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  Nick peered at it again.

  – You can tell we’re in Wales, anyhow. He laughed. Look. There’s only a fucking sheep in heaven!

  – That’s the Lamb of God, said Angus shortly.

  – I hope we’re in for an Indian summer, said Belle, looking out through the cobwebs at the tawny field rising before Llandefalle.

  – Indian summer? echoed Paolo. Che cazzo! It fucking rains in India in the summer!

  – That, said Belle aloofly, is the point. Why do you think it’s called an Indian summer? It’s sunny after it’s supposed to be.

  – It’s called an Indian summer, said Pete from the next room, because of Red Indians, not Indian Indians.

  – Excuse me, said Belle. I have been to India…?

  Pete had found his way onto the chaise longue that ran beneath a window in the other room. He’d rearranged the floral dustsheet covering it, draped his dreadlocks over the end, and was sipping at a spumy cup of tea.

  – Angus, he muttered, have you got a dictionary or something?

  Angus stood up, went to the desk, and took one through to him.

  – So, he said, where’s the others, then? Where’s Katy and, er…?

  Belle’s lustre faded visibly.

  – Infatti, Paolo exclaimed, you don’t know what’s happened?!

  – Christ, mumbled Tim.

  – God, said Paolo. Well, like… Katy got pregnant, just after you left. She had to go and have an abortion.

  He glanced towards Fay.

  – It was with that bloke Paul, from the Biology department. You know, the one with the red hair?… Fay hesitated, inspecting her hands a moment. He dumped her when she told him. She went through it all on her own, didn’t tell anyone. Then she just kind of shut down, locked herself in her room. I was really worried… In the end I phoned her mum… So, she’s back at home now.

  – Oh, Jesus… said Angus. Poor Katy.

  – Yeah, said Paolo, and Rob pissed off to Amsterdam, and vanished…

  – We got a letter from him on Monday, said Pete from the chaise longue. He’s in Dunkirk Prison, doing seven months for smuggling. And on Wednesday, Paolo got the house raided by the pigs… And, by the way, it is American Indian in Indian summer. Here. Look.

  – I believe you, said Belle, leaning on the windowsill – buttocks barely impressed – looking at the flagstones.

  – I just saw a mouse! Belle announced. Down there! Scooting across the floor!

  She giggled in a mixture of panic and incipient loved-upness, lifting her feet so only the toes of her trainers were on the ground, pressing her knees together nervously.

  A soft, unseasonably warm breeze was wafting through the open door. The long, unscythed grass of what could loosely have been called the lawn was breathing around the doorstep, the chopping block, the ailing nettles and the elder tree. It was the first time in weeks that the cottage could even remotely have been thought idyllic.

  – Bloody mice, agreed Angus. There was one in the fruit bowl when I woke up this morning. Just sitting there, looking at me, eating a peach!

  Belle giggled again, her lips lingering in a rictus, her jaw starting to chew. In the corner, bowed before the makings of another joint, Tim began to laugh suddenly too, continuing for twenty or thirty seconds before falling silent again and resuming work.

  – Well, um, said Angus. Come on, then. I’ll give you a guided tour.

  He managed to marshal Nick, Paolo, Belle and Fay into the space before the bottom of the stairs, glancing briefly back at Tim, who showed no sign of moving, and at Pete who – as cottage veteran – remained on the chaise longue, his eyes closed, smoking occasionally on a cigarette.

  – Yeah, he said. Okay, well this is the stairwell. He gestured at the segmented stairs curling towards his bedroom. It dates back to, er, 1416, when Owain Glyndwr used it to… mount a dragon.

  They drifted onto the upstairs floor and, over the course of two or three minutes, Angus pointed out the auxiliary banks of porcelain, the cots, trunks and mattresses of the spare room, the carpet and his huge sagging bed, where Belle perched herself proprietorially. She removed the aspirin pot from her bag, located the half-pill saved from earlier and swallowed it.

  – Ooh, she murmured, these things are dynamite!

  She patted the piece of bed beside her and looked at Angus pointedly, her eyes wide and legs swinging. As he sat down, she removed her hand from just before her mouth – she’d been about to suck her thumb – to just behind his back. Angus could hear his heart beating, something like a thin-skinned drum.

  – Angus, she said proudly. I’ve worked out what I’m going to do!

  She looked him in the eyes and the burning flared inside him. The arm tightened around his back. Belle, on his bed!

  – What do you mean? he said. When?

  – In my life. Her jaw echoed the words a couple of times. I’m going to run my own charity! Don’t you think that’d be great?

  There was an odd prickling on the back of Angus’s neck.

  – Er, sure, he said. Sounds like a plan… What field exactly?

  – Ah, she said. I haven’t quite got that far yet. But it’s a really good idea? She smiled hopefully.

  – Are we, er, um… Are we, er, going picking, then?

  Tim was sitting on Angus’s writing chair, a joint like a zeppelin drooping from a corner of his mouth. He blinked around the room a moment, then twitched, dislodging a quantity of ash onto his clean black jeans.

  – Picking? said Angus. Er… What are we on now? He looked through the open door at the clear, pale-blue sky. October? Early October?

  – Mid-October, Pete corrected, looking up from a copy of Thee Psychick Bible he was leafing through on the chaise longue.

  – Mid-October, said Angus. Well, I mean, I’m no authority. I just work here, you know. But they ought to be up by now, shouldn’t they?

  – Might be some after that rain, said Pete.

  – Why don’t you come out here where we can see you? said Nick, his arms on the kitchen table and a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger.

  – Because I’m fucking knackered, said Pete. You may not have noticed but I was driving all night, and placating pigs an hour before the rest of yous had even woke up.

  – Ah yeah. Nick hesitated. He pulled on the cigarette. I’m knackered myself. Didn’t sleep a wink last night…

  He squared himself to argue, but no-one said anything.

  – So where do we go? asked Fay, looking around the room, her eyes ending up on Angus.

  – Well, he said, I don’t know. Off up the hill there? Down the stream? I really don’t know.

  – I… began Tim. Smoke was spiralling from his nostrils. I, er, I was talking with Dave a week or two back. You know, er…?

  – Yes, said Nick.

  Tim blinked a couple of times, and frowned.

  – Nah, he droned eventually. It was, ah, no, yeah, right, it was Three-Eyed Dave. Yeah. Anyway, he was on about Hay Bluff. Said he went up there one time. That’s round here somewhere, isn’t it?

  – We came down past it, said Fay. It’s on the map.

  – Well, I’m going to sleep, said Pete. Bring me a few back, yeah?

  Nick was staring out of the door, his jaw hanging. At some point not much earlier in the day, thirty or so sheep had been released onto the field next door. They were picking at the patches of weeds and grass sprouting from the wheat stubble, drifting across the hillside like smoke.

  He came alert abruptly.

  – Oh, yeah, he declared. Yeah. Me too. There’s no way I’m going anywhere. I think I’ll have a snooze.

  – Well, said Angus. I’m coming, I guess.

  He got up from the chair, feeling like a primitive computer halfway through an extremely advanced calculation.

  – You can drive, Ang, said Pete sleepily. I’m not letting any of these other bastards do it.

  – Ah, said Angus.

  Belle was spinning on the grass outside the door.<
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  – You remember Richmond Park, Angus? she said blissfully, leaning towards his ear and whispering. When you bent me over and fucked me against that tree? God, I thought I was going to burst.

  She ran a lingering hand down the back of his leg.

  The incident reappeared promptly in Angus’s mind. Tearing off her knickers, a hand between her legs, and – whoomph! – he was buried in her, pressing against those smooth, firm buttocks, kissing her over her shoulder. They’d been sensitised, of course, every part of them bewitched. It was one of those Belle moments. Ecstasy itself.

  Except – like the few moments of bewilderment before each day sunk in – as the memory appeared the whole three months of misery piled in on top of it, so overwhelming Angus felt like he was about to pass out.

  – Yeah, he managed. Well, er. Let’s get on with it, then. Tim!

  Tim stuffed his skunk down his sock, put his hands on the table and heaved himself upright. Fay stood too, stretched and headed for the door, undoing the zip on her fleece and shaking out her long dark hair. She had two sparks of colour, just below her cheekbones, that Angus had never seen before.

  – Paolo? said Angus.

  Paolo was still at the kitchen table, fashioning a figure from a wine cork and three or four coloured paper clips. Light caught the bruising down the side of his face.

  – Yeah?

  – You coming?

  – It’s Saturday, he said.

  – And?

  Paolo looked at him.

  – It’s the fucking Sabbath, Angus. Have some respect, would you?

  Paolo consulted his watch, then, with a sigh, rose from his chair and walked over to the corner beside the stairwell. There he turned himself to face in the approximate direction of the east, placing his feet together and both hands over his heart while adopting what might have been a reverent attitude.

  – Mincha, he explained; then he bowed slightly and began mumbling to himself, presumably in Hebrew.

  p: long, thin strips of woodland

  Paolo was standing outside the cottage door, his hands in the back pockets of his mud-streaked flares and his hair in an overgrown Afro. Beside him, Nick was sitting on the chopping block, smoking anxiously. His shoulders were hunched. Every now and then he drummed his feet on the compacted earth and wood chippings around him. Both he and Paolo were listening.

  Most of the things they heard were not especially useful. The sucking of the stream. The shouts of ewes at the top of the next-door field. The splutter of a distant tractor. The rush of the breeze overhead. Inside the cottage itself, there was only the odd grunt as Pete shifted on the chaise longue: his arms thrown outwards and his dreadlocks fanned Struwwelpeter-like above his head.

  – He’s asleep, said Paolo eventually. Let’s go.

  Nick took a final pull on the cigarette and flicked it away into the grass. He put his hands in the pockets of his hooded top and got to his feet, blinking stonedly. For a moment Paolo trained his ears again; then he turned and led the way down the slippery footpath towards the bridge.

  – We’ll have to be quick about this, he said, glancing back to check Nick was following him. I’ll get the shit from the hedge, you keep a look out? Alright?

  – Paolo… said Nick. Look. Man, what the fuck are we going to do?!

  Paolo climbed the stile at the far end of the bridge, setting off up the bank, weaving between the trees.

  – I mean, said Nick. I mean, who are we going to sell the acid to? Huh? Man, we’ve got the pigs after us. Yeah? Steve fucking Fisk! I mean, what the fuck are we going to do?!

  The ground was beginning to level off slightly, the other side of the valley emerging from the grass in front of them. There was a quarry-scarred hillback, then hawthorns and rusty bracken, sheep-spotted fields and the creosoted barns around Pentwyn. To their left, a hedge ran straight towards the gate into the farmyard. A chestnut horse was eyeing them from the middle of the field, munching on a mouthful of grass.

  – Nick, said Paolo. He slowed and waited for him, breathing haltingly. Listen to me, yeah? We’re in the middle of fucking rural Wales. Okay? Nobody knows where we are. Chill out, for fuck’s sake! He pushed a hand through his hair. All we’ve got to do is get the purification finished, then we’ll have something to bargain with. Nick, that shit is worth a fortune. I mean, a fucking fortune! Believe me, Steve is going to want it.

  The horse had finished eating and was starting down the field towards them, its hooves splashing mud as it crossed the long drainage delta from the yard. Nick watched it nervously, and shuffled onto Paolo’s hedge side.

  – Yeah. He faltered a moment. But, I mean, man, what about the pigs? What if..?

  – Nick! Paolo interrupted. Look at this place! Do you see any pigs here? No. Right. Neither do I. You’re just getting paranoid, man, I swear…

  Nick said nothing, staring at the ground in front of them. Paolo turned his thoughts deliberately to Florence, the Piazza della Signoria: the great tawny block of the Palazzo Vecchio, the burning sunlight and the delicate awnings of the cafés. He could remember every moment of it. Fifi had been sitting on a stone bench, reading a magazine. She’d looked up and seen him, and not looked back down.

  The farmhouse at Pentwyn came from the quarries on the hill behind it. Its yard ran sideways, a weatherboarded barn at either end and another along the bottom. Outside the front door, a largely collie mongrel was dozing on a step, a litter of puppies and functionally cut lawns to either side of it. It raised an eyelid as Nick and Paolo scurried towards the track – glancing around them guiltily – then yawned.

  The track’s tarmac was pitted with a mohican of grass running down its middle. The hedges beside it were thick and balding, seven feet or so high. They’d stashed everything beneath the one on the right – just outside the farm gate – the place marked hurriedly by a wedge kicked in the verge.

  – Alright, said Nick. He ran his tongue round his mouth, glancing up and down the track. Let’s go.

  Paolo bent down and reached into a pile of mouldering leaves, producing the sports bag and the metal case immediately and handing them to Nick. He tied his hair back and pushed his head under the lowest branches, reaching for the cool-box.

  There were the remains of stakes inside the hedge, although you’d never have noticed them if you weren’t implanted in it. There were traces too of the layers from the hedge’s last pleaching, and of etherings between the tops of the stakes. A nest was mouthing a neat o off the end of Paolo’s nose – so much in keeping with the whole that it might have been the hedge-layer’s signature.

  – Shit! said Nick suddenly. Paolo, get out! There’s someone coming!

  Paolo extracted himself hurriedly.

  The tines of a tractor were visible above the hedge a hundred yards away. It was thundering down the track towards them, clattering on the potholes. Paolo turned and ran back into the yard, vaulting a few stray puppies and swinging himself and the cool-box onto a dryish patch of grass on the other side of the gate. As Nick was passing him the case and the sports bag, an ageing Massey Ferguson roared into the yard, its brakes screeching.

  – Pups! Pups! Pups! said the driver, flipping off the throttle lever and tying up the handbrake with baler twine.

  He’d gathered up two of the puppies – a tall, weather-beaten, grey-haired man in a blue boiler suit – before he noticed Nick and Paolo.

  – Hello? he said, nodding thanks as Nick collected an escaping puppy. Don’t tell me that Angus fellow’s actually got some friends?

  – Er… One or two, said Nick, following the man into the barn beside the yard gate and depositing the puppy on a drift of hay.

  – Well! said the man. He never invited you, though?

  – No, said Nick. No, we just turned up.

  – Ah! The man grinned. That’s more like it… Grumpy bugger. See if you can’t cheer him up a bit, eh?

  – Well, we’ll have a go.

  – That’s something anyway! Mary’ll be pleased to b
its. She goes down there every fortnight or something, check he’s not drowned in the Elsan… I’m Philip Lloyd, by the way. I’m the bloke lets him stay there.

  He held out a calloused, muddy hand, looked at it, wiped it cursorily on his overalls and held it out again.

  – I’m Nick, said Nick, shaking it nervously. Nick Carshaw.

  – Pop star, are you? said Philip Lloyd.

  – Er, no, said Nick.

  – Well, good luck to you anyway. You’ll probably have Mary down later on, I s’pect. Just as a word of warning. She’ll be wanting to get a look at you all.

  – Jesus, that was close! said Paolo, picking bits of foliage out of his hair, retrieving the case and sports bag from behind a nearby water trough.

  Philip Lloyd was walking towards a door on the side of the house, the dog barking and wagging simultaneously beside him.

  – We have got to get this sorted out, said Nick. I’m sick to fucking death of it!

  He watched the horse on the other side of the field for a moment; then he picked up the cool-box and headed quickly back downhill.

  If he ever did get the money, Paolo decided, he would buy himself a Ducati. A flame-red Hyper Sport 996SPS. He’d go back down to Italy and ask around the modelling agencies for Fifi, then he’d take her away, to Greece perhaps. They could find a beach somewhere, chill, swim, make love…

  – Fucking mud! Nick was complaining. No wonder I’ve never been to Wales before. It’s shit, that’s why! Tell you what, I should never have left Clapton!

  He was slithering as he walked, coming over the lip where the ground dropped towards the stream, the outline of the cottage discernible through the thinning leaves of trees on the opposite bank, smoke slanting from the chimney.

  His feet slid from underneath him suddenly. He landed on his coccyx, mud covering his shoes and trousers and the cool-box sitting on his lap.

  – Jesus, Nick! said Paolo. What the fuck is wrong with you?! Those flasks…!

  – That is the fucking limit! exclaimed Nick. That’s… That’s fucking it! I might just have done myself a major fucking injury and you…!