Portobello

Joel said he didn't. What had happened to him he intended to tell no one – not yet, at any rate. If he really tried it might go away. Concentrate instead on trying to remember exactly what had happened before he passed out and fell over in the street. His mother came to see him, unknown to Pa, and he told her where it was he had had his heart attack.

'I think I'd drawn some money out of the hole in the wall,' he said to her. 'I think it was a hundred and forty quid but there was only twenty-five in my pocket. It's in the drawer in that cabinet now.'

'You were never any good with money, Joel,' said his mother mournfully.

'Someone might have handed it in to the police. It's worth asking.'

His mother looked doubtful. She said she would enquire and then she said she wondered if it was 'all those drugs' he had taken in time gone by that caused his 'little heart problem'. Joel said he'd gone into rehab, hadn't he, he'd got cured, and then he lay down and pulled the sheet over his head. It was too light in his room. He had asked them for dark blinds and preferably dark curtains too, but they said the ones at his window, pale-blue and translucent, were the best they could do. He had read in a travel supplement about a place in the north of Sweden called Kiruna. It was inside the Arctic Circle and at midsummer when daylight endured all night, the Ferrum Hotel put up pitch-black blinds at their windows to give guests a dark night. At midwinter it stayed dark night and day. Joel liked the thought of Kiruna. It was just the place for him.

An only child for a long time, he had had an imaginary friend from the time he was seven until he was ten. The friend was a boy of his own age he didn't just pretend-talk to or imagine he was talked back to, he actually saw him. Not as clearly as he saw his schoolfellows but enough to describe him if someone asked. No one ever did ask because he told no one, but if he had he would have said that the friend he called Jasper, because Jasper called himself that, was fair-haired with blue eyes and had an expression of great sympathy and understanding.

No one at school was as nice as Jasper or as good a companion. Most of them ignored Joel or else mildly bullied him. Until, that is, he grew too tall for them to dare do too much to him. By that time Jasper had slowly faded away, the golden hair and blue eyes losing their colour, the features blurring, until he became a shadow falling sometimes across a patch of sunlight, then disappearing altogether. Joel had been saddened by his loss, which was not to say he was made happy by his return. Lying in his hospital bed, he closed his eyes and put his hands over them so as not to see the figure in the chair.

The real figure in the chair later that day when the bright sunlight had faded was Ma. She hadn't been to the police. She had gone to Pembridge Crescent to see where his heart attack had happened, notably to find the bell in the gatepost her son had fallen against. When she found what she thought was the right one, she rang the bell. The people who lived there were 'absolutely charming', couldn't have been nicer. Of course she had thanked them for saving Joel's life and they were 'most anxious' to know how he got on.

Joel asked, emerging, 'How about the money, Ma?'

'Well, such a funny thing, dear. There was this notice on a lamp post saying someone had found it. You were quite right about the amount. That really was clever of you after all you've been through. I wrote down the number you're to phone. Would you like me to do that for you?'

'I'll do it,' said Joel.

'All right, if you're sure.'

'I nearly died, you know. They said they nearly lost me.'

'I know, dear. You told me.' It was plain she didn't believe him. 'I want to talk to you about coming out. You're going to need someone to look after you for a while. Your father won't have you in the house. He's very hard but that's the way he is. Well, you know how he is, he doesn't change. He says he'll pay for a live-in nurse. Would you like that? I can come over every day of course.'

'You'll be in deep shit with the old bugger,' said Joel and he pulled the sheet over his head.

Once more under the blanket, in the stuffy semi-dark, he was aware of his mother sighing and at last stealing quietly away. Would his father have been sorry if he'd died? Joel doubted it. Pa would remember to his dying day what had happened to Amy. He would never forget and never forgive. Amy had been as much Ma's child as his and if Ma hadn't forgotten she had got used to it, she had forgiven him. She knew he hadn't meant to do what he did, or, rather, left undone. Pa would never understand that and so he would pay out any amount of money to keep his son out of his sight for ever.

* * *

'I hope you know what you're doing, Gene,' said Ella Cotswold. 'Inviting this person into your home, I mean. Why couldn't you simply ask him to – well, name the sum, and if he got it wrong that would be the end of it, wouldn't it?'

'And if he got it right he'd have to come here anyway. You don't suppose I'm going to send it to him by telegraphic transfer, do you?'

'But, darling, if he gets it wrong, and he probably will, he may get angry and – well, do something nasty.'

'Nonsense, Ella,' said Eugene robustly. 'I'm curious. I want to see this chap. He sounded a bit of a wimp.'

'I sincerely hope he is.'

They were going out to dinner at a newly opened restaurant in Kensington Park Road. While Ella applied lipstick and contemplated her reflection in one of his beautiful gilt-framed mirrors (he called them looking-glasses) Eugene nipped into the kitchen and took from a secret drawer two Chocorange sweets, which he slipped into his jacket pocket. The secret drawer had no handle and looked like part of the decorative frieze that ran along under the worktops. He noted that he still had three packets left, so perhaps he should take a third sweet with him to be on the safe side. No, two in his pocket and one to suck now should be enough.

Ella had an acute sense of smell and she detected it on his breath but supposed he had helped himself to a chocolate while in the kitchen. He knew she never ate chocolates but he might have offered her one just the same. She was a small woman and slightly plump, with a very pretty face and dark-brown curly hair, proud of her full bosom and showing it off whenever she could while remaining decent. Her fortieth birthday would come before the end of the year and she looked forward to it with dread. As a busy GP with a full life, a devoted lover, a passion for opera and a great reader, she realised how foolish this was. Forty was nothing these days, forty was young. Yet those months stretched before her like a sunny plain at the end of which a sheer cliff face dropped down into an abyss.

The abyss could be avoided and the sunshine made permanent if Eugene would ask her to marry him. She imagined walking into the medical centre and showing her engagement ring to her three partners, the medical secretary and the practice nurse. Maybe she could have a baby. That was something she wouldn't attempt without being married but if only he would ask her – the whole world would change. She had even thought of asking him. But you couldn't do that if you were an ordinary sort of doctor in a busy practice and he was a very rich man. He smiled at her and when he had helped her into her coat, gave her a chocolatey kiss on the lips. It was quite hurtful, she thought, not being offered a chocolate even though he knew she wouldn't have taken one.

'By the way, Gene,' she said when they were in the restaurant, 'how much did you find?'

'How much did I…? Oh, the money I found in the street? A hundred and fifteen pounds.'

'And you've only had one response in how long?'

'About two weeks, my darling.'

'What will you do if this chap doesn't get it right?'

'Take it to the police, I suppose.'

That would be a bit awkward after so long. But there was no point in thinking about it yet. Eugene looked fondly at Ella. How pretty she was and how nice. He would miss her terribly if she weren't around, though there was no prospect of that. This evening, in this charming restaurant with its delicious food, its candle on the table and its gazanias in a silver vase, would be a good time and a good place to ask her to marry him. Maybe when they were having their dessert wine and their double espressos…

But the time passed and he didn't ask her. Candlelight there might be and gazanias but a restaurant wasn't quite the place. It must be at home when they were quite alone. It might also be a good thing to give up this habit of his. It shouldn't be too difficult, for there was no question of its being an addiction like drink or drugs. But give it up he must, simply by the expedient of buying no more. Possibly it would take him a week or two, so there would be no proposal of marriage that evening.