to sit in. After a moment or two, brooding on what he had lost, he went to the top of the stairs and traipsed slowly down them.
From there, just inside the open front-room door, he could see Uncle Gib pacing up and down, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip. This cheered him up. Even if he stopped for as much as five minutes under Gemma's windows, it still wouldn't take him more than twenty minutes to get to Chepstow Villas. If he was late the guy would just have to wait. Better to get his own back on Uncle Gib for all those starvation-level meals and the rat in the toilet and his poxy bedroom and the smoke. He went back upstairs and watched the minute hand on the imitation Rolex he had stolen from a man he mugged for his mobile, moving sluggishly towards six o'clock.
The grandfather clock chimed and when the sixth stroke died away Uncle Gib called out, 'Come on, you. Time you was on your way.'
Lance winced at that 'you.' This particular usage was the way Gemma had sometimes addressed him but with a loving or sexy note in her voice: 'Come on, you' when she was in bed waiting for him, for instance. Uncle Gib just sounded nasty. 'I'm on my way,' Lance called out. 'No need to lose your cool.' As he spoke, the letter box on the front door clattered. There was no bell.
A deep voice said, 'God bless you, Brother Gilbert,' and heavy footsteps sounded, making their way into the front room.
Lance started laughing. He couldn't help himself. Very slowly he got up off the bed, crossed the landing and paused at the top of the stairs. Once more, the letter box clattered. Lance descended two stairs as Uncle Gib came out of the front room to answer the door and, looking up, shook his fist at him. Another Child of Zebulun was admitted, this time a very old one with a white beard. Lance would have liked to say, 'Hi, Santa, how're you doin'?' to him but didn't dare. He might come back to find the front door bolted on the inside.
His mood more cocky than it had been for days, he walked quite jauntily along Raddington Road and into the Portobello. The block of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea social housing where Gemma lived was a little way south of here. Lance walked under the Westway and the train bridge, down Westbourne Park Road and Powis Mews. In Talbot Road he skirted the yellowpainted concrete wall, thickly defaced with red and blue graffiti, and, superstitiously, stopped himself looking up until he was directly under her balcony. If he didn't look she might be there. He closed his eyes, then opened them. The washing was on the line, including a T-shirt with pink roses on it – painfully familiar to Lance – the buggy was there and the chairs but no Gemma. Lance experienced such a wave of nostalgia and longing at the sight of that T-shirt that he had to hold on to the concrete gatepost. Tears came into his eyes. He rubbed them away with his fists and walked on down Leamington Road. Depression had returned and settled on him like a heavy black bag strapped on his shoulders.
The house in Chepstow Villas was semi-detached, a white stucco Georgian house, as estate agents would have described it, of three floors and a basement. Behind the wall and the gateposts with lions' heads on top of them was a large front garden full of flowering shrubs, some in full bloom. A flight of six stone steps ascended to the front door. Lance noted that to the left of the garage was a side gate, perhaps six feet high. He would note more of that sort of thing later.
The old guy who opened the front door was tallish and thinnish, but nowhere near as thin as Lance. Gemma said no one was. He had white hair and lots of it. Saying, 'Pleased to meet you,' in response to his, 'Eugene Wren. How do you do?' Lance thought how unfair it was, what a sign of filthy class differences, that this old fellow was wearing a brown suede jacket that must have come from one of those places in Bond Street and a
He had never seen anywhere like it. He didn't know places like this existed except on TV and those he'd never really believed in. When he'd seen them on Gemma's super-TV, he and she sitting side by side on her settee, she'd said to him, 'There's no places really like that. They make them look that way to get you to watch.' And he'd said, 'You don't reckon those Beckhams or Elton John have stuff like that in their places?' 'Well, they're billionaires, aren't they?' she'd said. 'They don't count.'
So was this guy a billionaire? The room dazzled Lance, the pictures, the furniture, the jugs and pots and statue things, the curtains, yards and yards of them trailing on the carpet, the satin cushions coloured like jewels, the little tables, the clocks, the books done in leather and gold, the crystal that a sunbeam turned to diamonds. He stood and stared, feeling a fool, wishing he hadn't come – then glad he'd come, determined to make the most of it.
'Do sit down,' said Eugene Wren. 'May I know your name?'
Lance sat. He lived in a world where no one used surnames. 'Lance,' he said and, when the guy looked puzzled, 'Lance Platt.'
He was no longer staring but looking about him. Those were french windows the sunbeam came through, ordinary glass windows without bars. Outside, the garden had a high wall round it, all overgrown with ivy and stuff, but there was a side gate, wasn't there?
'Now,' said Eugene Wren, 'I have a sum of money here for you. All you have to do is tell me the amount you lost.'
What with his disappointment over Gemma and the shock of this place, he'd forgotten about the money. 'Ninety-five,' he said.
The old guy smiled. 'Ah, then I'm afraid the sum I found in the street wasn't yours. Pity.'
Lance didn't know what to say. He didn't much care. Ninetyfive pounds or whatever it really was would be nothing to the rich pickings in this place. He got up. 'I'll be going then.'
Having nothing more to say, he said nothing, until out in the hall again, 'Cheers.' In passing he had observed the burglar alarm on the wall, the bolts on the front door. It closed when he was halfway down the path. The whole visit had lasted no more than six minutes.
Bars at the ground-floor front windows, he noted, and also at the basement window down a flight of iron steps. That side gate presented no problem. There would be other ground-floor windows at the back, most likely not barred. I wonder if he lives alone. No sign of a woman but what sign would there be? He, Lance, would have to keep some sort of watch on the place, something more easily done from a car or van. Now who did he know who would let him have a loan of a van? Gemma's brother? You must be joking, Lance thought, as he walked back in the direction of her flat.
She was there! She was standing on the balcony up against the railing, holding her baby in her arms. Lance wasn't the first man to be moved by the sight of the woman he loved holding her child close against her heart. He let out a low cry of anguish. Gemma heard him and looked down, retreating immediately into the flat and slamming the glass door behind her.
Well, that hadn't been so bad, Eugene reflected. A nondescript sort of young man, all skin and bone, fairish, potato-faced – but what did it matter? He sat down to wait for Ella, then, seeing there was still half an hour to go before she was expected, pulled open the drawer in the carved black oak table (Danish, circa 1790), a heavy drawer invisible when closed, and contemplated the three Chocorange sweets remaining in the last packet inside it. They were the last he would ever have or would he perhaps not have them at all? Was the strength of mind he had earlier been so proud of strong enough to help him throw them in the waste bin?
As often happened, when thinking about his habit, he made fresh discoveries about himself and about his addiction. Today's was that no matter how many of the things he ate in quick succession, he never got tired of them. He always wanted another one. And that wasn't true of all addictive substances. Take drink, for instance. If you drank too much you either passed out or were sick. Too many cigarettes made you nauseous or start coughing. As for those joints, two had been enough to make him float while things happened in his head that caused him to fear for his sanity. There was nothing like that with Chocorange. He just wanted more and more. Therefore he must stop. What he would do was throw away two of them and suck the third.
The last one, the last of all, he conveyed slowly to his mouth, then took the remaining two to the kitchen and dropped them, not directly into the bin, but into a plastic bag containing the outside leaves of a lettuce, several tea bags and some pate past its sell-by date. Disposing of them like this among damp, unsavoury rubbish would be a sure way of stopping him retrieving them later. He tied the handles of the plastic bag together and dropped it into the bin.
Buy no more. It would be hard but he knew that already. Out of nowhere came a memory of running down supplies once before, of being alone here after all the shops were shut. A frantic search had begun, looking in all the unlikely places until – wonderful discovery, better than the first drink of the evening, almost better than sex – he had found an unopened packet in the bottom of the plastic bag he kept by him for taking to the shops. It was
