DAY SIXTY-THREE. 10.30 p.m.

Because of Coleridge’s moment of theatre, the final eviction show overran by half an hour, and half an hour after that, exactly one hour late, owing to his forgetting that the clocks had gone forward, Woggle blew up the house.

“Ha ha, you witches and you warlocks, how about that?” Woggle shouted, emerging from his escape tunnel as the last bits of brick and wood descended. Woggle had planned for this to be the crowning moment of the eviction show, the moment when he, Woggle, showed his contempt for the lot of them and upstaged all their petty egos by destroying the house at the very apex of Peeping Tom’s party. However, because of his error, most of his hoped-for audience were making their way to their cars when the bomb went off.

Geraldine, the principal target of his revenge, did not see it all because she was in the back of a sealed police van on her way into custody.

Coleridge saw it, though, and judged it a good effort and, on the whole, justified. However, this did not stop him from arresting Woggle for jumping bail.

DAY SIXTY-THREE. 11.00 p.m.

When Coleridge got home he was delighted to find that his wife had watched it all.

“Very theatrical, dear, not like you at all.”

“I had to do something, didn’t I? I had no proof. I needed to trick her into a public confession and to do it tonight. That was all.”

“Yes, well, you did very well. Very very well indeed, and I’m just glad we don’t have to watch any more of that appalling programme. Oh, by the way, someone called Glyn phoned, from the am-dram society. He said he’d been meaning to phone for ages. He was terribly complimentary about your audition, said that you had done a brilliant reading, which apparently blew him away, and that on reflection he wants you to play the lead after all.”

Coleridge felt a thrill of eager anticipation. The lead! He was to give the world his Macbeth after all. Of course Coleridge wasn’t stupid. He knew that he had only got the part because he had been on television. But why not? If everybody else could play the game, why couldn’t he? Fame, it seemed, did have its uses.