Smoke Mirrors: Neil Gaiman

According to the neatly typed message, Kevin, her second child, had not been born; the baby had been miscarried at five months. Since then Belinda had been suffering from frequent attacks of bleak, black depression. Gordon was home rarely, it said, because he was conducting a rather miserable affair with the senior partner in his company, a striking but nervous woman ten years his senior. Belinda was drinking more, and affecting high collars and scarves to hide the spiderweb scar upon her cheek. She and Gordon spoke little, except to argue the small and petty arguments of those who fear the big arguments, knowing that the only things that were left to be said were too huge to be said without destroying both their lives.

Belinda said nothing about the latest version of Gordon and Belinda's Marriage to Gordon. However, he read it himself, or something quite like it, several months later, when Belinda's mother fell ill, and Belinda went south for a week to help look after her.

On the sheet of paper that Gordon took out of the envelope was a portrait of a marriage similar to the one that Belinda had read, although, at present, his affair with his boss had ended badly, and his job was now in peril.

Gordon rather liked his boss, but could not imagine himself ever becoming romantically involved with her. He was enjoying his job, although he wanted something that would challenge him more than it did.

Belinda's mother improved, and Belinda came home again within the week. Her husband and children were relieved and delighted to see her.

It was Christmas Eve before Gordon spoke to Belinda about the envelope.

"You've looked at it too, haven't you?" They had crept into the children's bedrooms earlier that evening and filled the hanging Christmas stockings. Gordon had felt euphoric as he had walked through the house, as he stood beside his children's beds, but it was a euphoria tinged with a profound sorrow: the knowledge that such moments of complete happiness could not last; that one could not stop Time.

Belinda knew what he was talking about. "Yes," she said, "I've read it."

"What do you think?"

"Well," she said. "I don't think it's a joke anymore. Not even a sick joke."

"Mm," he said. "Then what is it?"

They sat in the living room at the front of the house with the lights dimmed, and the log burning on the bed of coals cast flickering orange and yellow light about the room.

"I think it really is a wedding present," she told him. "It's the marriage that we aren't having. The bad things are happening there, on the page, not here, in our lives. Instead of living it, we are reading it, knowing it could have gone that way and also that it never did."

"You're saying it's magic, then?" He would not have said it aloud, but it was Christmas Eve, and the lights were down.

"I don't believe in magic," she said, flatly. "It's a wedding present. And I think we should make sure it's kept safe."

On Boxing Day she moved the envelope from the box file to her jewellery drawer, which she kept locked, where it lay flat beneath her necklaces and rings, her bracelets and her brooches.

Spring became summer. Winter became spring.

Gordon was exhausted. By day he worked for clients, designing, and liaising with builders and contractors; by night he would sit up late, working for himself, designing museums and galleries and public buildings for competitions. Sometimes his designs received honourable mentions, and were reproduced in architectural journals.

Belinda was doing more large animal work, which she enjoyed, visiting farmers and inspecting and treating horses, sheep and cows. Sometimes she would bring the children with her on her rounds.

Her mobile phone rang when she was in a paddock trying to examine a pregnant goat who had, it turned out; no desire to be caught, let alone examined. She retired from the battle, leaving the goat glaring at her from across the field, and thumbed the phone open. "Yes?"

"Guess what?"

"Hello darling. Um. You've won the lottery?"

"Nope. Close, though. My design for the British Heritage Museum has made the short list. I'm up against some pretty stiff contenders, though. But I'm on the short list."

"That's wonderful!"

"I've spoken to Mrs Fulbright and she's going to have Sonja baby-sit for us tonight. We're celebrating."

"Terrific. Love you," she said. "Now got to get back to the goat."

They drank too much champagne over a fine celebratory meal. That night in their bedroom as Belinda removed her earrings, she said, "Shall we see what the wedding present says?"

He looked at her gravely from the bed. He was only wearing his socks. "No, I don't think so. It's a special night. Why spoil it?"

She placed her earrings in her jewellery drawer, and locked it. Then she removed her stockings. "I suppose you're right. I can imagine what it says, anyway. I'm drunk and depressed and you're a miserable loser. And meanwhile we're…well, actually I am a bit tiddly, but that's not what I mean. It just sits there at the bottom of the drawer, like the portrait in the attic in The Picture of Dorian Gray."

" 'And it was only by his rings that they knew him.' Yes. I remember. We read it in school."

"That's really what I'm scared of," she said, pulling on a cotton nightdress. "That the thing on that paper is the real portrait of our marriage at present, and what we've got now is just a pretty picture. That it's real, and we're not. I mean"-she was speaking intently now, with the gravity of the slightly drunk-"don't you ever think that it's too good to be true?"

He nodded. "Sometimes. Tonight, certainly."

She shivered. "Maybe really I am a drunk with a dog bite on my cheek, and you fuck anything that moves and Kevin was never born and-and all that other horrible stuff."

He stood up, walked over to her, put his arms around her. "But it isn't true," he pointed out. "This is real. You're real. I'm real. That wedding thing is just a story. It's just words." And he kissed her, and held her tightly, and little more was said that night.

It was a long six months before Gordon's design for the British Heritage Museum was announced as the winning design, although it was derided in The Times as being too "aggressively modem", in various architectural journals as being too old-fashioned, and it was described by one of the judges, in an interview in the Sunday Telegraph, as "a bit of a compromise candidate-everybody's second choice".

They moved to London, letting their house in Preston to an artist and his family, for Belinda would not let Gordon sell it. Gordon worked intensively happily on the museum project. Kevin was six and Melanie was eight. Melanie found London intimidating, but Kevin loved it. Both of the children were initially distressed to have lost their friends and their school. Belinda found a part-time job at a small animal clinic in Camden, working three afternoons a week. She missed her cows.

Days in London became months and then years, and, despite occasional budgetary setbacks, Gordon was increasingly excited. The day approached when the first ground would be broken for the museum.

One night Belinda woke in the small hours, and she stared at her sleeping husband in the sodium-yellow illumination of the street-lamp outside their bedroom window. His hairline was receding, and the hair at the back was thinning. Belinda wondered what it would be like when she was actually married to a bald man. She decided it would be much the same as it always had been. Mostly happy. Mostly good.

She wondered what was happening to the them in the envelope. She could feel its presence, dry and brooding, in the corner of their bedroom, safely locked away from all harm. She felt, suddenly, sorry for the Belinda and Gordon trapped in the envelope on their piece of paper, hating each other and everything else.