“It wasn’t so much of a big decision. Mum was really behind me doing it so, why not?” Shane sipped his beer.

“You’ll go back though. I mean, I’ve never been to Australia but everyone I’ve known who has, has come back talking about emigrating. Can’t see why you’d prefer London.” Australia was on Sam’s to-do list, at the head of a fairly exhaustive list of nations. She’d sidestepped the whole gap-year thing and now felt ill-traveled in a world where everybody had been everywhere. She had a secret loathing of those big photographic montages people hang in their houses, yard square assemblages of grinning faces framed by sand, mountains and nameless undergrowth, all sunglasses, raised beer bottles and regrettable hair styles. And Gore-Tex. She felt an inner squirt of acid at the thought of other people’s ski-nostalgia.

“London’s got a lot, Sam, its got soul. History. I think you take a lot for granted in this country. We’ve got sunshine and living space and lifestyle and that’s all great but our modern culture’s pretty shallow rooted. My Dad was from Stepney; his grandfather came over here from Greece. People blow about the World like…” he trailed off.

“Leaves? On the winds of history? Have you been reading again, Mr. Giorgiou?”

“Yeah well, I try to suppress it but my literary side comes through now and again. I need to get out in the park with my Frisbee before I go poofy. Maybe join a rugby club.” He grinned and Sam found herself hoping that maybe Gina had been right; she allowed herself to sample this new feeling, unsure of how it had taken root in the unpromising matrix of her ‘depression’.

“Do you play?”

“Have done. It’s great, but you need to be a particular kind of psycho to be good at it. I don’t like the sight of blood, especially mine.”

“It’s the Frisbee then. I had one once but when I threw it it would always capsize in mid air and end up rolling along the ground on its edge. A dog attacked it.”

“Yeah? Well they love ‘em if you throw them right. Our dog used to catch mine right out of the air. Dad and I had this game where we’d try to Frisbee our way across the park with the minimum number of throws but we’d almost never get right across before the dog would catch it and bugger off with it. Dad would be in hot pursuit across the park waving his arms about. All part of the game I guess.”

“My one rolled right through this picnic, chicken legs and pork pies all over the place, and the picnic family’s dog just went for it. It had toothmarks and slobber all over it, so that I wouldn’t touch it even after Dad had washed it.” She saw that he smiled at her story but that his eyes were unfocused, following his father across the grass after the dog on some sunny Sydneyside afternoon. “You miss him.” She didn’t know why it was okay to say something so dumb.

He met her eyes again. “Its okay. You had me right back there for a minute. I hadn’t thought about that for ages.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t worry.”

“It happens to me too. I lost my mother a while ago and most of the time it’s fine, and Dad’s fine and life goes on and then, wallop! You run into something and its all right back with you. I’m sorry.” There was a short pause while little grapnels of empathy were thrown across the space between them and a steady tension taken up.

“Does that drink have an obscene name? Because if it does you’ll have to have beer or wine.”

“Apparently it’s a Pant-wetter. Beer is fine.” She watched him weaving away again towards the bar.

“Hey-hey?” Daisy arrived at her side with a soft impact, having misjudged the friction available from the upholstery and rather over-scooted herself. “Oops.” Her eyes were shining. “It’s only half an hour till the dance floor opens.”

“Oh, good. I need to eat.”

“You shouldn’t have skipped lunch.” She’d made no effort to back away. Sam could catch the sweet tang of her breath and felt vaguely alarmed by her proximity; when Daisy glanced back towards Clyde her hair swept softly across Sam’s cheek leaving a tingly trail of sensation. “You should stay. We can get something later, curry or something. Anyway, I was talking to Dave, just neutral stuff, and I think you’re in the clear. Dawn 2 was all over him like a cheap suit and he wasn’t listening to anything I was saying.”

“Eugh.”

“I know. Look, it’s a good moment. The sixth floor’s out in force so he can’t let his cool go even for a moment. If you face him down now, nice as pie, you’ll have the high ground for ever after.” Sam puffed out a breath she had unwittingly been holding. “Seriously. Talk to him. Look, if you don’t do it now it’s going to be at work or when one of you is pissed or, worst of all, . . . somewhere private.” Now Daisy drew back, releasing Sam from the strange magnetism of her close-up presence, retreating into the normal texture of the world again, smiling, eyebrows raised interrogatively.

“I know you’re right.” Acid pooled again in Sam’s stomach. “Thing is, I don’t know what I’d say. How do I want to leave it?”

“Bollocks to all that. It doesn’t matter what you talk about, it’s the act of talking. Like people do?”
Sam peered into the shadows around her feet for a moment but found no perspective there. “Look, Daisy, Shane’s on his way back from the bar.” And he is too! How does he get served so quickly? He was moving through the crowd towards them, fielding banter and batting it back as he held his pint and her bottle out before him. “Can you . .”

“Keep him here for you? What do you think? He’s as good as chained to the floor.” That’s right, use your mermaid powers on him.

“I got you a glass.” Shane put the beers on the table and extracted a highball from his shirt pocket. He poured out some beer from the bottle for her. Its astringency was welcome after the jungly heat of the cocktails.

“Thanks. Shane, look, Daisy’s going to entertain you while I take care of something, okay?”

“Well you could just excuse yourself, girl. I’d wait without a cabaret laid on.”

“Could be a few minutes.”

“Look, I know the ladies room can get busy, but if it’s that dangerous maybe you’d better take Daisy with you for backup.”

“It’s a solo mission,” said Daisy. “Battle of the sexes, actually. Sam’s one of my best operatives when it comes to deadly force.”

“Right. Well, good luck and, er . . straight shooting, Sam.”

“Thanks.” Anxiety raged.

“So Daisy, if you’re Moneypenny can I be Bond?” he said.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Not with that accent. And not if I have to be Pussy Galore.” Sam left them to it before it got any worse.

* * * * *

A siren howled somewhere, distant, attenuated. Someone less lucky than me? More stupid? Hard to imagine that being possible. She hugged herself, leaning against the shop window, not because she was cold but more for the knowledge that she was whole, intact. So, think. Where do you fit in? School? No Marks there, unless there have been some gender re-assignments since. Uni? God, so many faces - I don’t know. Thing is, meeting someone is like anything else, any other event; you only remember it if it stays significant to you afterwards, like you rehearse the memory. I could meet a person on one occasion and never think about them again. They’re gone, never to be remembered. But for them it could be different, like you were the greatest person they ever met and that one conversation stays etched on their mind forever. You meet Al Pacino andyou bet you’ll remember it, probably every word he says, but will he remember you? Not that I’m Al Pacino or anything. No real similarities. Hoo-Hah! But that’s how it starts with stalkers isn’t it? They get obsessed and build up this huge fantasy for themselves from the tiniest beginnings, like he was introduced to me in the pub one night and ever since then he’s been mooning about like a displaced panda. Yeah Sam, because you really are the stuff of fantasies aren’t you. Unforgettable. Jeez, if it weren’t for your vanity you’d be almost perfect.

But something was stirring; the cellar door of her unconscious creaked ajar and a shadow moved, uncoiled. What does Daddy say? “Two types of men who will follow you Sam, hunters and acolytes. Ignore them all and root out a steady fellow.” Looking back I guess he’s right. A little wince-making cavalcade of exes paraded past her mind’s eye. She couldn’t fit the enigmatic Mark into either category though, or even into that whole romance/relationship thing. There was no doubting his magnetism, the intensity of his gaze, but there was something in this uncanny familiarity that seemed to preclude that kind of attraction. It’s like having a good looking, really close friend, or a relative maybe, really gorgeous but off limits without you even having to think about it. You’d love to show them off to your girlfriends and then you’d absolutely die of jealousy when one of them snapped him up. But no, that doesn’t really cover it either does it.

The shadow shifted, its bulk pressing the door outwards, looming in the darkness. She felt its weight, and recognized the inevitability of action. This is something more than old acquaintance working here. Way more. Stranger than a memory. A car went by. Sam didn’t follow automotive fashion but she knew this type of thing, an older model worked over to make it ride low to the ground on exaggerated wheels, vestigial tyres. Darkened windows quivered under the thrall of seismic bass and Sam noticed, quite without intention, the orange-peel imperfections in the cheap metalflake spray-job, the misaligned panels, and a graze in the alloy of a rear wheel. She released the car from her attention, almost able to see it resume its progress although, of course, it hadn’t even slowed as it passed. Right. That was odd. Beyond odd, actually. Right through odd and out the other side. Sam let go her own embrace and put her hands on her knees, looking at the paving and then down the road again. On an impulse she looked at her palms, at the criss-cross network of lines and whorls. The glance became a stare as she caught her breath, shocked again.

That settles that. No good standing here then. She looked at the receding figure of Mark, still striding away down the Highroad, past the medical practice and the tool-hire place, past the Hindu temple. Once she’d looked in through its open door from the other side of the road, the dull façade of the building pierced by the opening to reveal the jeweled colours of a painted deity within, like a window into paradise. Shiva? Vishnu? I should know more about all that stuff. He was past the closed-down pizza place now, passing the Duke of Devonshire. Good morning your Grace; strange to find you here. Not a patch on Chatsworth, eh? Well it’s no good standing around here, not with all this stuff going on. Gotta go. Shed some light. Not be afraid of the light. And she was off, running again with the wind thrumming about her head and her feet skimming off the spinning globe beneath her.

* * * * *

Dawn 2 was indeed closely attendant upon Dave Slater when Sam found him at the bar. To be in much closer attendance would have required a physical enmeshment of which the management might have taken a dim view. As it was the girl was barely dressed; no way she’d done a day’s work in that get-up. Dave’s expression was one of faintly stoical indulgence, such as one might extend to an infant that was not being quite so unpleasant as to warrant being given back to its parents. Sam felt her breath shortening as the moment drew near, saw that he’d seen her and knew that she couldn’t veer off, couldn’t bottle out this time.

“Hi David. I heard you were back.” I’m a silly twat, can you tell? Dawn 2 cast her a look one might reserve for moldy fruit. It just makes your nose look more piggy. First Daisy now me - you must be having a horrible time.

“Sam! Its good to see you. Yeah, about a week ago, in terms of being back at work. Can’t get my head around being back in London at all.”

Good to see me? Fifteen-love. “You don’t have to have been away to have that problem.”

“So they say. Maybe I’m still jet-lagged.” He had thick brows above his dark eyes, now beginning to take on a quizzical cast. She remembered that she’d once thought he had something of the Sean Connery going on there. “Do you need a drink?” Eek! Dawn’s huffy look swiveled onto him, narrowing to suspicion.

“No, no I’m sorted. Just wondered if they did food or anything.” She feigned a general glance around the bar area as though for a menu or bill of fare. Or a spit-roasted suckling pig? Oh, sorry Dawn.

“Just crisps I think. Or nuts.” Dave shifted a little, becoming watchful. Sam sensed that she had the advantage and decided to press it home. You star, Daisy.

“So what have they got you doing, now that you’re back?” She looked pointedly about at the company grandees around them, each with an attendant knot of apparatchiks and sycophants. Occasionally she’d wondered if she shouldn’t do a bit more brown-nosing herself, for career development reasons, but the drawling little scrums repulsed her. She settled herself against the bar’s tin surface, her elbow finding a dry spot.

“I think they’re trying to sort me out something in New Business, stuff for Marcel, or on one of the B-to-B spin-offs.”

The whats? Is it Boardroom Bingo? “Oooh. Exalted.” And nowhere near me, thank God, “I get a nosebleed if I go above the third floor, but I suppose that’s where the action is. And you get a view I guess, across the fooftops.”

“I’m not so near a window. But I do have a plant.”

“I get nosebleeds when I go on planes,” said Dawn, apparently feeling motivated to say something, anything at this point, then wishing she hadn’t. Attempting a casual suck at her cocktail, she jabbed herself in the eye with her straw. Nosebleeds? I’d be a bit surprised if there was much blood in that retroussé nodule; have it fixed did you? Between your tits and your nose there must be the price of a family hatchback.

There was a pause, which Sam enjoyed. “Well, I think you’re right about the crisps. Or nuts. Anyway, I’ll see you around. I’m still down on 2, if you ever visit the lowlands, with a view of the fire-escape actually. And the copier. But if I crane to the left I can see Selfridges delivery entrance!” She held down the giggle that sprang into her throat. Dawn was now wearing a ruptured expression, a mixture of petulance and dismay. “Sorry, you two were talking.”

“Right.”

“I’ll see you.” Sam turned away, savouring the expression on David’s face.

Daisy and Shane were deeply immersed by the time Sam returned, having moved on from 007 towards the Final Frontier. “You can’t be Picard with all that hair. You’ll have to be Kirk,” Daisy was saying.

“But Kirk’s fat.”

“He is now but he wasn’t then. Look, if you’re Kirk I can be Sulu. I always wanted to be Sulu. Sulu drove the ship.

“Kirk was always fat. And Sulu was just the navigator; it was Checkov who pushed the slidey things up to warp factor 9.”

“No, no, no. And the first Enterprise never went higher than warp 5.”

“Yeah well, we’ll have to check that. No way I’m taking your word for top whack on the Enterprise.”

Daisy spotted Sam. “Hey, hey! It’s Captain Janeway. That was quick.”

“Uhuh.”

Eyebrows up. “Good?”

“Uhuh.” Sam felt herself smirk unstoppably. “It didn’t take much. You know I never would have left you two alone together if I’d known you were both trekkies.”

“Ah, but you understood our conversation, so you’re no stranger to Star Fleet yourself,” said Shane.

“Living alone, I get to watch a lot of TV.”

“Despite your so-busy life. What did you say to him?” Daisy seemed to want more detail.

“You said that didn’t matter! Just nonsense really. He seemed bamboozled. It was all very . . . . . satisfactory.” She was still smirking.

“I get it now,” said Shane. “You had to front up to Slater. Good tactics Sam, but do you really wonder why you girls put the fear of God us guys? I guess Daisy teed him up and you whacked him into the heavy rough, right? Poor bastard.”

“Golfing analogy is not my preferred mode of speech but yes, it was a case of reaching for the driver. It had to be done.” Pleased with myself or what?

Daisy guffawed. “Too right. Now he’s back in the trolley thing with a sock on his head. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“It’s your beauty, Daisy. You’ve merely stunned them again with your beauty.” Clyde sat down, seemingly released from his odd trance of earlier after a safari around the dark corners of the premises. “Do I take it it was David that was summarily dispatched? He was talking to the Chairman over an epic cleavage just now; neither of them was concentrating.”

“I had to talk to him, to break the ice, kind of. But guys, we really need to talk about something else!” said Sam. “So far this whole evening seems to have revolved around my lifestyle. I just can’t believe that I’m that interesting.” A pause. “Oh what, now its my turn to be looked at in a funny way?”

“Give us a subject then, Sam,” prompted Shane.

“Er. Okay, Dawn 2’s new nose.”

“Dawn 2?”

Clyde helped out. “There are two Dawns in Finance. Dawn 1 is,” he looked about, “that one over there with the red blouse and the blokey company, and Dawn 2 is, well, another kettle of fish altogether. As it were. Over there by the bar, in the . . .well, what would you call that exactly?”

“Gownless evening straps.” Sam volunteered something her Dad liked to say. “I mean, she didn’t always have that nose did she? The Kidman Snub?”

“Now that you mention it, it does seem a little out of place,” Clyde confirmed.

“Never in the history of Human genetics has the chromosome for that nose coexisited in the same person as the one for those ears. Look. It’s about an inch too far up her face for a start.”

“Quite aerodynamic though, quite pointy.”

“That’s to offset the drag lower down,” said Shane. “Is that the cleavage you mentioned? That doesn’t look authentic either.”

Clyde put his head on one side. “Hard to tell without asking her to lie down, see if they flatten out or gallop off to the side.”

“Maybe we can ask Dave tomorrow.”

Sam joined in with the laughter but, now that the adrenalin of her little personal victory, over herself she noted, was dispersing, there was a queasy uncertainty about it. It seemed mean now, and she wondered whether, in a better frame of mind, she might have done better.

Somebody had nudged the music up another notch and bits of the crowd were beginning to sway and bounce a bit; the dance floor was still roped off but in the darkness above it lighting sequences began to flash into experimental patterns as somebody tinkered and tested the controls. An outsize mirror ball commenced its stately revolutions, strobing the ultra-violet into blueish stabs.

“A penny for them.” It was Shane, leaning close to her.

“Sorry?”

“Your thoughts. Looked like you zoned out on us for a minute there.”

She looked back at the dance floor. “It’s going to get noisy in here. Noisier. I think maybe I’ll go. I need my dinner.”

“There’ll be some curry action later. It’d be good if you stayed; Clyde wants to hear about your bat fetish.”

“What? If he’s that interested he can go and stand about in the dark counting squeaks.” Shane appeared nonplussed. “They’re endangered, every British species, so we listen for the squeaks to check the distribution and make sure the roosts are protected. Its cold and pretty dull really, not exactly fetishistic, especially if you don’t actually see them.”

“Sometimes you don’t?”

“They’re small, fast and in the dark. Not being seen is pretty much their modus operandi.”

“Right. But preserving them is the right thing to do, so you must feel pretty useful out there in all that dark and cold? Pretty motivated, or you wouldn't bother.”

“Yeah well, useful isn’t really it. The World would be very little different if there were no bats in it. But if we have the luxury of being able to protect something rare and strange I think that we should. I’m not really a conservationist or anything.”

“No, you just sound a bit like one and can sometimes be seen behaving like one.”

“No. Look, you protect what has value to you. It doesn't matter for whatever reason you value it. People bang on about preserving the landscape and all the furry animals, but its only because we think it’s pretty and we want to go on looking at it. We happen to have the luxury of not needing it for anything else! And stuff the rural economy, incidentally, it’s all man made anyway. The country’s been dug up, slashed, burned, built on as required, and it would be all over again if there was enough reason. It’s kind of lucky, actually, that much of it is even worth looking at.” Sam stopped herself, recognising the beginning of an incident of ‘banging on’, a vice to which she was prone.

“You’re contradicting yourself. You said that we should protect what’s rare and strange. And aren't there better reasons than aesthetics for preserving the ecology? Biodiversity they talk about, isn’t that important?”

“Well it is if you value it. You can’t get away from the human perspective.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, so many people still seem to think the Earth, and life on Earth, has somehow been arranged for their convenience. But let’s not talk about religion.”

“Er, were we going to?”

“It’s one of the places that conversation ends up.”

“Alright. So, going back a bit, you're equating conservationism with sentimentality?”

“One hundred percent. And watch your terminology, mate. People use ‘ecology’ and ‘conservationism’ like they’re interchangeable, but their not. Humanity adapts and exploits its environment, always has.”

“Woah, a pretty hard-core stance, Sam.”

“Well it’s what’s got us where we are. If you don’t like it you can go and be a bacterium. But it doesn’t mean you can’t preserve things you like, things you find that kind of value in; that’s part of the exploitation.”

“So bats. You’re an exploiter of bats for selfish aesthetic reasons.”

“Yup.”

“Bollocks.”

“Of course it’s bollocks. They’re small and furry and need my help.” He was looking at her with a sort of bemused fascination. She was suddenly aware of a perceptual bubble in which, amid all the rush and thump of the bar, there were only the two of them.

Shane said, “Seems to me that it’s pretty hard to feel much affection for a bug-eating, leathery little guy with ears bigger than its body, with or without the fur.”

“The truth is we don’t always choose the things we care about.”

“You don’t always make a lot of sense,” he said.

“Scarcely ever, if you listen closely.”