colleagues to do; it was down to the boys in the front line - which is how the field sales reps were described when business was brisk. As the month waxed, then waned, he could do little more than keep an eye on sales and stock levels, measuring their failure against performance targets.
As Christmas Day approached and the possibility of a performance-related bonus once more evaporated, head office slipped into languor. The silent resentment wasn't helped by the seasonal round of obligatory departmental lunches, nor the Christmas party.
On Christmas Eve, Nathan worked as late as he could -- it was always possible to find something to do, even if it was filing or clearing out old paperwork. At 3.30, he wandered twice round the building, looking for somebody to have a drink with. But his colleagues were all gone; one by one, they'd bid cheery seasonal goodbyes and bundled themselves into overcoats, picking up their briefcases and handbags.
On the way home, Nathan stopped off to buy some food. Then he parked his car behind the nursery and approached home via the rear entrance. The nursery was in darkness; the children would soon be tucked up, enduring their own excited sleeplessness at the thought of a nocturnal visitation. But the darkness in the nursery didn't frighten Nathan. The walls were lined with painty splodges on cheap sugar paper. It wasn't conceivable that something wicked lurked in there.
But now he noticed the flats on the first floor were in darkness -- and so was the attic flat that abutted his. He looked at his watch, as if it might suddenly have become three o'clock in the morning.
Frowning, half embarrassed, he walked to the front of the building to see that, except for his own flat - which he kept illuminated even in his absence, in case the uninhabited darkness should act as an invitation -- there were no lights on. Not even in Flat A, on the first floor - where steadfast, boring Wendy and Dave lived. In an act of what felt to Nathan like calculated malice, they'd turned off the winking Christmas tree lights.
It hadn't occurred to Nathan that all of his neighbours might be away for the holiday. It hadn't happened before. The thought of all those empty rooms - of all that darkness, below him as he slept -- dried his mouth and caused his scrotum to shrivel up.
His key rasped too loud in the latch. Stepping into the hallway, every movement seemed to echo. Having banged the timer switch firmly with the heel of his hand, he made it up the first two flights of stairs.
Then he stopped.
He hit the timer switch again and, still clutching his shopping, he turned and ran back downstairs and out the front door.
Eventually, he found a city-centre hotel that was not fully booked.
The room was not cheap, and Nathan was not sufficiently composed to negotiate himself a last-minute best-price deal.
He returned to his flat in the drizzly light of Christmas morning, to pick up a few things: some clothes, some toiletries, a book, and some magazines for when he lost interest in it. He ate a room-service Christmas dinner while watching a repeat of Only Fools and Horses. He spent Christmas evening in the bar, defiantly reading and drinking.
He didn't know how drunk he was until he stood to retire. The walls performed a trick of perspective, retreating from him, and the barmen looked wicked and malicious.
But New Year's Eve, at least, was tolerable. He watched television and, because the hotel was in the city centre, close to the renovated docklands, he could hear the cars hooting their horns and the girls screaming and laughing and groups repeating one verse of 'Auld Lang Syne', over and over again, and still not getting it right. He could watch it on television too: he could watch a celebrity count in another year, and that was good. That put another year between him and it.
January kicked off with a cold snap. Winds blew in unchecked from the Russian steppes. England descended into bedlam, the way it always did when faced with weather that to whatever modest degree actually resembled winter.
So he had to sit out January, too - because nobody went househunting when frost was hard-baked into the ground, making soil like hardwood and concrete brittle like seaside rock. Nobody in England, anyway.
It was not until February that he began to compile a list of local estate agents.
He made the calls from work, during his lunch hour. If the call should be traced, he need only claim to be househunting. In case this should ever be checked out (he well remembered Detective Holloway's cordial malice), he went to see his bank's mortgage adviser, who agreed on the spot to a mortgage in principle.
There were many more local estate agents than Nathan had anticipated.
A single, large advert in the Yellow Pages might cover half a dozen local branches. Because of this, and because he didn't always get a lunch break, it was nearly three weeks before he called Morris Michael estate agents and said, 'Hi, can I speak to Holly Fox please?'
By now, he'd repeated this sentence so often that, somewhere along the line, it had lost its meaning. So the reply 'I'm afraid she's out on a viewing right now, may I take a message - was followed by a long silence, during which Nathan's salesman's throat tightened and let him down. He slammed the receiver into its cradle and hurried to the lavatory.
He fumbled at his belt and suffered a protracted bout of diarrhoea.
Then he went to the car park behind the office and sat in his car, listening to loud music. He smoked seven cigarettes.
He watched motorcycle couriers with packages to deliver, and colleagues who'd nipped out for a smoke (there was a forlorn, stained patch of concrete designated for smokers: contrived to be as uninviting as possible, it deterred nobody). He turned down the music and pretended, ineptly, to be speaking into a mobile phone.
Back in his tiny, glass-fronted office, he wrote the estate agent's number on a Post-it note, and returned the Yellow Pages to Angela's desk.
It took him more than a week to call the number again. But he thought about little else; the idea had annexed a corner of his brain, like adolescent obsessions sometimes had. Whatever else he was doing, the greater part of him was rehearsing imaginary conversations with Holly Fox.
When he called a second time, the voice on the line asked him to wait. There was a basso rumbling as the receiver was set down. He hadn't been left on hold and he could hear the background sounds of somebody busy approaching the phone: muffled snippets of conversation, other noises rendered indecipherable; the rumbling of the phone as it was lifted from the desk; a hand cupped over the receiver.
Softly, 'Okay, I will. Later.'
Then:
'Hello, Holly speaking.'
Nathan stood up, as if someone had entered the room, saying: 'Hello?'
'This is Holly. How can I help you?'
'I'm looking for a house.'
'O-ffay.'
He thought by the tone of her voice that she was searching her desk for a pen.
He told her his price range. She asked what he was looking for.
He said, 'Something nice.'
'Okay. That's a start. A flat? A house?'
'Can I afford a nice house on my budget?'
'You'd be surprised. If you pick the right area.'
'Okay. A house would be great. Obviously. Yes. A house.'
'Bedrooms?'
'Yes, please.'
'Got that. How many?'
'Oh. I see. Sorry. I don't know. Two?'
'Two bedrooms. And would you consider a three-bedroom if it fell within your price range?'
'Maybe. Should I?'
'Most Victorian properties have three bedrooms, you see.'
'Right. I see. Okay. Then yes.'
'One of them is usually quite small. A lot of people use them for home offices.'
'Okay.'
