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soupçon of lipstick to offset what would otherwise be an interesting yet sickly pallor. My eyes came last, and to these I gave my all. Eye-shadow, eyeliner, lashes and mascara. And when it was all done, I added my blonde wig. This last I had originally bought as a birthday present to my wife, but I could not bring myself to part with it, and bought her a fountain-pen instead. To this day she does not know of its existence and I feel slightly guilty every time I put it on, though I console myself with the thought that it probably looks much better on me.
    I took my time with my dressing, and had a little difficulty in closing the back zip – one of the hang-ups of dressing alone – and when it was done, I looked in the mirror and found it pleasing. I sat down in my chair with my legs neatly crossed at the ankle, and picked up the crossword puzzle. Between clues, I fingered my chiffon or patted my hair. Allthoughts of Mrs Johnson had ceased, and I was at peace with myself.
    I ask very little from life. My tastes are very simple, and in such moments of happiness, I can even think of my wife by name.

Chapter Three
    I would get on with my story if I could, but I keep thinking of my father, and such thoughts are an obstacle to any undertaking. But I must not think of him. It is imperative to put him out of my mind. I can remember him only with hatred and bitterness, a bitterness that corrodes. I am not ready to think about him. When I can recall him with a modicum of affection, that will be the time for nostalgia. But I don’t ever want to think of him with affection. Yet I can’t not think about him. I am trapped in his leprous growth across my mind, an immortal cancer on my brain. I will not speak of him.
    There was a post-mortem, of course. I am speaking of Mr Johnson. My father had one too. It was an accident, they said about my father. But there are accidents and accidents, and even my father, as he lay dying, knew that it was no accident. But enough of that. Mr Johnson’s post-mortem showed unsurprisingly that he had died of heart-failure. So everybody was in the clear, and the neighbours tried to hide their disappointment. But all that came much later, and I must go back to save what little chronology I have forged for myself.
    I went to school on the following day, taking a roundabout way to avoid passing the Johnson front door. I would be spared Tommy for at least the week before the funeral, a week to put my thoughts in order, and to organize a plan of action, if indeed there were to be one at all. I had a vague hope that Tommy would never put in an appearance again, indeed, that both of them would move out of the neighbourhood, or with luck, out of the country altogether. People said Australia was a good place, a happy hunting-ground for those who had failed elsewhere. The advertisements called it the start of a new life, and it struck me that Mrs Johnson and her wretched son could do worse than to forge a new path thousands of miles away from George Verrey Smith. I resolved that at our next meeting, I would tentatively suggest that achange would do her good. But I kept thinking of those weeping breasts of hers, and at such thoughts, I didn’t want her to go.
    I had difficulty in settling down to my school work that morning. Monday, in any case, was a particularly heavy day on my timetable, and to make matters worse, Mr Parsons, our junior French teacher, was away with what he had spluttered through the telephone was ‘flu, but knowing Mr Parsons, was probably his Monday hangover. And so I was saddled with his work as well as my own, and far worse, with Mr Parsons’s form, who frightened the life out of me. They were in what we call the Remove, a name in my opinion which should have been acted on forthwith, for they were a bunch of zombies who neither gave nor took any trouble. They constitute the embryonic ‘Don’t knows’ of a Gallup-poll society and the ‘Yes,