It was all she talked about, money, all she wanted, poor immigrant. Perhaps the man will come back, perhaps he would give her more money and try to become her lover. Would that make him jealous? Would that make him angry? Phil could hear Fat Eugene laughing in the background.

'You know, Anya,' he said, picking the bracelet off the branch like a fruit, 'all that glisters is not gold.'

She didn't understand of course. She asked him what twice and then brushed over it.

He stopped himself from telling her he had a gift for her.

He had paid to have the bracelet cleaned and polished and bought the best box the jewellers had to present it in. The green box had a yellow coat of arms stamped on it, some spurious connection to an obscure European family of aristos prepared to exploit their family history to make and sell trinkets for tourists. It had a gold satin interior. And then he saw the egg in pink enamel with gold weave around it, a poor man's Fabergé. The elderly jeweller showed him how to open it. 'A special message can be placed inside, you see, for a loved one.' He glanced at Phil's wedding ring. 'For an anniversary. It's a brand new piece, valuable, from a very reputable maker, intricate.' It was yellow gold meshed over menstrual pink enamel. Phil could see it was crap. That's why he bought it.

He finished his sandwich and stepped outside the sticky hub to make the phone call. He found an alley away from the pedestrians and faced the back, hanging his head low, getting the voice right.

'Please don't hang up,' was his anxious opener. He loved her. He needed her. He was sorry. He finished by telling her that she deserved so much more.

She was delighted to hear from him, he could tell by the high tone of her voice. 'Please to come,' she said. 'We can talk please.'

'I'm so sorry.'

'Come to me, Pheel.' She sounded quite turned on, a little breathy even.

He hung up and went back into the pub for another quick half.

It was a cheap room in a pricey area. Soho might have been the centre of the red light district but it was still expensive. Small rooms in overpriced narrow houses. The buzzer system was ramshackle, with biroed names sellotaped on to the buzzers. Some of them weren't even names, some were just descriptions: Young Model, Swedish Girl, Lonely Guy. Anya only had a number on hers. She must have been waiting by the entry phone because the moment his finger came off it she buzzed him up.

The stairs were wooden and narrow and worn in the centre where eager feet had rattled up them and sloped down for a hundred years. Anya was waiting for him on the second landing, dressed in a sheer black silk shirt and jeans, standing in the doorway, watching for his face to appear on the bend. She looked tentative and nervous. He brought his eyebrows together in the middle, whispering her name as he ran up the three final steps.

'Forgive me.' He brought her hand to his lips, looking at her face and noticing a small black crescent on her cheek where the tooth had gone into it. He kissed the mark lightly. She kept his big hand in her small one and pulled him into the flat.

The apartment had been chopped up from a grand whole and there was no hallway. She manoeuvred him to the sofa and sat him down. He stayed on the edge of the seat, acting anxious still.

'I have something for you,' she said and skirted round behind him to a sideboard. 'I bought for you.'

She bent down, presenting him with her tight little arse in denim, and pulled from the cupboard a bottle of Remy Martin XO Special. It was very good cognac and she had the presentation bottle: a flat oval with ornamental ridges all along the side. They had it in the drinks cabinet at work. It was a delicious, cool fit on the well of a palm and cost extra to buy. In the four months they had been together he had never known her spend any money on anything and he knew that this bottle cost closer to a hundred quid than fifty.

'You like?'

He nodded dumbly. There was less work for him to do here than he could possibly have supposed. She was already forgiving him, already smiling at him as she unwrapped the lid and poured the glittering caramel liquid into two waiting glasses.

'I bought you a gift too,' he said quietly, looking back at her.

Anya looked him in the eye as she ran her sharp little tongue around the neck of the bottle. 'That's lovely, honey. Put on the table for me to see.'

'It's nothing much.' He took out both of the green boxes and placed them on the cluttered coffee table next to one another, the big one and the matching little one, and for a moment he considered them and thought they looked like him and Anya, a big one and a little one by its side, perfectly matching.

Behind him Anya raised both hands high, using all her slight weight to bring the heavy ornamental glass bottle down on the left side of Phil's head.

Stunned at the blow he slumped to the side and she hit him again, holding the bottle by the neck, smashing the deep heavy ridges across the right of his head this time, hearing a dull crack. Frowning, she looked at the bottle, but the glass was intact. The noise hadn't come from the bottle. Phil was lying on the sofa, staring intently at the legs of the coffee table, a bubble of red at his ear. She hit him once again, on the temple this time, and his head caved in like a smashed egg. He rolled forward, tumbling paralysed on to the floor, unable to bring his hands up to break his fall. His blood began to spill free and the thirsty carpet sucked it up.

As he lay on the ground listening to his own hot blood glug into the nylon shag the last thing he heard was Anya, tiny hitherto compliant Anya, spit words at him. 'Fuck you,' she said. 'You can fucking hit me? Fuck you.'

He couldn't hear her anymore but his vision was suddenly as sharp as it had ever been. The last image ever to register on his retina was Anya, drinking straight from the bottle, clutching the blood-smeared glass with both her bird-like hands.

She sat alone and still for a long time, drinking brandy, whispering to Phil's cooling body, telling him what a cunt he was. She opened the boxes and saw the bracelet and put it on. It looked ridiculous on her slim wrist.

'Fucking rubbish.'

And then the egg. She opened it in the middle and found a note in Phil's handwriting: I love you. She screwed it up and threw it to the floor. It sucked the blood up from the ground, smothering itself in gore until it was as bloated as a happy tick. Anya clipped the egg to the bracelet and sat back, poking the body with her toe.

'Go fuck yourself.'

The fury ebbed away as the drink warmed her. She would have cried but she wasn't sorry or afraid. Phil had stopped bleeding and the edges of the blood had started to dry by the time she picked up the phone and called the club.

It was nine o'clock and the punters were few and far between. The music blared insistently on the other end and she could hear the girls talking to each other. Eugene? Please to put Eugene. Thanks you, Sally.

She shook a cigarette out of the packet and lit up, inhaling deeply, tipping her head back, closing her eyes and stroking her slim throat with her fingertips. Eugene picked up the phone and grunted hello and Anya lapsed into her own language. 'Eugene,' she whispered, 'I've done it again.'

Suddenly he was attentive. 'By "it" do you mean what happened at home, the Johnny situation?'

He sounded annoyed. She jackknifed slowly forwards over her knees, contracting every muscle in her face until she looked like a small, grieving child.

'He hit me, Euge,' she keened. 'I can't… Euge, I can't take that. My face, it's my face.'

Eugene turned from the bar, cupping his hand over the receiver. 'What's wrong with you? Why do you keep doing that?'