But these kids-there was a group of them lounging on the corner of Knox Street-they looked like a more lethal breed altogether. Though they'd grown up in the same lusterless environment, he and they, with its few wretched attempts at tree planting, its barbed wire and glass-topped walls, its relentless concrete-though they shared all that, he knew they'd have nothing to say to one another. Their desperation and their lassitude intimidated him: he felt nothing was beyond them. Not a place to grow up in, this street, or any of them, along the row. In a way he was glad his mother had died before the worst of the changes disfigured the neighborhood.

He got to Number Twenty-six. It had been repainted. On one of her visits Charmaine had told him Terry, one of her brothers-in-law, had done it for her a couple of years back, but Marty had forgotten, and the change of color, after so many years of imagining it green and white, was a slap in the face. It was a bad job, purely cosmetic, and the paint on the windowsills was lifting and peeling already. Through the window the lace curtains that he'd always loathed so much had been replaced with a blind, which was down. On the window ledge inside a collection of porcelain figures, wedding presents, gathered dust, trapped in the forsaken space between blind and glass.

He still had his keys, but he couldn't bring himself to use them. Besides, she'd probably changed the lock. Instead, he pressed the bell. It didn't ring in the house, and he knew it was audible from the street, so it clearly no longer worked. He rapped his knuckles on the door.

For half a minute there was no sound from inside. Then, eventually, he heard dragging footsteps (she'd be wearing open-backed sandals, he guessed, and they made her walk ragged), and Charmaine opened the door. Her face was not made-up, and its nakedness made even plainer response to his standing there. She was unpleasantly surprised.

"Marty," was all she managed to say. No welcoming smile, no tears.

"I came on the off-chance," he said, attempting nonchalance. But it was obvious that he'd made a tactical error from the moment she sighted him.

"I thought you weren't allowed out-"she said, then corrected herself, "-I mean, you know, I thought you weren't allowed off the estate."

"I asked for special dispensation," he said. "Can I come in, or do we talk on the doorstep?"

"Oh... oh, yes. Of course."

He stepped inside, and she closed the door behind him. There was an uncomfortable moment in the narrow hallway. Their proximity seemed to demand an embrace, yet he felt unable, and she unwilling, to make the gesture. She compromised with a patently artificial smile, followed by a light kiss on the cheek.

"I'm sorry," she said, apologizing for nothing in particular. She led him down the hallway to the kitchen. "I just didn't expect you, that's all. Come on in. The place is in chaos, I'm afraid."

The house smelled stale; as though it needed a good airing. Washing, drying on the radiators, made the atmosphere muggy, like the sauna back at the Sanctuary.

"Take a seat," she said, lifting a bag of unsorted groceries off one of the kitchen chairs, "I'll just finish here." There was a second load of dirty washing on the kitchen table-hygienic as ever-which she began to load into the washing machine, her chatter nervous, her eyes never meeting his as she concentrated on the matter in hand; the towels, the underwear, the blouses. He recognized none of the clothes, and found himself ferreting through the soiled items looking for something he had seen her in before. If not six years before, then in visits to the prison. But it was all new stuff.

"-I just didn't expect you-" she was saying, closing the machine and loading powder into it. "I was sure you'd call first. And look at me; I look like a wet rag. God, it would be today, I've got so much to do-" She finished with the machine, pushed the sleeves of her sweater back up, said: "Coffee?" and turned to the kettle to make some without waiting for an answer. "You look well, Marty, you really do."

How did she know? She'd scarcely taken two glances at him in her whirlwind of activity. Whereas he, he couldn't take his eyes off her. He sat watching her at the sink, wringing out a cloth to swab down the counter, and nothing had changed in six years-not really-just a few lines on their faces. He had a feeling in him that was like panic; something to be held down for fear it make a fool of him.

She made him coffee; talked about the way the neighborhood had changed; about Terry and the saga of choosing the paint for the front of the house; about how much it cost on the subway from Mile End to Wandsworth; about how well he looked-"You really do, Marty, I'm not just saying that"-she talked about everything but something. It wasn't Charmaine talking, and that hurt. Hurt her too, he knew. She was marking time with him, that was all it was, filling the minutes with vacuous chat until he gave up in despair and left.

"Look," she said. "I really must change."

"Going out?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

"-if you'd said, Marty, I would have cleared a space. Why didn't you ring me?"

"Maybe we could go out for a meal sometime?" he suggested.

"Maybe."

She was viciously noncommittal.

"-things are a bit hectic just at the moment."

"I'd like a chance to talk. You know, properly."

She was getting edgy: he knew the signs well, and she was aware of his scrutiny. She picked up the coffee mugs and took them to the sink.

"I really must dash," she said. "Make yourself some more coffee if you want. Stuff's in the-well, you know where it is. There's a lot of things of yours here, you know. Motorcycle magazines and stuff. I'll sort them out for you. Excuse me. I have to change."

She hurried-positively raced, he thought-into the hallway, and went upstairs. He heard her moving about heavily; she was never light-footed. Water was running in the bathroom. The toilet flushed. He wandered through from the kitchen into the back room. It smelled of old cigarettes, and the ashtray balanced on the arm of the new sofa was brimming. He stood in the doorway and stared at the objects in the room rather as he had at the dirty washing, searching for something familiar. There was very little. The clock on the wall was a wedding present, and still in the same place. The stereo in the corner was new, a flashy model that Terry had probably acquired for her. Judging by the dust on the lid it was seldom used, and the collection of records haphazardly stacked alongside was as small as ever. Among those records was there still a copy of Buddy Holly singing "True Love Ways"? They'd played that so often it must have been worn thin; they'd danced to it together in this very room-not danced exactly, but used the music as an excuse to hold each other, as if excuses were needed. It was one of those love songs that made him feel romantic and unhappy simultaneously-as though every phrase of it was charged with loss of the very love it celebrated. Those were the best kind of love songs, and the truest.

Unable to bear the room any longer, he went upstairs.

She was still in the bathroom. There was no lock on the door; she'd been locked in a bathroom as a small child, and had such a terror of the same thing happening again she'd always insisted there be no locks on any of the internal doors in the house. You had to whistle on the toilet if you wanted to stop people walking in on you. He pushed the door open. She was dressed only in her panties; arm raised, shaving her armpit. She caught his eye in the mirror, then went back to what she was doing.

"I didn't want any more coffee," he said lamely.

"Got used to the expensive stuff, have you?" she said.

Her body was a few feet from him, and he felt the pull of it. He knew every mole on her back, knew the places a touch would make her laugh. Such familiarity was a kind of ownership, he felt; she owned him for the same reasons if she would just exercise her right. He crossed to her and put his fingertips on her lower back, and ran them up her spine.