I Watson: Director's cut

He'd worked hard to keep the youthful unblemished shape. He moved to the dresser and another mirror. The unfamiliar shag on the stool felt better than good. With an experienced hand he applied his make-up and slowly his face changed. Beneath the blond hair it became soft and oddly beautiful. Blond became blonde.

Before dressing he cut twin lines of dust on the dresser's polished top and used a custom-built straw. He was charlied in seconds, getting off on his own dangerous eyes as the euphoria took hold. The city was waiting and he was the celeb, up there with Anthea Palmer, on stage, a catwalk queen. A high-heeled bitch.

He watched himself move to the bed, swinging his hips like a tom with fifties in her eye. He'd pass go, no problem. Better than Anthea Palmer. He pulled on the knickers. The lace stretched, eighty-six percent nylon, the colour of his lipstick. It felt like a slight caress against his dick, a touch of butterfly wings. He put on the matching lace bra, ninety-eight percent nylon, padded, A cup, 34, and changed the plain gold studs in his ears for a couple of danglers with glittering blue stones.

He checked the full-length again. His legs were slim and as smooth as a woman’s after waxing. He turned for his dress, a short shift in shantung fabric, dry-clean only, burgundy, any year’s colour. His penis bulged slightly, but no more than a skinny girl's muff.

He slipped into black satin sandals, size 7, and in the three-inch heels he looked better still. His painted toenails, the colour of his dress and lipstick, poked through.

The first guest had arrived and was ready for the party. He slid into a black Paul Smith jacket that was almost as old as him but looked like new for he kept it for special occasions, and picked up his Elle handbag, reached the door and paused. In his feel-good mode he'd forgotten his accessories. He went back to the drawer of the dresser and selected a blade that was as sharp as a Gillette razor. But it wasn't a safety.

Mr Lawrence had about him the peace of the passing of unhurried years, a contentment in the knowledge that today would be like yesterday and yesterday had been survived.

He had always been a quiet man. He didn’t need long stretches of solitude to direct his attention inward. That ability came quite naturally. He didn’t need the absence of other people either, for he was adept at mental absenteeism. He was in need of absolutely nothing save for the odd customer in his shop.

Mr Lawrence owned the Gallery, a shop in the High Road. The explosion that rattled the police station windows was distant but unmistakable and was followed by the sounds of sirens and raised voices coming in from the road outside. He thought of terrorists, the Arabs and the Irish, but barely paused in his work, just poured a little more white spirit and rubbed a picture-frame a little harder. He did like anarchists, no matter where they came from, particularly the majority who showed their mental health problems up front. In a way, he wished he were a part of the revolution. But revolutions were for young men without sense and women without bras and he had spent his younger days in another place where ordinary folk, anarchists included, would not dare to follow.

The Gallery with its strange side-wall finished quickly with shades of grey pebble-dash and with its small flat above hadn't always been an end of terrace. Before the shadowy town planners had decided a new road was necessary to link the High Road to the growing Richmond Park council estate, Mrs Meacham's small shop that sold wool and lace and dress-making patterns had been on the end of the row. It all seemed so long ago that now he could barely summon the old days or the old girl. Even so, he might have been her last customer, he thought, remembering the lace antimacassars he’d purchased from her closing down sale.

During the afternoon he would watch gangs of youths walk past his shop swinging their high-strength bottles, followed a few moments later by tottering slappers as they tracked the trail of testosterone. As the day wore on the gangs became louder and more abusive and shoppers moved out of their way, shop-keepers took in their pavement displays and a few more cowardly or wise, pulled down their steel shutters. And while the trouble brewed – and there was always trouble – the police were not about. They were too busy form-filling and using their speed-guns on speeding motorists and their CS spray on pensioners; easy targets to enhance the crime figures for the government to manipulate. And in the road the brewing went on until, at one end or the other, a small argument would start and that would do it. Nothing much. It was, after all, only an excuse.

And then the darkness fell.

And a cosy routine fell with it.

And with his shop bolted and as secure as it could be in this part of town, he made his slow way to The British.

Out of the inky night the illuminations threw a jaundiced glow of Christmas message. Along the High Road the bare trees crackled beneath the rushing clouds and the last withering leaves scampered, a mad palette of neon stained the wet surfaces and the early evening pavements thronged. Oh, how he hated Christmas with its false friendships and packed pavements and its queues and its once-a-year drinkers blocking the bars. He sighed heavily and under the weight of the festive season he shuffled on his way.

The British were about old things. Old wood in particular. In The British the only brick was about two huge fireplaces that, winter or summer, were piled with smouldering logs that spat at you as you passed. The seating was in narrow alcoves opposite the long bar, some said the longest bar in Britain. It reminded him of an old British Rail platform where the trains smoked and doors slammed and a blue-uniformed guard blew his whistle.

The British was staffed by Roger, the owner, who had once rowed in a boat race, perhaps the boat race, a no-nonsense stocky owner in his late thirties who was always losing weight but never seemed to lose it, and half a dozen young serving staff wearing tight black pub skirts.

Roger kept the older women in the back, nuking the pies and cutting the sandwiches.

Roger's wife was upstairs looking after their baby.

Mr. Lawrence had been surprised to find that Roger had a wife, never mind that she had been pregnant all these months.

They had called her Erin.

An Irish name.

And she was beautiful. He had seen her moving pictures on Roger’s mobile. Technology was quite wonderful. In looks she took after his wife which was a good thing.

Roger was the man that Japan and Germany dreamt about. He had to have the latest in TVs and DVDs and sound systems. And he could think of nothing finer than trawling the HMV shops for the 3-for-?20 DVDs. And sooner or later he was going to hang a giant half-inch thick plasma on to The British wall. It would show Sky Sports and Sky News and a Sky slant on the world. e short-lived. Reality was only a short pause for the pub's heavy doors shut it out. That's why they came, the same familiar booze-smacked faces, day after day, to live in pickled suspension, utterly free from interference.

Albert was there, a tall man, his body hidden by a navy-blue coat. The jeweller, incognito, except that everyone knew him and what he was. He was fifty and probably dangerous. He wasn't interested in the girls. The only thing that interested Albert was measured in carats.

“Good evening, Albert.”

“Good evening to you, Mr Lawrence,” he said and his black eyes sparkled like two of his precious stones. “Did you hear the bang?

Quite a bang, it was.”

The colonel was there. Most of him was always there. The bits of him that were not were in the sands of El Alamein. A short, squat man with stiff shoulders, at attention even while at ease “Good evening, Colonel.”