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  He cleared his throat and addressed the police officer.

  ‘I did it,’ he said. ‘I put it in her suitcase.’

  He was sentenced to a year. Remarks were made about a man in his position, a senior pilot, and how he had abused a job that demanded the utmost trust and integrity. Regrets were expressed that a man with such a distinguished wartime record could end his career on such a note of disgrace. More abominably, that in doing so he had tried to corrupt a simple-minded girl who was young enough to be his daughter. What were the British coming to?

  In his absence the Sind Club members learnt more about Johnnie than they had ever learnt when he was there. His real name was James and he had been decorated for bravery in action during the war; he had been a fighter pilot, flying Hurricanes, and one had been shot in flames from beneath him. As a child he had lived in institutions; once grown up, he had restlessly moved from place to place, living at one time in Australia and then Canada. Finally in the forties he had moved to Karachi. Until now his record had been blameless.

  ‘Well, well, so he’s a crook,’ said Mr Khan, who that morning had slipped Rs 30,000 to his good friend Habibsahib at the Port Authority, to facilitate the importation of some air-conditioners in which he himself happened to have an interest. ‘I always said there was something odd about this chap Johnnie, he was so nice to everybody.’

  * * *

  It is the next summer, 1977. At the far end of the beach route the casino remains uncompleted. It is simply a concrete shell, a monument to the corrupt Bhutto regime which is now ending. There will soon be bloodshed. In July Bhutto himself will be thrown into prison and some months later executed. Martial government and strict Islamic law will be imposed on the country; gambling will be forbidden and drink no longer available even on the black market. No more shindigs. This will be a New Era of Purity.

  Farooq and his family, having Bhutto connections, are now out of favour and have fled the country. They were last heard of living in Knightsbridge.

  Aisha had unwittingly told the truth, the previous October; she was indeed pregnant. This summer she gives birth to a boy. The baby’s skin is surprisingly dark but this is never mentioned either by herself or by Johnnie. Neither wishes to. He dotes on the child.

  He is no longer employed by PIA, but then he says that he always wanted early retirement. Flying has lost its importance; he prefers to be at home sweet home. Phase One is now finished and a small bazaar has sprung up between the apartment blocks. Aisha shops there, ordering aubergines and onions to be piled into her increasingly frail Harrods carrier-bag. When she passes the cars, parked facing the beach, she rolls her eyes at the young men. Nothing will change her, but Johnnie has always known that.

  One evening, unused to the heat, June and David drive out to the beach. They are new arrivals; he is Kenneth’s successor at Grindlays Bank. To mark his status as sahib and branch manager he is trying to grow a small moustache.

  There is a café on the beach. Johnnie and Aisha are sitting there. Johnnie holds the baby in one arm while with the other he passes a model aeroplane to and fro above its head. He makes aeroplane sounds.

  David turns to his wife. ‘Isn’t that the chap who went to prison?’ he asks. ‘Unlikely-looking couple, aren’t they?’

  June sighs, but so softly her husband doesn’t hear. She watches them for a moment, then she says: ‘They do look happy.’

  • Vacant Possession •

  SOME PEOPLE CALL us cynics. Us, being estate agents. With a chortle they quote our advertisements: ‘STUDIO FLAT,’ they read. ‘You mean a bedsit. EASILY MAINTAINED GARDEN. You mean four square yards of concrete.’

  I’m not a cynic. In fact, I’m the opposite. I’m a romantic. I see the possibilities in the meanest property. I don’t just see it; I believe it. For instance, I don’t tell myself that a garden is surrounded by buildings, I tell myself it’s secluded. If a flat overlooks Tesco’s loading bay I tell myself it’s convenient for the shops.

  And to my surprise it works. If you’re blind to the disadvantages, you pull other people along with you in the warm slipstream of your vision. Next time you’re in the Fulham area, drive around and have a look at all those boards up saying FOR SALE: PREWITT, CUDLIP & LITTLE. Cudlip’s me.

  Oh yes, this optimism has got me a long way professionally. In my private life, however, it’s been a different matter. Only the most foolish of romantics, the blindest of fools, would believe that a married man, working for the Department of the Environment, with three teenage children, would ever leave his wife.

  Nigel was going to, of course. But not quite yet, because Vicky was doing her O-levels and he’d never be able to forgive himself if she failed. Because his wife was depressed after her hysterectomy and he couldn’t bear to upset her just yet. Because, because.

  They had gone on for four years, these becauses, and meanwhile I’d see him once a week or once a fortnight, when I was known as a conference in Southampton or a meeting in Hull. I’d been every major town in the British Isles. Once, for a couple of days, I was actually a summit meeting in Brussels.

  Work is easy, isn’t it, compared to everything else. I would sit in my beige office with its warbling phones and its window display of dream houses which I passed from one stranger to another. I would drive around in my shiny Metro, making valuations on the properties of Fash Fulham. I worked out percentages on my calculator; how cool those numbers were, how simple the soft bleeps of my sums.

  If you want to know what sort of properties we handle, then Marcus Tanner’s house was typical. I’d already acted for several clients in Foster Road, a street once occupied by the humble. A few still remained, with their net curtains and polished front steps, the crysanths carefully staked in the gardens. But they were a vanishing species, outnumbered by the middle classes who knocked through their ground floors, called to each other in fruity, confident voices and filled up the street with their double-parked Renaults.

  It was a morning in May that I went to Marcus Tanner’s house to make a valuation. I guessed the reason for selling when I saw that the tubs on each side of the front door were choked with weeds. After six years in the house trade, I can recognize a divorce.

  ‘Think you can shift it?’ he asked. ‘Quick?’

  I nodded. ‘No problem. These houses always sell. They’re so sweet.’

  ‘You mean small.’

  ‘I mean sweet. Bijou. Perfect for –’ I stopped.

  He sighed. ‘It was.’

  Blushing, I gazed around the lounge. It was a typical late-seventies job – open plan; William Morris wallpaper; corduroy sofa; pub mirrors; Maggie Thatcher candle.

  I paced the carpet. ‘Hold this, will you please?’ I gave him one end of the tape measure. ‘Immaculate through-lounge,’ I murmured.

  ‘Immaculate?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Looks a bit battle-scarred to me.’

  I ignored him. ‘Period features retained.’

  ‘You mean these grotty old cupboards?’

  I looked at him. ‘You want to sell this house or not?’

  He grinned. ‘For a moment I thought you were a romantic.’

  ‘Oh no. I’m a businesswoman.’

  We went into the kitchen. ‘Compact,’ I muttered.

  ‘You mean it’s a cupboard. Hey, don’t lean on those shelves, I put them up.’

  ‘Everything within reach,’ I said, measuring it.

  ‘Shall I tell you about the dry rot?’

  ‘No.’

  We went outside.

  ‘Even you can’t pretend this is a garden,’ he said.

  ‘No, but it’s a suntrap patio.’

  He paused, picking a weed out of the wall. ‘I’ll miss this place. It’s full of single-parent actresses. On Sundays you hear them learning their lines. And then there’s the Sloane girls who’ve been bought their houses by Daddy. On summer evenings you can hear the pop of Waitrose hock bottles and the rustle of After Eights.’

  ‘Now who’s sounding romantic.�
��

  ‘No. Just over-sexed.’

  We went inside.

  ‘It’s an up-and-coming area,’ I said.

  He sighed, and inspected himself in the passage mirror. ‘Look at these period features.’

  He looked all right to me: a big chap, I would say in his early forties. Big but not fat – beefy. A lived-in, humorous face. I seem to have a weakness for older men. He wore a tired-looking jacket and corduroy trousers.

  We went upstairs. Halfway up, I paused and looked out on to the extension roof. There was a flowerpot there, with shrivelled foliage.

  He asked. ‘What are you writing?’

  ‘Roof terrace.’

  We went into the bedroom. Being an estate agent, I’ve become an expert on divorces: weeds in the tubs, cracks in the walls. To me, the outsider on the inside, entering their lives at a moment of stress, they divide into two sorts. The ones who say nothing (men) and the ones who say too much (women). But Mr Tanner, unlike most men, wanted to tell me about it.

  ‘Spacious fitted cupboards throughout,’ I murmured, writing it down.

  He opened one. It was full of dresses. ‘She’s coming for them tomorrow. It’ll look even more spacious then.’

  ‘What about the carpet?’

  ‘Oh, get rid of the lot.’ He paused, gazing at the bed. A cat lay curled there, its fur lit by sunlight. ‘Looks peaceful, doesn’t she?’

  I gazed at the cat nestling on the daisy-patterned duvet, and nodded.

  ‘She left me for her T’ai Chi instructor.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Chinese martial arts.’ He shut the cupboard with a snap. ‘Spiritual self-defence. She was taking classes.’

  ‘So he’s Chinese?’

  ‘No. From Tufnell Park. Between you and me, a bit of a wanker. But then I’m biased.’

  There was a moment’s silence. We stood in the bedroom, listening to the far strains of Radio One coming from the opposite house, which was being done up. No doubt another couple was moving in there, full of hope. I thought of the wheel of fortune, turning. Couples rising, and the casualties fallen by the wayside. Him, for instance; and me. I was not becoming a cynic.

  ‘Enough maudlin talk,’ he said. ‘How much can we ask?’

  ‘Sixty-eight,’ I said briskly. ‘Are you open to offers?’

  He grinned again. ‘Depends who’s offering.’

  He worked at the BBC, so he was out all day. Over the next week I showed prospective buyers around the house. After all these years I still feel intrusive, letting myself in through somebody else’s front door. Particularly when that person lives alone; their solitary possessions seem vulnerable when exposed to strangers.

  I showed round young couples who lingered, arm-in-arm. ‘Lime-green!’ said one girl. ‘What a ghastly colour for a bathroom.’ In the kitchen, an officious young man prodded the shelves. ‘What a wally job. Wonder who put these up.’

  I felt prickly. I told myself it was simple jealousy. These people were couples, and they were actually buying a house. They would walk down a street together, arm-in-arm, in broad daylight.

  I looked at the bowl of half-eaten Weetabix and wondered if Marcus Tanner always ate his breakfast standing up in the kitchen. I wondered how he passed his evenings. In the lounge one day, while the floorboards above creaked with yet another couple, I found an open Time Out next to the phone; various cinemas had been underlined. He’d been doodling in the margins, and he’d drawn specs on Helen Mirren.

  The cat, disturbed from her bed, came downstairs and rubbed herself against my legs. I fetched a tin and fed her. Even though I didn’t know her name, I felt at home then.

  It was Thursday. That evening I was expecting a visit from Nigel. We were going to a suburban cinema, where we couldn’t be spotted, to watch Gandhi. I realized how I had been changing recently. Once I would have resented Gandhi because it was three hours long and that meant three hours missed when I could have had Nigel to myself, in bed. Now I just wanted to see the film. I thought: I’m curing myself. The cure is working.

  But in the end it was immaterial because he phoned up with his call-box whisper, and said he couldn’t come because his son had been sent down from Oxford for possessing cannabis and they had to have a family confrontation.

  So I went to Gandhi alone, at my local. At least I didn’t have to travel all the way to Orpington. The next morning he sent me a bunch of roses in apology. I shoved them into the swing-bin, jamming down their heads in a crackle of cellophane.

  When I went to Marcus Tanner’s house that morning there were two empty wine glasses on the table. In the kitchen I found two coffee cups; it wasn’t his usual Nescafé, he’d made proper coffee in his cafetière. Two breakfast plates, with toast crumbs. Irritably I thought: what a mess. How’s he going to sell his house if he leaves it like this?

  I was called upstairs then. The people wanted to know if the blinds went with the house. I answered them, gazing at the bed. Beside it were two glasses and a half-empty bottle of Calvados. And his Maggie Thatcher candle, burnt down to a pair of sloping blue shoulders. She must have been important, for him to have burnt his candle.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said,’ the man repeated, ‘is the seller open to offers?’

  I replied: ‘Apparently.’

  A week later an offer was made, and accepted. I spoke to Marcus Tanner on the phone.

  ‘Come out and celebrate,’ he said. ‘Say you will.’

  ‘You only got sixty-two thousand.’

  ‘I knew you were an optimist. A romantic.’

  ‘I’m a businesswoman.’

  ‘Forget business,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a meal.’

  He took me to a Fulham Road bistro. The evening got off on the wrong foot when one of the waiters looked at me, then winked at him.

  ‘I see you’re known here,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said blandly. He was wearing a red shirt and a bright blue tie. In the candlelight he looked caddish; a divorced man on the loose.

  ‘Have you found somewhere else?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m looking. A flat in Barnes, I thought. Lots of BBC people in Barnes.’

  ‘Lots of actresses.’

  ‘Lots.’

  I looked down and ordered veal, the most expensive thing on the menu.

  The wine arrived. He said: ‘Glad I didn’t get Prewitt or Little.’

  ‘Watch it. They’re my partners.’

  ‘But they’re not as pretty.’

  ‘They’re blokes.’

  ‘I don’t go for blokes.’

  ‘I’ve gathered that.’

  He laughed. My neck heated up. I sipped my wine and thought of the breakfast coffee cups, and despised myself. Why shouldn’t the chap enjoy himself?

  I thought: catch me becoming another melted portion of Maggie Thatcher. Blushing harder, I thought: What on earth am I thinking?

  We ate our antipasto. For a while it went all right. He wanted to know how I’d got into the business and I told him about my flat, and my brother’s awful wife who hoovered under his lifted feet, and what I’d thought of Gandhi. I hadn’t talked so much for ages; he made the words come into my head. I found I was entertaining even myself.

  Then he said: ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Who’s who?’

  ‘There must be some lucky bloke, somewhere.’

  I paused. ‘Well …’ I speared an anchovy.

  ‘Go on. I’ve been longing to ask.’

  ‘It’s all … well, rather difficult.’

  ‘Ah. That sort of difficult.’

  I glanced up sharply. ‘No!’

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What a waste.’

  ‘It’s not!’

  ‘How long has it been going on? Do you mind me asking?’

  ‘Yes. No.’ I ate a green bean. ‘Four years.’

  ‘Four? That’s appalling.’

  ‘It’s not appalling. It’s … difficult.’

  ‘So you sit by the phone, and when
it rings there’s that pip-pip-pip?’

  I said coldly: ‘You’re obviously speaking from experience.’

  He ignored me. ‘And all weekend you wash your hair, and hear the hours ticking away, and watch the families in the park –’

  ‘Marcus, shut up!’

  ‘And he keeps promising he’ll leave her, and sometimes he even breaks down and cries –’

  ‘Look –’

  ‘– a grown man, and that makes you feel even worse.’

  ‘Marcus –’

  ‘And so you throw yourself into your work, and sublimate –’

  Furious, I shouted: ‘What a stupid, sexist remark! You wouldn’t say that if I were a man.’

  ‘I wouldn’t feel like this if you were a man.’

  I pushed an olive around my plate. ‘It’s none of your business.’

  We fell silent. After a while we started talking politely. It was Wimbledon fortnight and we discussed McEnroe, but the zest had gone.

  Outside he offered to drive me home but I said I would rather walk. I thanked him for the dinner.

  He took my hand. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does.’ Lorries rattled past. He was gazing at me, frowning. ‘Four years is a long time. I just feel … you ought to be more honest with yourself. Not such a romantic.’ He paused. ‘You should face up to reality.’

  ‘I do!’

  He smiled. ‘You and your suntrap patios.’

  On the way back I stopped outside the office. We were doing so well that we’d had it refurbished. In the window, each photo was mounted in a plastic cube, lit from within … glowing from the heart. CHARMING PERIOD HOUSE … DELIGHTFUL GARDEN MAISONETTE. Beyond them I could see the shadowy room and my dark desk.

  I thought of Marcus’s words. Why was he such an expert, when he’d made such a mess of his own life?

  I worked harder than ever the next couple of weeks. Houses move fast in July; people are restless.

  I was restless too. I felt hot and cramped in the office. I spent a lot of time in my car, driving clients around and visiting new properties. Once I drove to Holland Park, just to see if I could pass down Nigel’s street without my stomach churning. I stopped outside the house. The blinds were down; he had taken the family on holiday.