‘Would I?’ Julia forced her eyes to look away from the dome. ‘I’m still not sure.’

‘Something very dangerous was happening here. You needed to act.’

‘But the wrong people got hurt, as they usually do.’ Julia retrieved my stick and pressed it into my hand. ‘I have to get to the hospital—all these check-ups, they’re a disease in their own right. I’ll give you a lift home.’

‘Thanks, but I’ll stay here for a while. There are a few things . . .’

WE WALKED TOher car, parked on the nearby kerb. She settled herself behind the wheel, watching me through the bright new windscreen as I arranged my mind.

‘Richard? You’re trying to say something?’

‘Right. Why don’t we meet this weekend—you can stay in my father’s flat?’

‘Your flat, Richard.’ She corrected me solemnly. ‘Your flat.’

‘My flat.’

‘Brave chap. That took some doing. You’re on—I’ll take my chances with a wounded man.’

‘Good. I’ll have to learn how to clean the bath.’

‘I’ll come, if you tell me something. I’ve been thinking about it all week.’ She pointed to the dome and the watching crowds, their impassive faces turned towards the plumes of smoke and water vapour. ‘When you and David Cruise started all this, did you know where it would end?’

‘I can’t say. Perhaps we did . . . in a way, that was the whole idea.’

SHE THOUGHT OVERmy reply, once again the serious young doctor, and drove away with a mock-fascist salute. I waved to her until she had gone, inhaling the last traces of her scent on the air. Tapping the ground before each step, I moved through the crowd and found a free place at the railings. The Metro-Centre was as much a tourist attraction as it had ever been. Visitors drove from the motorway towns to gaze at its smoking carcass, once the repository of everything they most valued. None of them, I noticed, was wearing a St George’s shirt. Tom Carradine’s seizure of the dome had sent a seismic jolt through the Heathrow suburbs, and the ground beneath our feet was still shifting.

The policewoman who carried out my debriefing told me that all marches and most of the sports fixtures had been cancelled. Post-match violence and racist attacks had fallen away, and many Asian families were returning to their homes. The cable channels had reverted to an anaesthetic diet of household hints and book-group discussions. Once people began to talk earnestly about the novel any hope of freedom had died. The once real possibility of a fascist republic had vanished into the air with all the vapourizing three-piece suites and discount carpeting.

I GRIPPED THEpolice railing in both hands, the stick crooked over one arm. In some ways the dome reminded me of a crashed airship, one of the vast inter-war zeppelins that belonged to the lost era of the Brooklands racing circuit. But in other ways it resembled the caldera of a resting volcano, still smoking and ready to revive itself. One day it would become active again, spewing over the motorway towns a shower of patio doors and appliance islands, sun loungers and en-suite bathrooms.

I remembered my last moments in the dome, looking back at the fires that raced along the high galleries from one store to the next. In my mind the fires still burned, moving through the streets of Brooklands and the motorway towns, the flames engulfing crescents of modest bungalows, devouring executive estates and community centres, football stadiums and car showrooms, the last bonfire of the consumer gods.

I watched the spectators around me, standing silently at the railing. There were no St George’s shirts, but they watched a little too intently. One day there would be another Metro-Centre and another desperate and deranged dream. Marchers would drill and wheel while another cable announcer sang out the beat. In time, unless the sane woke and rallied themselves, an even fiercer republic would open the doors and spin the turnstiles of its beckoning paradise.