"So it was all just an act, was it?" he said, after a while, when she had said nothing more. He still couldn't show what he felt. He kept thinking, wildly, that it might all be a cruel sort of joke, or even a test, a final examination before he was allowed closer knowledge of this woman. He couldn't, mustn't over-react.

"Sort of," Sara conceded, voice deliberately lazy (he had the impression of her turning very slightly to the window, as though listening for something), "but I haven't hated it. I quite like you. Graham, really I do. But having set out to use you, there wasn't a lot else I or... Stock could do but go on with it. Maybe I shouldn't even be telling you any of this now. Maybe I should just have told you not to come here, and then not have seen you again. But I wanted to tell you the truth." She swallowed a couple of times, gazed at her hands on the table, clasped them.

Still there was that false coldness in her voice, he thought, as he scratched at the white fleck of paint; still she was not really telling the whole truth at all. She wanted to see what his reaction would be, how the words would affect him. He sat there and wondered what he could do. What was there to do? Break down and cry? Become violent? Just get up and leave?

He glanced quickly at her, then away. She sat looking at him, still but somehow tensed. Looking again, he saw what might have been a tic, near the edge of her jaw, under her right ear. A pulse on her neck, over the white scar on her upper chest, beat rapidly. He looked away, eyes blinking.

He could not, he would not break down. She would not see him cry. A furious, vicious, angry part of him, some deep, buried kernel of animal hatred, wanted to attack her; slap and punch that cold white face; rape her, leave her wrecked and battered; reciprocate and outbid her in this awful, hurtful game she had suddenly chosen to play. The only part he trusted (but the part that had got him here, now in this situation, even if through no fault he could see) was equally revolted by the idea of either type of assault; to embrace either of the sexually conventional reactions, adopt either of those segregated responses was... insufficient. Pointless. Nor was there a way to stay in the game with (he searched for a word, inside himself)... honour (that was the only word he could think of, though it was too old and tainted, too historically misused to be quite what he wanted or meant. But in more sense than one, it was all he had).

"So this is the truth, is it?" he said, still with a sort of half-laugh in his voice as his finger picked at the table.

"Don't you believe me?" she said, clearing her throat awkwardly on the first word.

"I believe you. I suppose. Why shouldn't I? Why should you tell me any of this if it wasn't true?"

She didn't answer. He smiled emptily as he watched the finger, still trying to lift the stuck-down wisp of dried white paint from the black surface of the table.

Back at the bike, the black figure twisted the throttle, trying to gun the motor, but it stuttered, rasped then coughed, almost died. It ran more smoothly, but still not perfectly for a few seconds, then hesitated once more, missing beats. The man kicked the bike, then straddled it, revving the motor. He looked behind him for an opening in the traffic. He let the clutch in on first gear and the bike jerked forward, then the engine failed, dying again. The bike trickled forward as horns sounded from the cars and trucks behind; the bike revved, moved forward, but each time the engine tried to take the load it stuttered and the bike slowed.

"Fuck it!" the man shouted into his helmet. "Oh, God." He used his feet to trundle the bike back in to the kerb again. He got off quickly. Should he walk, or run, up to Half Moon Crescent?

"Well then, be there," she had said. He'd laughed. They had been planning just how they would remove Graham from their private equation. "I'll be there," he'd assured her, "no problem." She'd said, kissing him: "If you are not on time I might resort to Plan B." He had asked her what that was. "I give him what he wants," she'd said, "then tell him to disappear..." Whereon he had laughed - he now thought - a little too heartily.

He got down quickly to his knees, took off his gloves and threw them to the pavement, opened one of the panniers at the back of the bike and snatched the toolkit out. "Come on. Stock," he said to himself, "you can do it, son...' He took the small screwdriver out. Damn bike. Of all the times to let him down!

He had been concerned, mostly for her sake, that she wasn't too hard on Graham before he got there; she was only supposed to tell him she had decided to stay with Stock, not hurt the kid too much - dangerously much - with the truth about the way they'd used him. "Let him down gently, won't you?" he'd said. She'd looked at him calmly for some time, then said evenly, "I'll let him down."

He looked over the top of the bike at a young man with fair hair walking up the far pavement. For one heart-thumping second he thought it was Graham Park, then saw it wasn't. As his gaze dropped to the bike again, he caught sight of something odd on the top of the black-polished petrol tank. He looked back again, more closely. There were fresh scratches on the paint round the chrome petrol filler cap, and clusters of small white grains. When he tried the cap it lifted easily, and would not lock. The small white grains felt sticky. "Oh shit," he breathed.

"Poor Graham," Sara ffitch said, smiling jerkily at him, letting her head tip slightly to one side, as though she was trying to get him to look at her.

"Why me?" Graham said (and wanted to laugh in spite of it all, at the sheer absurdity of what he was saying, the falsity of the entire situation, the way that, because it was like a game and the sort of scene they had doubtless both seen portrayed in this popular culture a thousand times, there were only certain things he could say, certain viable responses he could make).

"Why not?" Sara said. "I heard about you through... Slater. You sounded like the sort of guy I might be able to charm, you know?"

He nodded. "I know," he said. A small piece of white paint came away from the surface of the black table, lodging under his fingernail.

"I didn't think you would actually fall in love with me, but it did make things easier in a way, I suppose. I'm sorry for you, though. I mean, I don't think we can go on after this, do you?"

"No. No, I think you're right. Of course." He nodded again, still not looking at her.

"You don't seem... very concerned."

"No," he shrugged, then shook his head. The last piece of paint stuck on the table's surface would not come off. He took his hand away, glanced at her, then sat forward in the seat, folding his arms, crossing his feet at the ankles, as though suddenly cold. "You just acted it all, then?" he asked.

"Not really, Graham," she said. He thought he could just make out, from the tops of his eyes, as he stared at the table, her shaking her head. "I didn't act very much at all. I told a few lies, but I didn't promise very much, I didn't have to pretend very much. I did like you. I certainly didn't love you, but you're quite nice, quite... sweet."

He laughed, briefly, quietly, at that last word, such faint praise indeed. And that "certainly'; did she have to put that in, as though trying through every single word and nuance to find a way to hurt him? How much damage would she be content with? What sort of reaction was she trying to get from him?

"And I loved you, I thought you were so..." he could not finish. If he went on, he knew, he would break down and cry. He shook his head and angled his gaze so that she would not see his eyes glisten.

"Yes, I know," Sara said, sighing artificially, "it was pretty dirty, I know. Terribly unfair. But then who gets what they deserve, hmm?"