I didn’t want to have to do it to her. I would have infinitely preferred some other solution. Still, there we are. It makes sense, really, given the rules of life on earth; and she asked for it. I just wish there was another way, something more self-contained, economical, and shapely. But there isn’t. That’s life, as I say, and my most sacred duty is to make it lifelike. Oh, hell. Let’s get it over with.

Someone leaned over her and said with a voice so close that it might have come from within her own head, ‘Are you all right now?’

She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I’ll leave you then. You’re on your own now. Take care. Be good.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

She opened her eyes and sat up. Whoever had spoken was no longer there, but other people were moving about near by, people who for some reason were all there just to help her through. How kind they must be, she thought, how kind they are, to do all this for me.

Outside, a man in white walked quickly past. He hesitated, then poked his head round the door. His posture suddenly relaxed. ‘Come on, get up,’ he said wearily, his eyes closed.

‘What?’

‘Get up. It’s time. You’re all right, come on.’ He walked forward, glancing sideways at a low table on which various items were scattered. ‘These all your things?’ he said.

She looked: a black bag, some scraps of green paper, a small golden cylinder. ‘Yes,’ she said secretively, ‘these all my things.’

‘You better be off then.’

‘Yes all right,’ she said. She swung herself over the trolley’s side. She stared down at her legs and moaned. The poor flesh was all churned and torn. Reflexively she reached down to touch. Her flesh was whole. The shreds were part of some wispy material laid over her skin. She was all right.

The man snorted. ‘Where you been,’ he said, his voice moistening.

‘Can’t tell,’ she muttered.

He came closer. ‘The toilet?’ he said loudly. ‘You want to go to the toilet?’

‘Yes please,’ she said, without much hope.

He turned, walked towards the door, and turned again. She stood up and tried to follow him. She found that heavy curved extensions had been attached to her feet. The idea was obviously to make movement very difficult, if not actually impossible. With one leg wobbling she came towards him at an angle along the slipped floor.

‘Get your things then.’ He shook his head several times. ‘You people . . .’

He led her into the passage. Walking ahead of him now, and feeling his eyes on her back, she looked hastily this way and that. There seemed to be two kinds of people out there. Most of them were the ones in white. The other kind were smaller and bound in variegated robes; they were being carried or led about with expressions of defencelessness and apology. I must be one of them, she thought, as the man urged her down the passage and pointed to a door.

In the trickling narrow room, whose porcelain statuary she could not connect with herself, she placed her cheek against the cold wall and looked for clues inside her head. What was in there? Her mind went on for ever but contained nothing, like a dead sky. She was pretty sure this wasn’t the case with other people—a thought that produced a sudden spurt of foul-tasting liquid in the back of her throat. She steadied herself and turned to face the room, catching the eye of a shiny square of steel on the wall; through this bright window she briefly glimpsed a startled figure with thick black hair who looked at her and ducked quickly away. Is everyone frightened, she wondered, or is it just me?

She didn’t know how long she was expected to stay where she was. Any minute now the man could come and get her again; alternatively, she might be allowed to hang around in here for as long as she liked, perhaps indefinitely. Then it occurred to her that the world was her idea. But in that case it couldn’t be a very good idea, could it, if she sensed such unanimity of threat, such immanence of harm?

The door was a puzzle she speedily solved. The man had gone when the narrow room let her out. Without pausing she moved in the general direction of the white-clad keepers and their slower charges, towards the light which raced in playful eddies along the colourless walls. Abruptly the passage widened into a place where movement ceased and new kinds of people stood about in furtiveness and grief, or lay sweating warily on white-decked tables, or yelled out as the trotting keepers smuggled them away. Someone covered in blood stood hollering spectacularly in the centre of the floor, his hands raised to his eyes. Beyond him open double-doors admitted a cool wash of air and light. She moved forward, careful to skirt the thrashing pockets of confusion and distress. No one had time to prevent her.

She hurried from the indoors. When she tried to accelerate down the glass passage the devices on her feet abruptly checked her with their pain. She bent down to examine them and found, to her pleased surprise, that she could remove them without much difficulty. Two passing men carrying an empty hammock shouted at her and frowned meaningly at the discarded machines on the floor. But she could smell the living air now, and she hurried from the indoors.

There were six kinds of people outside. People of the first kind were men. Of all the six kinds they were the most fully represented and also the most varied within their kind. Some went where they had to go in an effaced and gingery shuffle, hoping no one would pick them out: not many of them looked at her, and then only with diffidence and haste. But others moved with a rangy challenge, an almost criminal freedom, their jaws held up to front the air: they certainly looked her way, and with enmity, several of them making sounds of cawing censure with their mouths. People of the second kind were less worrying; they were shrunken, compacted—mysteriously lessened in some vital respect. They limped in pairs, with such awkward caution that they hardly made any progress at all, or else whirled about with a fluttery, burst, directionless verve. Some were so bad now that they had to be wheeled round in covered boxes, protesting piteously to their guides, who were people of the third kind. The third kind resembled the first kind quite closely except at the top and the bottom; their legs were often unprotected, and they skilfully tiptoed on the arched curves of their elaborate devices (I must be one of them, she thought, remembering the narrow room and lifting a hand to her hair). They looked at her for just a moment, then at her numb feet, then turned away in pain. People of the fourth kind were men who couldn’t get their hair right, some using hardly any at all, others smothering themselves with the stuff, and still others who actually wore theirs upside down—the matted face climbing towards a great globed chin of naked scalp. They seemed to think that this was all right. People of the fifth kind stood apart on corners or edged their way sideways through the guiltily parting crowds; they didn’t talk like other people talked; they either muttered darkly to themselves or spun away at an angle to wring their hands and admonish the air. She thought they must be mad. The people of the fifth kind included people of most other kinds. And they were never seen in pairs. People of the sixth kind, of course, were sorrily shod with tangled stockings, and weren’t sure who they were supposed to be or where they were going. She thought she saw one or two of these, but on closer inspection they always turned out to be people of some other kind.

No one out there reminded her of anything much. She sensed that she was on the brink of the inscrutable, ecstatic human action, that all she saw was ulterior, having a great and desperate purpose which firmly excluded her. And she still couldn’t tell to what extent things were alive.

No change yet, she thought.

Not too far above the steep canyons there had hung an imperial backdrop of calm blue distance, in which extravagantly lovely white creatures—fat, sleepy things—hovered, cruised and basked. Carelessly and painlessly lanced by the slow-moving crucifixes of the sky, they moreover owed allegiance to a stormy yellow core of energy, so irresistible that it had the power to hurt your eyes if you dared to look its way. But then this changed. The tufted creatures lost their outlines, drifting upwards at first to form a white shawl over the dome of the air, before melting back into a slope of unbroken grey beneath their master, which lost its power and boiled red with rage—or was it just dying, she thought, as she started to see the terrible changes below. With humiliation, candour and relief, people of all kinds duly began to hasten in hardened fear. Variety grew weary, and its pigments gave up their spirits without struggle, some with stealth, others with hurtful suddenness. Soon the passages and their high glass walls appeared to be changing places—or at least they agreed to share what activity remained: the daredevil roadsters broke in two and raced their ghosts away. Above, the bruised distance seeped ever nearer. Baying in panic with their wheels out, showing their true colours now, the trolleys of the sky warped downwards towards the earth, as further below the people made haste to escape from beneath the falling air.

Where were they all going to hide? Soon there would be no people left and she would be here alone. Someone of the second kind hobbled past, paused and turned, and said shyly,

‘You’ll catch your death.’

‘Will I?’ she asked.

She moved on. People lingered in the well-lit places. Sometimes you walked in glazed bleak silence, measuring yourself to the yellow relays of light; then you turned into a buzzing gallery of action and purpose. Alone or in small groups they eventually ducked into the darkness, determined to get somewhere while they still could. They went on staring at her, some of them, but perfunctorily now—at her feet, at her face, and perhaps at her feet again, depending on the kind of people they were.

For a time breakdown arrived on the streets. They teemed with a last, released, galvanic hate. People experimented with their voices, counting the harsh sounds they could make; others dashed headlong into the deepest shadows, as if only they knew a good secret place to hide. It was then that her sense of danger started climbing sharply, in steep swerves. Each turning seemed more likely to deliver its possibilities of hurt and risk; soon, someone or something would feel the need to do her special damage.

Enough of this, she thought, deciding to get these things over with and out of the way.

At last she made it to a place where there were no people left. The concrete floor spanned out into another kind of life. This was the end of whatever she was in. Beyond spiked rods green land rose in a calm swell. Overhead, she noticed, the fat creatures had crept back beneath their spangled roof—all heavy and red now, and their deity a sombre silver in the lake of darkness. Suddenly she saw a gap in the cage: a lane fed straight into the green land, with only a horizontal white bar to mark the point. She moved forward, bent herself beneath the bar, then ran as fast as she could up across the soft ground.

She soon found a good place to hide. There was a moist hollow at the foot of a leaning tree. With her breath lurching she lay down and folded herself up. Her body began to quiver: this is it, she thought, this is my death. The pain that she had harboured all day burst from the tight crux of her body. Her face leaked too, and some convulsion within her was squeezing unwanted sounds through her lips. She told herself to be quiet. What was the point of hiding if you made all this noise? The shadows put on weight. The ground gave way to receive her. At the last moment the air seemed to hum with iron and flame as one by one, above the vampiric sky, the points of life went out.

Of course, the initial stage is always the most difficult in a case like this. I’m pleased, actually. No, I am. We’ve got phase one over with, and she has survived quite creditably. Between ourselves, this isn’t my style at all really. The choice wasn’t truly mine, although I naturally exercise a degree of control. It had to be like this. As I said earlier, she asked for it.

A rising stretch of London parkland, a silver birch tree crooked over a shiny hollow, a girl in the recent dew. The time is 7.29 a.m., the temperature 51° Fahrenheit. Over her body the wind-dried leaves click their tongues—and no wonder. What in hell has happened to the girl? Her face is made of hair and mud, her clothes (they are hardly clothes any longer) have found out all the slopes of her body, her bare thighs clutch each other tight in the morning sun. Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was a tramp, or a ditched whore, or drunk, or dead (she looks very near to the state of nature: I’ve seen girls like that). But I know better, and, besides, people usually have good reason for ending up the way they do. Whatever happened to this one? Something did. Let’s move in closer. Let’s find out. It’s time to wake up.

At first she didn’t know where she was or how she had got there. She assumed that that was what memory was doing to her, subtracting day after day so that she would always have to start from the beginning, and never get ahead. Then she remembered the day before and (this was probably an earlier thought, the second thought perhaps) the day before reminded her of the idea of memory and the fact that she had lost hers. And she had lost it, she had still lost it, and she still didn’t know what exactly this entailed. She sent light out into the corners of her mind . . . but time ended in mist, some time yesterday. She wondered what happened when you lost it, your memory. Where did it go, and was it lost for good or were you meant to be able to find it again? Well, here I still am, she thought finally; at least I haven’t died or anything like that. Something about sleep worried her, but she let it pass. And even she could tell it was a beautiful day.

She sat up, testing her wet senses, and blinking at the light that had made the long journey back again while she had slept. Small but influential creatures were screaming at her from above. She looked up—and realized she could name things. It was simple, just a trick of the mind’s eye. She knew the name for the birds; she could subdivide them too, to some extent (sparrows, a hooded crow staring at her humourlessly); she could even loosely connect them with memories of the day before: the jumpy, thin-shouldered, frowning, supplicant dogs, a long cat flexing its claws on the glass of a shop window. She wasn’t sure how things worked or what they had to do with each other, how alive they all were, or where she fitted in among them. But she could name things, and she was pleased. Perhaps everything was simpler than she thought.

As soon as she stood up she saw them. In the middle distance over the damp green land there was a wasted, scattered area against a line of forgotten buildings. Other people were there, some standing, some still lying flummoxed on the floor, some sitting in a close huddle. For a moment she felt the squeeze of fear and a reflex urged her to hide again; but she was too pleased and too weary, and she had an inkling that nothing mattered anyway, her own thoughts or life itself. She started to move towards them. How bad at walking she was. They seemed to be people of the fifth and second kinds, which was encouraging in its way.

As she limped into the slow range of their sight, one of them turned and seemed to eye her coolly, without surprise. Even at this distance their faces gave off a glow of distemper, suggesting rapid changeability beneath the skin. She was getting nearer. They did not turn to confront her although some knew she was coming.

‘Mary had a little lamb,’ one of them was saying in a mechanical voice not directed at her, ‘—its face was white as snow . . .’

She came nearer. They could harm her now if they liked. But nothing had happened yet, and it occurred to her exhaustedly that she could probably walk among them as she pleased (for what it was worth), that indeed she was condemned to move among the living without exciting any notice at all.

Then one of them turned and said, ‘Come on, who are you?’

‘Mary,’ she lied quickly.

‘I’m Modo. That’s Rosie.’

‘Neville,’ another said.

‘Hopdance,’ said the fourth.

‘Come on then, come in the warmth.’

With nonchalance, with relief, they included her among themselves. She sat on their square grill, beneath which a vast subterranean machine thrashed itself rhythmically for their heat.

‘Here, wet your whistle, Mary. Keep the cold out,’ said Neville, handing her a shiny brown bottle. She tasted its spit and fizz before Rosie claimed it.

Neville went on, to no one in particular, ‘Twenty-two years of age, I was one of the top six travellers for Littlewoods. My own car, the lot. They wanted to do a, an article on me in the papers. But I said—no, I don’t want no publicity.’

‘No, you don’t want no publicity,’ agreed Rosie sternly.

‘You can keep your publicity, mate. That’s what I told them.’

‘Publicity . . . ? Hah!’ said Hopdance, then shook his head, as if that settled publicity’s fate once and for all.

She resolved to be on the lookout for publicity. It was obviously a very bad thing if it was to be so vigilantly shunned even here . . . She peered at them through their hot breath. Their skin was numb and luminous, but all their eyes were ice. I’m one of them, she thought, and perhaps I always have been. And as she looked from face to face, sensing the varieties of damage which each wore, she guessed that there were probably only two kinds of people. There were only two kinds of people: it was just that all kinds of things could happen to them.

You know the kind of people I mean. The reason they are tramps is that they have no money. The reason they have no money is that they won’t sell anything, which is what nearly everyone else does. You sell something, don’t you, I’m sure? I know I do. Why don’t they? Tramps just don’t want to sell what other people sell—they just don’t want to sell their time.

Selling time, time sold: that’s the business we’re all in. We sell our time, but they keep theirs, but they don’t get any money, but they think about money all the time. It’s an odd way of going about things, being a tramp. Tramps like it, though. Being a tramp is increasingly popular, statistics show. There are more and more tramps doing without money all the time.

I’m obliged to deal with these sort of people fairly frequently. In a sense it’s inevitable in my line of work. I’d far rather not, of course: they’re always wasting my time. I’d avoid them if I were you. You’re much better off that way.

Mary nodded in agreement.

‘See?’ he said.

It was true. She knew little, and what little she knew she would have to keep to herself. She would have to learn fast, and other people would have to show her how.

‘Aren’t you a beauty though,’ he added slowly. ‘Here, isn’t she a beauty though, eh?’

Mary hoped he was wrong about this . . . But the accusation clearly wasn’t a very serious one; the man’s hostility gave out, and he turned away, raising the bottle to his lips. It wasn’t too bad here, Mary thought, though she was quite curious about how long it would go on.

‘Right, come on love, you’re coming with me. On your feet, girl.’

Mary looked up expectantly. It was someone of the third kind—a girl, she thought, one of me. Mary had noticed her before, out on the edge of the other people there, hanging back with a certain sense of her own exclusiveness and drama. She was big, one of the biggest people Mary had ever seen. Her numberless hair was a violent red, trailing from her head in distracted spirals; and her eyes were ice.

Without protest Mary was helped to her feet. As she straightened up, Neville made a cunning but enfeebled lunge towards her. The big girl thumped her great fist down on the back of his neck and then kicked him skilfully, so that he barked his forehead on the metal grill.

‘You leave her alone, Neville, you dirty little sod! Ooh, I know you, mate. Yeah, that’s right! She needs a good friend to look after her, that’s what she needs.’

Neville murmured grumblingly as he curled up away from them.

‘What? What? You want to watch it, mate, or I’ll kick your bloody head off. All right? All right? . . . Come on, my love. Let’s get away from this lot. Scum of the earth, they are—the pits. I mean, some people. Where’s the consideration? I mean, where is it?’

With her shoulders working, the big girl marched Mary off towards the pale line of forgotten buildings. As soon as they turned the second corner she halted and looked Mary carefully up and down.

‘My name’s Sharon. What’s yours?’

‘Mary,’ said Mary.

Sharon looked into Mary’s eyes. She frowned. Her broad face seemed to carry an extra layer of flesh, a puffy afterthought grafted on to her natural features. It was a layer of delay; there was a sense of missed time about everything one would get from that face, thought Mary. Something skipped a beat between the face and any feelings that might prompt it.

‘Phew, girl. Someone’s done you over, haven’t they?’ She laughed harshly, and started to straighten Mary’s clothes. ‘We all do it though, don’t we? Isn’t it a scream? I mean, I like that every now and then myself, providing they’re all nice boys of course, and it’s just for fun.’ She lifted an erect forefinger. ‘I won’t be peed on though. I just won’t stand for it,’ she added with considerable hauteur. ‘I will not be peed on!’ She brushed dirt from Mary’s shoulder. ‘Mm, they could have put you somewhere after though, couldn’t they? I mean, a couple of quid for a nice little hotel or something. But you know what men are like? It’s silly that we love them so much, isn’t it really?’

Mary was ready to agree. Sharon was flouncing on, however, and she followed. Mary was getting worse at walking all the time. She attributed this fact to the knot of mighty pain that had wedged itself somewhere in the plinth of her back. What a pain, what a grabby pain. It hurt her, too, because of its wayward naturalness, its suspended familiarity; it was a simple and unworrying pain, she felt. But it hurt. That was the trouble with pain; it wouldn’t really bother you much if it weren’t so painful sometimes.

‘This is where I stay when I’m down this way,’ said Sharon, leading her past a series of metal traps, behind one or two of which she could see old cars sleeping. ‘Not that I’m down here too often, mind you.’

They moved past the flat walls of an empty cave. There was a brackish smell of wetness and age, and a richer smell that was man-made and attacked the juices of the jaw. Someone smothered in clothes looked up sheepishly from the ground. Near him a toppled bottle creaked gently on its axis.

‘Don’t mind him,’ said Sharon briskly. ‘That’s Impy. His name’s Tom really, but I call him Impy because he’s . . . important—impotent. Aren’t you, Impy, you little wreck!’ She turned to Mary and said conciliatingly, ‘You know, I think it’s always better to laugh about these things, out in the open, you know. Otherwise he’s bound to get a complex about it or something. Eh, Impy? How are you this morning then?’

‘I’m cold,’ said Tom.

‘Well you go out and get some then. Don’t look at me. Now this is Mary and you keep your bloody hands off her. What’s the matter with you, girl? You look like you’re giving birth . . . Does, does it hurt?’

Mary nodded in apology.

‘Where? Where does it?’

Mary stroked her sides gently.

‘Did they do your back in too? What sort of pain?’

‘Just a simple pain.’

That frown again, and that little click of time as it showed on her face. ‘Whew! You are simple, aren’t you.’ She reached for Mary’s waist with hands that were less harsh than Mary feared. ‘Here,’ she said. Mary felt pressure lifting from her middle. ‘Everybody’s something. That’s one thing I’ve learnt from life. Everybody’s something. Don’t mind him—you’ve seen it all before, Impy, haven’t you?’ Gracefully holding Mary’s hand aloft, Sharon helped her step out of the skirt. They both looked down and saw a complicated network of bands and clips. ‘You aren’t half a mess, my girl. Were you in somewhere? Well take down your knicks! You must have been in somewhere. Over here. Come on then! . . . Gawd, you’re helpless, girl. Take some looking after.’ Sharon slipped her fingers into the central band. It started to come away quite easily. ‘You’re pretty though. I always wanted to be dark. It lasts longer. Talks nicely too, doesn’t she Imp? That’s it, now crouch down. Go on, silly. You . . . just let it . . . That’s it. Ah, don’t—no need to cry now. Silly girlie. Everybody does it. Everybody’s something. You know what my granny used to say to me? “Everybody’s queer dear, except you and me dear, and even you dear look a bit queer dear.” We’re going to take you away from here, yes we are. We’re going to get you fixed up.’

They headed off together towards the distant, stirring streets. The grass was kind to Mary’s feet; Sharon hovered hugely in the corner of her eye. Already she felt less fear about the question of her re-entry into the vociferous, the astronomical present. And she was pleased about everyone being queer. Mary looked up. The corpulent beings of the middle-air were hanging around again, rolling slowly on to their backs to enjoy the sun. She wondered with interest what Sharon had in mind for her.

‘Fuck!’ said Sharon suddenly. She halted and placed a hand on Mary’s shoulder. ‘Scuse my French.’ She crooked a leg and groped downwards. ‘Hate walking on the grass in these heels.’ Her heels did indeed look particularly vicious, curved on to a thin prong and secured to her ankles with metal clamps. ‘God, we’ve got to get you some shoes as well, girl. I generally keep, you know, a little wardrobe down here but . . . You must be fucking freezing. Whoops!’ She straightened up with a grunt. ‘It’s lucky the weather’s turned.’

They walked on. The weather had turned. It was lucky. Everything was coming right. Mary now felt inclined to dismiss or at least extenuate the insidious burden of what had happened to her while she slept. Because something had. Boy, something certainly had. Something had come at her in the night, something had mangled her, something had turned her inside out. Whatever it was had hated her life, had wanted to murder her soul. Was this how the past got back at you? Perhaps. It made sense, in a way, for the past to wait until you were asleep before sneaking up on you like that. And the worst thing was that she had wanted that violence done to her. She had brought it about. And she had wanted more.

‘You know, Mary,’ said Sharon, ‘I’m buggered if I—sorry—if I know why I keep coming back here. I don’t know for the life of me why I still do. Only for Impy I suppose, soppy old fool that I am. I’m not accustomed to this sort of circle at all really. I’m not like them. But, you know, get a couple down you and, you know . . . When I wake up I never know how I got here. But we all do it, don’t we? Silly really, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Mary, ‘I suppose it is.’

Mary walked the streets again, but with purpose now. Accordingly they seemed rather less effusive to her eye. Sharon knew the way: her progress was bold, even brazen, and yet she saw nothing. The streets did not strike her, nor did the other people and their storms of fortunes.

They walked quickly and Mary was always trying to catch up. The streets Sharon led her down varied in size and demeanour. Some were owned by the raucous cars: these were given over to movement, so that the very air seemed to shoo the people along in its gusts and backwash. When enough people massed on a corner the cars would arrest themselves and wait in lines, rumbling with impatience. Occasionally a man whirled hectically out to dodge across the precipitate passageways, while the snouty cars stuck with menace to their tracks. Other streets were owned, collectively and with civic pride, by their buildings, the houses: these were in the interests of quiet, and their air was still. You hardly ever saw anyone going into the houses and you practically never saw anyone coming out. Anxious to divine the laws of life, Mary assumed that once you got inside you stayed there, avoiding the streets and all their chances. Here, cars nosed about with diffidence or had already come completely to rest, and people could cross more or less as they pleased.

‘Money money money money money money money money,’ said Sharon. ‘You haven’t got any, have you?’

‘What?’

‘Money!’

‘I’m not really sure.’

‘Let’s have a look then . . . You must have had a skinful last night, my girl.’

Sharon delved expertly into Mary’s black bag, while Mary looked on in wonder. She hadn’t given it a thought—and yet the bag had remained at her side, its straps still clinging to her shoulder. Mary almost lost her balance as Sharon’s movements suddenly grew driven and frantic, her hands working deeper downwards.

‘Hello-ello-ello, what have we here?’ In her trembling fingers Sharon held up the two scraps of wrinkled, faintly luminous paper. ‘Know what we can get for this?’

‘Money,’ Mary ventured, but Sharon wasn’t listening now. With huge strides she crossed the street. Mary was nearly running again.

‘What do you reckon?’ panted Sharon. ‘Clan Dew? Couple of Specials each? Some nice Port Character?’ She slowed down. ‘Or what about a bottle of Emva,’ she said shrewdly. She halted and looked at Mary with narrowed eyes. ‘Or shall we get some spirits . . .’

‘Yes,’ said Mary, ‘let’s get some of them.’

‘Yes, I think that’d be best,’ said Sharon, on the move again. ‘You know, this time of the morning, spirits are more . . . refreshing. Don’t you think. It’s awful really though, isn’t it. But we all do it, don’t we? Now you wait here, killer. Be back in a sec.’

Sharon made her entrance to the sound of a bell. Mary peered through the glass sheen and discovered she could read. Now this is more like it, she thought. Signs told her in elementary style about money and goods. Whoever drew up the signs kept getting the numbers wrong and was repeatedly obliged to cross them out and put new numbers in their stead. Using a trick of her eyes Mary looked beyond the window through to the gloom within. There were the bottles that the signs had pictured and praised, flamboyantly ranked against the wall. Sharon was inside this complicated grotto, busy doing her deal. The exchange occurred, with the man giving Sharon something extra before she turned and came back through the reflections towards the door.