Omega

The paper gave details of the posting, including the information that Maurice still had support staff security clearance but was being reassigned to Recuperative Duties. The whole family had been transferred to the Alliance headquarters in Tunis, where he would be put into the governor’s pool of drivers.

“It was all I could find,” Marisa told him. “Perhaps you could send a letter?”

Maurice’s old address in the Isle of Dogs was listed. The transfer had plainly been arranged in haste; but at least there was something on record. He hadn’t simply vanished.

“I appreciate it,” he said to Marisa. “I hope it didn’t cause you difficulty.”

She shook her head emphatically. “Owain, I would do anything for you.”

An air-raid siren. I jolted.

“Sssh,” Tanya said gently, squeezing my hand.

The noise grew louder, and a police car overtook us before executing a sharp left turn.

She waited until the noise had started to diminish before moving off again.

“I’m OK,” I told her, though this was patently untrue.

height="0em" width="13" align="justify">“Stay calm. We won’t be long.”

Her face was so close to mine I could have kissed her. My heart was racing. What on earth was wrong with me? Why did I keep coming and going?

“Did I have a fit?”

She shook her head. I could tell that for once she was finding it difficult to be jolly.

“Have I disgraced myself?”

“You fell out of your chair. Next time you need to give us some warning before you try to go walkabout.”

I had no memory of it myself. “Nothing else?”

She opened and closed her mouth. Didn’t know what to say. Or she did, but didn’t know how to put it. She was keeping something from me.

What had happened to the Scenic? And where was Geoff? Perhaps he’d had to get back to work. Perhaps they’d decided that enough was enough. No doubt both of them were in on it. They might even be drugging me to keep me docile while keeping up a ludicrous pretence that everything was normal.

I wanted to rage at her, to demand the truth. At the same time I felt that everything was incredibly fragile at that moment, poised on the brink of something truly destabilising. After all, neither Tanya nor Geoff was responsible for Owain. Perhaps I really was losing my mind, and if I started ranting about Lyneth and the girls that would only be confirmation of it. I’d be incarcerated again, kept under permanent scrutiny, until they found out what was wrong. I couldn’t risk this. I needed to be at liberty to find out things for myself.

Tanya let go of my hand. She couldn’t disguise the disappointment in her face.

However had I ended up marrying Lyneth rather than her? It was a mystery to me still. Even while I was dating both of them as a student I’d been confused about my feelings: but at least I’d been in full possession of the facts. And I’d had Geoff to sound off to: him of all people.

I didn’t actually have sex with Lyneth until the Easter holidays of my final year at UCL. I think she offered it as a concession, perhaps sensing that I was semi-detached. I’d stopped using condoms with Tanya when she told me that there was no chance of her getting pregnant: a teenage uterine infection had scarred her oviducts and left her infertile. My reaction to this was predictably shallow: I saw it as grisly in detail but fortuitous in effect since it allowed us greater sexual licence. But when Lyneth saw me produce a packet of Durex she frowned and asked whether I was seeing anyone else. I assured her I’d been carrying them for months in the hope of this moment.

We made fumbling love on her lilac quilted eiderdown. She was much more inhibited than Tanya, hesitant and even quizzical, peering up at me with serious eyes throughout as though assessing the pros and cons of t wo her something quite new. And I was a complete amateur again. I briefly lost my erection in the middle of it, and afterwards we discovered that the condom had slipped off inside her before I’d ejaculated. Lyneth shut herself in the bathroom to retrieve it.

Of course I told Geoff all about it when I returned to London. He was never judgmental, I’ll give him that: in fact he couldn’t have been nobler. He made a point of assuring me that he felt honour-bound to say nothing of my indiscretions to Tanya before announcing that he considered Tanya the most extraordinary young woman he’d ever met and that if I stepped aside he intended to begin his own courtship of her.

Tanya turned into the hospital car park. She said something to me, but I didn’t catch it. Suddenly I remembered why I had panicked in the park. I’d looked up and seen Geoff standing on the bridge a little distance away. There was a woman and two children close by. They must have been strangers, just passing between us, but for an instant I’d thought that they were Lyneth and the girls. I’d tried to wave, to get up and run to them. And had fallen. When I looked up again they were gone. And I was raving.

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