So there came the time when they would leave the bar, determined by an unspoken consensus when the tone of music shifted and the spell was broken. Sam felt sweaty and hungry, suddenly impatient for the night air.

“Where’s the nearest place?” asked Shane, having almost to shout now over the pounding music.

“Just round the corner, but it’s a bit dodgy. There’s a good one just off Leinster Square though.” Clyde was known to be a connoisseur of Asian food, the kind of person who would object if anything was described simply as ‘Indian’. “Really good; subtle flavours.”

“Sod the subtlety, what about ambience?” Daisy had been to one of Clyde’s ‘good’ curry houses before and ended up on a wicker chair under a spider plant. “I want flock wallpaper and sitars or I’m off to B.K.”

“Yeah, all of that. Come on.”

They began to gather their belongings and move away from the table they had orbited loosely about, more adept now at avoiding the sharp-edged furnishings. Sam had a scarf with her and had to hunt about for it, eventually finding it wedged behind the top of the banquette in a little midden of straws, crumbs, bits of lint and paper. She shook it to banish the contamination, then repeated the procedure with her coat, which she realized had been sat upon for large stretches of the evening. Bollocks. Going to look like a pykie going home. Pykie in Prada. Sounds like an album title, except you probably can’t say ‘pykie’ any more.

“Did I give you my cloakroom ticket, Sam?” Daisy’s normally airbrushed features were creased into a little-girl grimace of despair.

“Don’t think so.” Sam made a show of checking her pockets. “I kept my coat with me, as you can see.” She rubbed some peanut salt from near the hem.

“Rats!” Daisy popped open her tiny bag and poked about within, extracting an unfeasible array of cosmetics, keys and two diminutive telephones, all of which she balanced on her arm as she rummaged. “Nope. Maybe Clyde, then.” The others were loitering at the exit, Clyde leaning on a golfing umbrella in a theatrically impatient posture.

“Why do you have two phones?”

“I’ve got two numbers.” Which apparently was sufficient explanation. Sam trailed in Daisy’s wake towards the door, a path opening in the crowd before them as the bag’s contents were magically tucked once more into its interior. Mary bloody Poppins.

Clyde also denied being entrusted with the ticket. “Are you sure you didn’t give it to Sam? If you’d tried to put it into that bag you could have blown us all to pieces. I’m surprised the bomb-squad haven’t tried to defuse the thing by now.”

“Why would I give a cloakroom ticket to Sam. I’m not a complete idiot.”

“Er…” Sam began a protest but gave up. Daisy’s patent boots were already clattering on the steps.

Clyde was checking his pockets. “You never know,” he said. “Take no chances.”

Satisfying himself of his innocence he also turned to go up to the lobby and Sam saw, in the corner of her eye, something fall away from his suit coat. Instinctively she reached for it - Aha! – but instead of the missing ticket she found in her hand the cocktail mat that Daisy had passed to Clyde earlier in the evening. It had tiny writing all about its edge, spiraling in towards the centre. Self-consciously Sam averted her eyes from the text. If there had been any private communication this evening then this was it; something that couldn’t be said, even whispered amid the din of the bar. There had been tension between herself and Clyde all evening until the passage of that note. Dammit, she’d been needling him and he’d been rising to it. She folded the paper and pocketed it, meaning to give it to Clyde or to Daisy, to say ‘I think you dropped this’ and make nothing more of it. But then there would be an implication that she had read it, to know that it was theirs, that it was important. Perhaps she should read it after all, to discover an innocuous joke or piece of nonsense and be able to relax. But what if it was intimate? Arse.

In the velvety lobby Daisy was queuing for the cloakroom. Everybody else was ready to leave. “Daisy,” said Clyde, gesturing with Shane’s outsize brolly. “We’ll go on ahead, get a table. You know where we’re going?”

“What’s it called?”

“The Light of Raj, I think. It’s the only one on the square.”

“Fine. Get loads of popadoms though.” She waved them away and they piled out onto the street.

Sam was beset with unease. “Look, guys, I’ll wait for Daisy, okay? She shouldn’t be wandering about by herself.”

“Sure" said Shane "There’s no telling what damage she might do. Although knowing her she’ll probably hail a cab and get there before us anyway.”

“You’re right. Anything more than about a hundred yards warrants a journey in style. I’ll still stick around though.”

“Hungry!” shouted Gina. Her vocabulary had fallen victim to vodka and she could now deliver only single words and hysterical laughter.

“Alright! We’re going,” Clyde answered. “If we get too weak we can eat the Australian.”

“Kill!” Gina tried to push Shane into the road, a mercifully futile effort resisted with tree-like immobility.

Clyde turned back to Sam. “Thanks,” he said, and smiled quite unaffectedly. Then he had kissed her cheek and was sauntering away.

Sam plumped back against the masonry by the lobby door and looked up. It was a clear night but the streetlights washed out the stars leaving only a flat, brownish sky to look into. But the stars are up there somewhere.. The air held exactly the chill she had hoped for and she drew deep breaths, flushing the smoky processed air of the bar from her lungs. She was glad that the summer had passed, taking its fuggy blanket of warmth with it. Give me a good hard frost.

“Sam?”

Oh, nuts. “Hi David”

He stood there, wrapped in a heavy, dark coat, his too-transatlantic haircut riffling slightly as he seemed to savour the irony of this unexpected table-turning. “That was mean. At the bar, Sam, your ambush.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He waited. She tried another deep breath. “It was more about me than you.”

He huffed air through his nose “Pretty feeble.”

“Yup, pretty feeble. David, I never apologized, about. . .before. And I should have. I was so crap about what happened. I…well it was all from inside, all my problem. I’m so sorry. You must have felt awful.”

“Well, so long as it wasn’t anything I did, or said.”

“No, no, no. All me, truly. Mad cow stuff.”

He pursed his lips momentarily, and then gave the tiniest shake of his head as if to say ‘forget about it’. “Good. I didn’t think I’d deserved it.” Awkward silence. “So no more ambushes then?”

“No. I got your note; it was… kind. Thankyou.” Then, “where’s Dawn?”

“Inside.” His eyes darkened momentarily, “You know, she doesn’t really deserve your contempt, Sam.”

Sam held up her hands. “For what it’s worth I’m thinking of getting out of the whole contempt business. No future in it.”

“Good. And will you begin at home?”

She was momentarily nonplussed, then twigged. “Yes. Yes I think I will.” There was a silence. David looked back into the lobby, then at Sam.

“Are you…?”

“Waiting? Yes, for Daisy.”

“Oh, well she’s right here.”

He opened the door and Daisy came out, coat on and buckled, smiling at David, then at Sam “Hey, hey?” Damned if she wasn’t standing right there all along!

They said goodnight to David and left him there, Sam bundling Daisy ahead of her “It’s not far,” she said, hotly. “I see you got your coat back.”

“They were very nice about it once I explained that you’d lost the ticket. We could get a cab.” Daisy began to scan for an orange blip in the traffic on Oxford Street.

“I’d rather walk. Did you set that up?”

Daisy looked back at her. “What?”

“Him.” Sam gestured back towards the club.

“David?”

“Uhuh?”

“Coincidence. Was it bad?”

“Well I had to bloody apologise to him didn’t I,” As if you didn’t know.

“Did you?”

“Yes!”

“Finally!”

“Bitch.” And Daisy laughed and laughed, cackling at the pavement even when punched quite hard in the arm, and Sam laughed too.

After a few moments’ walking in silence Sam said, “This is like the edge of something, I think.”

“Hmm?”

“This is where something ends. Figuratively speaking. Right here, tonight, I can step off. Does that make sense?”

Daisy’s arm snaked around hers and tightened a little. “Big step or little one?”

“Does it matter?”

“Either works. I shouted at you earlier. Shouldn’t have and I’m sorry.”

“No, no I deserved it.”

“Too right. Whingeing cow.”

“So are you a totally resolved person then? Self knowledge and self esteem all sorted out and squared away? Shane thinks you’re going to take over the World.”

“Can’t imagine what I’d do with it. Tart it up a bit maybe. Ban all black clothing.”

“I’d have to go naked.”

“That might work for you, careerwise. Black undies, huh?”

“Thousand-wash grey actually.”

“So you wouldn’t be that naked then. I’d allow grey in special cases.”

“Great, now I’m a special case!”

“Sam, we were talking about changing the World but that’s all bullshit. You’d have to be a nutter to want that. Chances are if you changed the World in some way then there’d be a whole pile of people who’d think you’d just messed it up. Maybe the best we can do is try harder to be people other people can understand.”

“Daisy, I have to say that you’re certainly not there yet.”

“No, well, there’s a gap between aspiration and capability maybe, but you keep trying eh? And you have that problem too, anyway.”

“I do? I’m not big on aspiration at all right now.”

“I know. That’s what I’m saying. Think it through, Sam. From where I’m standing I see this person with everything going for her, going nowhere. You’ve got education up to here, your own flat, this massive brain thing that just idles most of the time; Jeez, it winds me up!”

“Well, I hadn’t realized….”

“Yeah, well! I try quite hard at work, amazingly. Do you? Or do you just breeze along, more money, vaguely better prospects, better hair, off the peg clothes that actually fit. God you’re depressing! And half the company tip-toeing around you. I kid you not. That was what was so great about Dave, that he seemed to be getting over your…wall. Till you fucked it up.”

“I didn’t…don’t…” there was no prospect of releasing her arm from Daisy’s grip.

“No, well, think about it. I’m sure you’ve got your troubles, they’re written all over your face sometimes. Maybe you should try sharing some of them, get them sorted. Your friends will help you, Sam. You do have some, and its kind of what they’re for.” There was a long pause. Sam saw that they were in Leinster Square now; Daisy had been navigating.

“So why aren’t you an astronaut then? You’ve got a little education of your own, if we’re talking about fulfilling our potential.”

“I’ll kill Giorgiou. Well. Nobody looks good in zero gravity.”

“Not good enough.”

There was a silence. “It’s okay for boys to want to be pilots but people think its weird for a girl, even these days. Sam, I was never a tomboy but I really, really wanted to fly, like I never wanted anything else in all my life. And I did get my license, at Cranfield before…” She trailed off. After a while walking she said. “I have a health issue now, kind of an epilepsy thing after this meningitis I had. I have medication, stay pretty normal, but . . .well, they don’t let you fly planes. Or rocket-ships”

“Daisy, that’s terrible. I’m sorry.” My word of the day…

“Well, don’t be. I’m stuck down here but, well at least I had my time up there.” She looked up for a moment, her features now unreadable.

To change the subject Sam said, “I found this. Clyde dropped it.” She held up the folded cocktail mat. Daisy looked at it, just for a beat, then grinned.

“Did you read it?”

“No.”

“I would’ve. You should never pass up the chance to learn something.” They had stopped, and now they were facing each other, close enough that Sam could see flecks of gold in the deep brown of Daisy’ eyes, feel again the warmth of her breath and catch the musky intensity of her perfume. Before, Sam had been struck by something uncanny in Daisy’s way of jumping out of the background of the World, as if she had an extra dimension at her disposal when required, but now here was just a person. A girl from the office. “The only sins are ignorance and self pity.”

“There are things you don’t know about me. It’s not that simple.”

“What I know or don’t know doesn’t matter and it really is that simple. We’re all human, Sam, and life’s too short to bugger about.” She stepped back “ Here, this one’s yours.”

A black cab, invoked in some secret Mermaid way, drew up to the kerb and Daisy handed her friend into it, spoke to the driver. Sam, not knowing whether it was a ride home or a life that she had just been given, held out the cocktail mat again. Daisy’s photoflash grin popped for a final time.

“No, Sammy. Served its purpose I reckon. Your keepsake now.”

Later, in the bubble of light cast by her reading lamp, Sam deciphered the minute script. Studying it, reading it over and over, she found that it broke quite naturally into verses which she copied out, in her own clear, flowing hand. Romantic doggerel really she thought, but she remembered the figure left at the kerb, a red-gold spark of light receding into the city’s texture like any roadside detail, swept away by the diesel roar of the taxicab.

Stray not atop the mountain, seeker.
Turn from the tower, and the door.
The lighted window and its lantern,
Burn in waiting not for thee.

Follow not the song of longing,
Set not foot upon that stair.
Leave the cup upon the table,
Let lie the shrouded figure there.

Find my woodlands and my meadows,
Lay thy head within these bounds.
Pass beneath the wilder places,
Come to rest and bide with me.

Here amid the flowered shadows
On the scented greens to sleep
Where the springing crystal waters
In their pools the heavens keep.

****

“Nobody ever for a moment blamed you. And if they had they would have forgiven you. We’re talking about people who love you.” Her tears were past. She knew she had more to give but also that she would save them, eke them out jealously. She would have need of them. “How old were you? Nine, ten? There’s no guilt for little ones, Sam.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d felt what I’ve felt. And never been able to talk about it, that’s the worst. I knew they blamed me and I knew they weren’t letting on, trying to spare me the knowledge probably. The best swimmer in my class and I didn’t even wet my hands for him. So I wasn’t going to mention it was I? Stir it all up?”

“You hogged it a bit then.”

“What?”

“The blame. You kept it all for yourself. You’re still sitting on it twenty years later. Wallowing in it even.”

“Look, I don’t have to be insulted by you…”

“But its okay if you do it to yourself?” She let out a snarling sound, ugly and incoherent. They were alone on the pavement now and everything seemed to have gone very still. “Yes, that was cheap. I’m sorry.” Mark regarded her, his face blank.

“Is our conclusion in sight?” Sam asked. “Sainsburys is just here.”

“You grew up rather beautifully.”

She was nonplussed again. “No distractions please.”

“No, I mean it. You made me proud.” Before she could object further he carried on. “Did you ever wonder who else might have been to blame? Okay, the older sister for not watching over him but what about the boy himself? Could you blame him? What about the mother? Did she really believe you were old enough to take responsibility for a tear-away like that? What was she thinking? And the father? Did he ever come out of his study even? Was he ever even there?”

“Hey, now that’s not fair!”

“Isn’t it? Is it any less fair than some poor girl shouldering the whole burden of a family tragedy just because nobody would talk about it?” He seemed angry now, his coat flapping as he raised his arms. “Of course they never talked about it, Sam, and for exactly the same reason that you didn’t. Because everybody blamed themselves. There’s your big black shadow Sam, the knowledge that the only thing worse than blaming yourself is blaming other people. Your mother, your father and your baby brother, all the people you love most dearly, all guilty of your unhappiness.”

“Stop it!”

“No Sam, you stop it. Because you’re the only one who can.”

“He was just a baby.”

“So forgive him. Forgive them all. And then forgive yourself.”

After surrendering more of her tears Sam felt a real calm at last. She found the supermarket to be everything she’d hoped it would be. “I used to buy all that stuff.” The pasta, the magazines, the self-indulgent little packaged treats, mini cheesecakes. She wondered how high a stack you could make if you assembled together all that she had ever bought here, whether it would be ludicrously big or strangely small. It struck her that there was no way to measure yourself against the world and quite possibly no need ever to do so, that people could waste quite a lot of time trying. “I’m not going back am I.” She tasted the idea, the strangeness.

“No.”

“This isn’t so much of an out-of-body experience as a finished-with-body thing,” And it’s probably not even where I left it! It was a pretty good one though, worth looking after. Hell, worth looking at! Never smoked in it, well, not much. One careful owner. I wonder if they’ll use any of the bits? “Am I right?”

“Yes. But it probably won’t be very much like what you might be expecting.”

“Too right!” She moved to the roadside, leant on the railing there to savour the chill of the metal, the tickle of the writhing paint molecules against her ‘arm’. “None of this comes into the category of ‘expected’. I need to talk to Daddy.”

“There’ll be a time for that. The right time.”

“Poor Daddy. He doesn’t deserve this.” She looked sidelong at Mark “So what happens now? I never believed much in an afterlife; I’m not sure I’ve been a very good person so there’s very little time left before I panic.”

“There are no angels here, Sam. Don’t worry about anything you might have been told; its hard to explain but, . . . we get to do our own thing, pretty much.”

“Right. Okay. When did I, …check out?”

“More or less straightaway. As soon as you spoke to me.”

“Oh.”

“So. Are you okay? How do you feel?” His concern seemed funny suddenly, under the circumstances.

“Not very dead.” Which was certainly true. She felt her consciousness sweeping outward, embracing the colours and textures of the World as the dawn crept upon them, drinking deeply of the giddy swirl of detail.

“There you go then.” He seemed uncomfortable as a silence stretched between them again.

“Before I fell, did I see you? I saw somebody.”

“You could have done. Only you could have.”

“Right.” That figures. “I would have expected someone a little…grimmer.”

“I opted for a softer approach. I hope it hasn’t made things harder.” Another pause. “We shouldn’t stay here, Sam. Some do but it’s not…healthy. You don’t lose all this you know, you can stay connected. But there’s so much more.”

“Where are we going?”

“Onwards.”

“What, Morden?”

He laughed. “One of the things that you do get to take with you is your sense of humour.”

“Lucky me,” and now that your guard is down, “So, Mark, what did you mean, I made you proud? I heard that right didn’t I?”

He looked up, down and then straight at her. “It’s not what I normally do, this…collecting, but I volunteered to come for you…it was important… I wanted. .” He looked away again, and she saw that he was biting his lip, really struggling. There was a sudden detonation of foreknowledge within her, an absolute recognition of what was coming and of the only possible reaction. “I grew up too Sam but, but I couldn’t share any of it with you. I couldn’t tell you there was no need to be so unhappy. I’m so sorry Sammy, so sorry. I never meant to leave you. I never meant to go away.”

She said his name, “Marcus,” perhaps for the first time in twenty years, the first time since she had screamed it at the cold water of the deep lock where only the reflected clouds had moved across the mirror surface “Oh Marcus, Marky baby.” and she held him again, her brother, and they wept together.

* * * * *

“So where are we really going then?”

“Downstream. There are people waiting.”

“Mummy?”

“Uhuh.”

“Poor Daddy. If only he could know.”

“He’ll do okay. Then we can surprise him.”

“Hmm. Daisy was right though, about it being too short. Did she write that poem?”

“What poem?”

“Sorry. I’m forgetting that you don’t actually know everything.”

“Just a whole load of stuff, not everything.”

“Daisy wrote a poem, for Clyde, her boyfriend, if that’s not weird enough. I think it was about knowing when to stop searching, if you don’t know what you’re looking for. There’s a lot of stuff I never did get round to. Like my whole life, for instance.”

“Bollocks.”

“Eh?”

“That was it Sam, that was your whole life. You sound as if you reckon you were due more of it but, not in this universe, Sis’.”

“Touché. So who’s going to feed the cats, Dr Schroedinger?”

“Cats are pretty smart. They’ll find somebody.”

“If only I’d known.”

“You’d have done things differently? You and about eight billion other people. Life is wasted on the living. But wait till you see all the other stuff.”

“Show me then.”

“All right, let’s run.”