Espedair Street

looked round at me. 'Did you know he'd been taking it?'

'There's a lot of things I don't know,' I said; one of the stock, off-the-peg answers it helps to carry around with you if you're as naturally conversationally clumsy and awkward as me. In fact, I'd guessed Davey was on something, but I hadn't been sure. Like I still wasn't sure whether Christine knew about what had happened between Davey and Inez. Inez and Davey had both been vague on that point.

So it all came out then, sitting on that dark beach, on golden sand and before a blue sea, both of which had lost their colours till the dawn; all the hurt and tension and the fear poured out of Christine, and I sat there and just listened.

How he'd started, how he'd controlled it at first; the talk of only weak people really needing it but he was living on a high all the time anyway; H just intensified it, and how he got his greatest kicks out of playing on stage; nothing could match that, and how for the past few months, including during the tour, she'd been trying to get him to stop, and thought he had, then found he hadn't, and discovered things about herself and about him she hadn't known; that she felt responsible for him, that he could, nevertheless, infuriate her to the point of hate and rage; that he could use the drug to hurt her; taking it to spite her when she annoyed him; and encountering the user's duplicity and illogic; I've given it up; I've virtually given it up; I'll give it up tomorrow; hey look I went a day without any so I deserve some as a reward...

She'd talked and shouted and screamed, she'd hit him, threatened to break his fingers, shop him to the police, she'd searched all his clothes and possessions and thrown the stuff out when she found any; finally, she just hadn't let him out of her sight for the last couple of weeks of the tour (I had noticed they'd seemed very close in one way and very distant with each other in another way, towards the close of the tour), and the same for the first two weeks here, on Naxos.

And so she was tired, not just because Davey was one of those people who didn't seem to need very much sleep, and she didn't dare go to sleep before him, but because of the tension, the concentration... And so, also, she'd needed to tell it all to somebody.

We sat there and drank most of the champagne, and watched another few satellites drift slowly overhead; and there were a couple of shooting stars too, thin bright silent lines that disappeared before you had a chance to look at them.

'Anyway... ' Christine said, 'I think he's over it.'

She looked at the brushing line of white where the waves hit the beach. 'I hope he's over it.'

I couldn't think of anything to say. I put my arm around her, patted her shoulder. 'Weird,' she said, closing one eye and looking at me from very close range, 'I'm going for a swim.'

'Oh?' I said, as she peeled off her jeans and jumper.

'Coming in?' she asked. She took off a T-shirt under the jumper, snagging it round her head for a moment and giving me a chance to ogle her breasts in the moonlight and think, Oh God, I'd love to screw you, Christine. 'Oh, fuck,' she grunted, finally hauling the T -shirt off. She stood in her bikini bottom, looking down at me. 'Well?'

'I don't have any Ys on,' I told her .

'Weird, I've already... oh, suit yourself.' She padded down the sand to the water. 'It's still quite warm,' she said. 'Come on in.'

I shook my head. She waded in a little further until the small waves were breaking around her knees, then stopped, turned round to me and stepped out of the bikini bottom. She threw it up the beach to me. 'Does that make you feel any better?' she said, then turned and ran and dived forward.

I stood up, watching the splashes of her easy-looking crawl draw slowly away. I stripped too, and laid both lots of clothes neatly on the beach.

My crawl is spectacular but inefficient; Christine swam rings round me. I had my feet tickled and my bum pinched, water splashed at me, and I lost the race back to shore.

We lay there, side by side on the sand and breathing hard. I lay looking up at the stars and the chip of moon, and shivered a little. I wanted to turn over and kiss Christine, but I knew I wouldn't. These things don't happen that way with me. Besides, I tried to tell myself; it would be too tidy, and too much like a deliberate revenge, to form the fourth side of this eternal square on another beach, before another line of surf, under the high-tech lights of passing spy satellites...

Forget about it.

I wondered where Davey and Inez were: in bed, in Athens, or an island between here and there? Or had they really given up their little affair, and were they chastely apart, separate rooms while the plane was repaired ?

Jesus, I thought, for all I know they're both at the bottom of the Aegean. But that didn't bear thinking about.

Christine gave a big, sort of whistling sigh at my side. I tipped my head a little, to see her staring up at the stars again. I let my gaze wander down her body, over nipples and belly and mons and thighs and knees, and I thought what a damn shame it was that it seemed so important that I be the woman's friend, and be thought trustworthy and kind and somebody she could talk to, when what I really wanted to do was throw myself on top of her and cover her in kisses and be covered in hers and pull her legs apart and have her pull me inside her and... oh, dear God; that didn't bear thinking about either.

I looked back up into the sky again. The stars in the north were gone; cloud must be moving in.

'You pointing out any particular star, Weird?' Christine asked lazily.

'What?' I said, mystified. My arms were both down at my sides; what was she talking about?

Christine showed me. Her hand was wet, warm/cold. She propped herself up on her other elbow and said, 'Well ... what are we going to do with you, Weird?'

'Do you' — I cleared my throat — 'want a suggestion?'

She brought her head down to mine, but as I reached up with my hands and opened my mouth, she kissed me briefly on the nose and pulled away again. I opened my eyes to see her holding the champagne bottle. She sloshed what was left of it around in the bottom of the bottle, stroking me gently with her other hand. 'You ever had a champagne head-job, Weird?'

'A champagne hedgehog?' I said, mishearing.

'Head job... I mean, blow job,' she said, laughing. I shook my head. She put the bottle to her lips and threw her head back. Her cheeks bulged as she put the empty bottle down, held up one finger and said, 'Mmm mm m- mmm mm.' Which I think was meant to be, 'Don't go away now.' Then she lowered her head.

'Ka-pow!' was my considered comment, I seem to recall.

Then we screwed on the beach, and a couple of times back at the villa.

A storm passed over late in the night, coming from the north: thunder crashed and lightning flashed. She moved half-waking, made a small whimpering noise, and I held her still salty body close to me as the storm which had kept Davey and Inez in Piraeus moved above us.

'You want to call the next album what?'

'I want to call it 'We'll Build You A New One, Mrs McNulty',' I told Davey. I looked at him briefly, then quickly looked back to the racetrack; Balfour had almost lapped me. I tried speeding up, but came off at a bend I'd misjudged twice already; the little plastic Scalextric car flew off the black track and flopped into the pile of three cars underneath; two of mine and one of Davey's. I reached for another car and slotted it into the track as Davey cackled (another half-lap gained).

'Mad,' Balfour told me, as his car swept past where we sat. 'You're mad. That is a crazy title. ARC'll never let us call an album that.'

I shrugged. 'I'll talk them round to it.' We were sitting in tall chairs which were perched on top of a large table at one end of what had been the mansion's dining room; it was a good fifty feet long, and Davey's model racing set filled most of it. He must have had about a hundred yards of track spaghettied throughout the room, and at least a dozen booster transformers connected to distant parts of the track, all controlled through the handsets via a small computer. The roadway swooped and zoomed amongst packing cases and stacks of ancient books and piles of old curtains and bedding.

Davey had positioned mirrors at various points throughout the room, so you could see places where the track disappeared from view, but it was tricky driving. When a car came off— which happened fairly often — you just pulled another one from a pile of boxes behind where you sat (on a very broad table) and slotted it into the system