Anne Billson - Stiff Lips

It was just a garden: neatly trimmed lawn, tidy hedge, stone bird-bath, wooden shed, gnarled apple tree. But it reminded me of something, and for the life of me I couldn't think what, though I had the feeling that something awful had either just happened or was just about to happen there.

'This is the best thing you've done,' I said, trying not to sound too bitter.

'I'd like to think so,' said Sophie, gazing at it tenderly, almost maternally. She tried to take it from me, but I was reluctant to let go. My instinct was telling me there were people hiding in the hedge, or behind the tree, but that if I wanted to catch a glimpse of them I couldn't let the drawing out of my sight for an instant.

'Why are you looking at it like that?' asked Sophie, and in a flash, I realized what the scene reminded me of. The Drunken Boats album cover. Sophie had gone psychedelic on me.

I had to close my eyes then, because all of a sudden I was feeling dizzy.

'I like the faces,' I said, though I don't know why I said that, because I didn't like them at all. I could still see them, even with my eyes closed. They gave me a funny feeling, and it was funny peculiar, funny frightening, not funny ha-ha.

'What faces?' asked Sophie.

I opened my eyes and pointed them out.

'Those are leaves,' she said, quite crossly.

'Of course they're leaves. But if you scrunch your eyes up, they look like people. Except this one's got a bird's head. And that one's got… something weird going on where its eyes should be. Look there.'

I jabbed at the board with my finger. Sophie snatched it away, as though I were about to leave mucky fingerprints all over her precious work.

'Maybe so,' she said, sounding doubtful.

I leant over for another look, but the faces had vanished, and I was no longer sure I'd seen them in the first place. Once again the hedge was an ordinary hedge, and the apple tree was an ordinary apple tree.

The shed, though — I hadn't taken much notice of it before, but now I saw the door was slightly ajar, as though someone had just gone in.

Or as if someone — or something — were about to emerge.

I shook my head, hard enough to make my teeth rattle, trying to jolt myself out of this whimsical thinking. Sophie was looking at me curiously. 'What on earth are you doing?'

'Just trying to shake sense into my brain,' I told her. 'Sometimes my imagination runs away with me.'

'I know exactly what you mean,' said Sophie, and I felt a twinge of irritation. How could she possibly know? Sophie was one of the least imaginative people I'd ever met. She couldn't even imagine what it would be like to go shopping without a walletful of credit cards.

'They're just leaves,' repeated Sophie.

'If you say so,' I said, and then added, a touch maliciously, 'Maybe breaking up with Miles has been good for your artistic development.'

Sophie's reply was instantaneous. 'We haven't broken up.'

'Come off it. He's been going round introducing this Ligia woman as his girlfriend.'

She winced. I was exaggerating, but only slightly, and the news hit her where it hurt. But she pulled herself together in a jiffy; it was impressive to see. 'It's me that doesn't want to see him,' she reminded me. 'There are things we need to sort out before I move back. Miles can go out with other people if he wants. Maybe he should go ahead and get it out of his system.'

At about eleven o'clock I realized I was going to miss the last train, but Sophie assured me I was welcome to stay with her, she'd assumed that had been the plan all along. As the minutes ticked away to midnight, I was surprised she made no effort to get ready for bed. This wasn't like her at all: Sophie was one of those irritating early birds who were normally tucked up well before twelve o'clock, which meant they would invariably be up in time to listen to Farming Today .

But tonight she wasn't in a hurry to get tucked up, and she wasn't even yawning. The level of noise from the street outside slipped down a level from evening to night, the occasional stirrings of movement from the man upstairs died away, and, when we switched on the television, the viewing had dwindled to a choice between Open University and an old American cop show starring a has-been British actor.

Eventually we dispensed with the television altogether, and ended up talking more than we'd talked in years. We laughed a lot, and even cried a little. Sophie tried to explain why she was so upset by Miles' behaviour — 'It's not the infidelity I mind, it's the lying' — and we discussed art and sex and gardens and decorating and, before I knew where I was, I found myself defending Dirk and Lemmy yet again.

'Dirk's actually a very responsible person,' I was saying. 'Once, just for fun, he smashed an empty bottle in the street, and then spent the next half-hour picking up every last sliver of glass so that passing dogs and cats wouldn't cut their paws on it.'

Which was when the music started.

Sophie sat up very straight, and said, 'Party time.'

I call it 'music' though from where we were sitting it was more of a tuneless thudding, a booming bass which you felt in your entrails, rather than heard through the normal channels of the ear.

Ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk

I looked up at the ceiling. The noise seemed to be coming from up there, but there was so much echo it was difficult to tell.

On Sophie's face there was a look of exhilaration which put me in mind of Joan of Arc. 'I thought they were playing hard to get,' she said, almost shouting to make herself heard. 'This is why I asked you round. This is what I wanted you to hear.'

'It's loud !' I shouted back.

'Don't you recognize it?'

I tried making sense of the racket, and after a while caught a hint of vocals.

Down there down there down there down there

It was our old friends, the Drunken Boats.

I tried to repress the sneaky little thrill of satisfaction I was feeling. Sophie's new flat was not so marvellous after all. At least my place in Hackney was solid and purpose-built and I didn't have to listen to neighbours' music thudding through the walls.

'Have you complained?' I asked, gesturing towards the ceiling.

Sophie was watching me attentively. 'It isn't Robert,' she said.

'But it can't be Marsha. I saw her go out.'

Sophie shook her head again. 'It took me ages to work out where it was coming from.'

'And?'

'It's coming from right here,' she shouted. 'From inside the flat .'

I looked at her and without saying another word got up and made my way towards the living-room. Just outside, I paused, and sniffed.

Sophie was at my elbow. 'Smell it?'

I nodded. Sophie was the staunchest of non-smokers and had never stopped nagging Miles to give up, so I knew this had nothing to do with her. There were so many freshly painted surfaces that the smell of cigarettes should have been overwhelmed, but it wasn't; it hung in the air, like a poisonous mist. It was a smell that went well with the ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk

The music was definitely coming from the living-room. I went in, and she followed, watching intently for my reaction. The smell of smoke was stronger in here, and now there was an extra ingredient to it, something I couldn't quite identify.

I was halfway across the room when the music stopped just as suddenly as it had begun.

It was only now there was silence ringing in my ears that I started to feel a small flutter of nervousness. I could think of only one explanation; both the noise and the smell had something to do with Dirk and Lemmy. Perhaps they'd inadvertently rewired the room so it had turned into one big receiver for Capital Radio. Maybe they'd left a cigarette burning. I prowled around the room, searching for fag ends, checking behind the paint cans in the corner, lifting each can in turn. I rooted through the pockets of the paint-splattered overalls draped over the stepladder, but all I found was a steel tape-measure, a grotty paper tissue, and a small scale model of one of the Klingons from Star Trek .