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shows for a long time. It’s not just a matter of going to Hampstead Heath after midnight.’
    ‘What about burning?’ I asked, a bit wildly.
    ‘It’s not like an old newspaper.’ She made a gesture of repugnance. ‘The human body is a difficult thing to burn.’
    ‘They do it in crematoriums.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Sonia. ‘With an industrial-strength furnace that can heat up to a thousand degrees. And even then it doesn’t destroy everything. It’s not something you can do in your back garden.’
    I had a horrible flashback of cremating my guinea pig when I was small and the smell that had filled our garden. I put my hands over my face, feeling sick. ‘What then?’ I said. ‘What can we do? We can’t hide it and we can’t bury it and we can’t burn it. You’re not going to suggest cutting it up, are you? I can’t, Sonia. I’d prefer to die myself than do that.’ In fact, the thought of dying seemed inviting right now, to close my eyes on all this.
    ‘No, I’m not,’ said Sonia. ‘I’ve dissected animals and I’m just not going there.’
    ‘People do go missing, though,’ I said. ‘Some bodies are never found.’
    ‘Not very often, except in films. Not unless you’re the Mafia and you can bury a body in concrete and build a motorway on top of it. This is not an easy thing to do.’
    My mind wasn’t working properly. Everything seemed to be shifting in and out of focus. His body, sprawled on the floor, seemed to fill my field of vision. Everywhere I looked, I saw it. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I can’t do this. I don’t know why I ever thought I could. Oh, God. Let’s just get out of here as quickly as we can.’ And I clutched her arm as if to pull her from the room.
    But Sonia drew back. ‘Wait,’ she said.
    ‘We just leave,’ I said. ‘It’s like you were never here.’
    She turned to me, her expression calm and almost tender. I could feel her taking charge of the situation and myself letting her – and, after all, wasn’t that why I had turned to her? So that someone else could sort out the ghastly, catastrophic mess?
    ‘We can’t bury it,’ she said. ‘We can’t burn it, we can’t just dump it. What’s left?’
    ‘Water,’ I said. ‘People are buried at sea, aren’t they? You see it in war films. They wrap them in a sail with weights.’
    ‘You’ve got a boat, have you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You know anyone who’s got a boat?’
    I thought for a moment. ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Friends of friends. I don’t think any of them would lend me one and let me take it out to sea on my own, though. Also, I don’t know much about marinas but I imagine they’re pretty crowded in the summer.’
    ‘It doesn’t have to be the sea,’ said Sonia.
    ‘Where, then?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘It’s no use.’
    ‘I don’t know yet . It’s the best idea so far. Water. A lake or a reservoir or a river. There’s a reservoir I’ve been to once; it’s quite near here. That might be the best place. There would definitely be no one around. First we need to sort things out.’ She walked over to the body and peered down at it almost dispassionately. ‘Why does it look so different from someone who’s just asleep?’
    I’d seen him asleep and I’d seen him dead and I was trying not to think of the difference.
    ‘The blood’s all on the rug,’ said Sonia, ‘so I don’t think we need to do very much cleaning.’
    She seemed to decide something and walked out of the room. I heard cupboard doors opening and closing. When she came back in she was wearing pink washing-up gloves. She threw a packet to me and I caught it. It was another packet of gloves, yellow this time.
    I ripped it open and pulled them on. Sonia picked up an ornament from the table and contemplated it. It was made of dull grey metal, of a vaguely abstract design, and showed a big figure and a small figure linked together. It probably symbolized something like friendship or parenthood.
    ‘By picking this