‘Thirty-eight dead, over a hundred injured,’ said Chris. ‘Almost all of them students, and more than half from middle-class families. Even a couple of visiting scholars from Japan. That’s very bad for business.’

‘So are you handling the NAME account for Shorn these days?’

It was Liz Linshaw, suddenly propped against the worktop opposite, a spliff cocked in one upheld hand beside her face, spare arm folded across her body to support the other elbow. He looked across at her and felt her presence turn on a tiny tap in his guts.

He’d seen her a couple of times already, once in passing on the stairs up to the bathroom, once across the cleared space and dancers in the lounge where she was weaving back and forth alone to the junk salsa-beat. She was decked out in classic designer oil-stained Mao jeans, a deep red T-shirt and a black silk jacket. Her riotous blonde hair was gathered up and pinned at one side with an artful lack of care, left elsewhere to tumble down past her shoulder and partly mask that side of her face. There was a tigerish vitality in it all, he saw now, an animation that took the constructed charms of Patricia’s kind and made them plastic and spray.

Now she tilted the hair away from her eyes and grinned at him.

He found himself grinning back. ‘You know I can’t answer that, Liz.’

‘Just you sounded so informed.’

‘I’m informed about a lot of things. Let’s talk about Mars.’

It was that season’s Dex and Seth ultra-cool quote, immortalised in a series of sketches featuring Seth’s fawning, craven TV interviewer and Dex’s high-powered American corporate shark. Whenever the interview steered into politically iffy waters, Dex started to make angry American noises that didn’t actually contain any words and Seth’s interviewer invariably reacted by cringing and suggesting let’s talk about Mars.

With that line, you knew that across Europe, hundreds of thousands of watchers were reeling away from their illegally tuned screens, clutching their sides and weeping with laughter. Apart from being as far removed as you could humanly get from current affairs on Earth, news from Mars was famously dull. After nearly two decades of manned missions and exploration, the rotating teams of scientists were doing nothing anyone cared remotely about. Sure, people might be able to live out there in a century. Big fucking deal. Meanwhile, here are some more red rocks. More Red Rocks was another big Dex and Seth number, the two comedians done up in pressure suits and geeky masks, bouncing in faked low g and singing the lyrics to tunes ripped off from junk-salsa giants like Javi Reyes and Inez Zequina.

‘Let’s not talk about Mars,’ said Liz Linshaw firmly, and everyone in the kitchen broke up with laughter. Amidst it, she leaned across the narrow space between them, and offered the spliff to Chris.

Her eyes, he suddenly noticed, were grey-green.

The dealer sniffed the air with professional interest. ‘That the new Moroccan stuff?’ he wanted to know. ‘Hammersmith Hammer?’

Liz spared him a glance. ‘No. Thai direct.’

‘Anyone I know?’

‘I seriously doubt it.’

Chris drew it down, coughed a little. Let it up again almost immediately. He wasn’t a big fan of the stuff. Aside from a couple of parties at Mel’s place with Carla, he hadn’t smoked in years.

Liz Linshaw was watching him.

‘Very nice,’ he wheezed, and tried to hand the spliff back. She pushed it away, and used the motion to lean in close. Close enough that tendrils of her hair brushed his face.

‘I’d really like to talk to you somewhere,’ she said.

‘Fair enough.’ He found a stupid grin crawling onto his mouth and twitched it away. ‘Garden?’

‘I’ll meet you out there.’ She withdrew, nodded casually at James and the powder man, and wandered out of the kitchen, leaving Chris holding the spliff. Patricia watched her go with enough venom in her gaze to poison a city water supply.

‘Who is that woman?’ she asked.

‘Friend,’ said Chris, and drifted off in Liz Linshaw’s wake.

Either Troy’s garden was larger than he’d expected or the Thai grass was already beginning to kick in. It was full dark by now, but Troy had thoughtfully provided half a dozen garden torches, driven at intervals into the long tongue of well-kept lawn. The garden was bordered by a mix of trees and shrubs, amidst which the dwarf palms seemed to be doing the best, and at the far end a gnarled oak tree raised crooked limbs at the sky. From one lower branch someone had strung a simple wooden swing on blue plastic ropes that picked up the flickering light of the nearest torches and glowed. Liz Linshaw was seated there, one long leg drawn up to wedge her body back against one of the ropes, the other on the ground, idly stirring the swing in tiny arcs. There was a fresh spliff burning in her hand.

Chris hung from the moment, and felt something happen to him. It wasn’t just the fact that he knew she was waiting for him. There was something in the air, something that caught in the luminous blue twistings of the swing ropes, in the casual elegance of the way she had folded her body like an origami sketch of sexual appeal. The lawn was a carpet laid out under his feet, and the other people in the garden - he only registered them now - seemed to turn in unison and approve his passage towards the tree.

He grimaced and threw away the spliff. Made his way warily to her.

‘Well,’ she said.

‘You wanted to talk to me.’ It came out rougher than he’d intended.

‘Yes.’ She smiled up at him. ‘I’ve wanted to talk with you since the Tebbit Centre. Since the first time we met, in fact.’

It felt as if the ground beneath his feet had gone suddenly soggy and unsupportive.

‘Why is that?’

She lifted a hand. ‘Why do you think?’

‘Uh, Liz, to be honest, I thought you and Mike—‘

‘Oh.’ The crooked smile was back. She smoked some more and he struggled with his doped senses. ‘He told you about that. Well, Chris, how can I put this? Mike Bryant and I are not some kind of exclusive event.’

The ground was, apparently, gone now.

‘In fact,’ she said very softly, ‘there’s no reason why I can’t ask you for what Mike’s been giving me. Is there?’

He stared at her. ‘Sorry?’

‘Interviews,’ she said, and laughed. ‘Your life so far, Chris. My publishers are promising me a half-million advance, if I can come up with another book like The New Asphalt Warriors. It’s a guaranteed bestseller. And with the Nakamura thing, Cambodia and the rest of it, you’re the man of the moment. Ideal focus.’

The ground came up and hit him in the heels, so hard he almost stumbled.

‘Oh.’ He looked away from the level grey-green gaze. ‘Right.’

She was still grinning. He could hear it in her voice. ‘Why, what did you think I was talking about?’

‘No, I. Yeah. Fine, that, that’s good.’

She pushed with her foot and cranked the swing back a little, then let go. The edge of the wooden seat hit him across the front of the thighs. Her weight swung with it, pressed against him.

‘Was there something else you wanted, Chris?’

Sprawled, airbrushed bodies on the exercise bench, liquid moans

Carla, the house, the stagnant anger through empty rooms

You’re a good guy, Chris. Bryant, lolling semi-conscious on the hotel bed

That’s you. You’re a. Fucking good guy.

It fell through his head like an avalanche, images crushing each other.

Liz Linshaw’s cleavage loaded into an open-necked blouse

Carla, soaping him in the shower, hands still gritty with the work on the Saab

Mitsue Jones, trapped in the wreck of her Mitsubishi, struggling

what we value here at Shorn is resolution

you ‘re a fucking good guy

was there something else you wanted

‘Chris!’

It was Bryant. Chris took a sudden step back from Liz Linshaw and the swing. He saw her face, and the way it changed. Then he was facing Mike as he strode up the garden towards them.