Anne Billson - Stiff Lips

Perhaps that was why I couldn't stop thinking about him.

I kept a careful watch on the mail for the next couple of the weeks, in the hope of intercepting the manuscript Madeleine Curran had said she was returning, but nothing of that sort turned up.

Try as I might, I couldn't make any more headway with Walter. I'd nuzzled up to him on the way home from the Crow Bar, but although he'd neither cringed nor pushed me away, he hadn't responded with the sort of enthusiasm I might have hoped for.

But, as the summer slipped away, I grew accustomed to having him around. He was a useful companion — amusing, informative, passably debonair — and his presence seemed to have put a stop to that tiresome but mercifully short-lived Scott-of-the-Antarctic syndrome in which everyone kept imagining they'd seen someone standing just behind me.

But then, one Friday morning, these halcyon days came to an end. There was a buzz on my entryphone.

The bell part of it worked, but the intercom facility was broken, so I had to nip down to see who it was. I rounded the last bend in the stairs to find Walter standing below me in the hall, surrounded by suitcases. His chin was covered with a light golden fuzz that indicated he hadn't bothered to shave. As I drew nearer my nostrils were greeted by the sharp tang of his body odour. Grooming had obviously not been high on his list of priorities that morning.

'I'm off,' he said, momentarily pushing his sunglasses up in order to rub his eyelids. It was only the third or fourth time I'd seen his eyes; the irises were a surprisingly pale grey, and the sockets were smudged with fatigue. I wondered if he'd only just developed a slight twitch in the nerves of his jaw, or whether it had always been there and I hadn't noticed.

'I don't blame you,' I said. 'I'm going back to Hackney for the weekend. Anything to avoid the Carnival.'

'No,' said Walter. 'I mean I'm really off.'

'But I thought…'

'I told you I never stay long. I've already stayed longer than I should.'

'But I don't want you to go.'

Walter's face clouded over. 'Bad dreams,' he said. 'Real stinkers. And they've been getting worse. Always do, this time of year. Especially now, this stage of the cycle.'

Even his fake smile let him down; he tried to turn it on, but ended up looking like a man in pain.

'What cycle?'

Walter waved his hand. He couldn't be bothered to explain in full. 'Architectural equivalent of PMT. You know.'

I didn't know at all. 'You can't just go ,' I said, feeling as though a golden opportunity was slithering through my fingers like a raw yolk. I hadn't even made it to bed with him. 'When can I see you again?'

'Couple of months, maybe. I've used up all my credit for now. But I'm going to leave you with this.' He handed me a plain brown envelope with my name printed on it. There was something bulky inside. I looked at Walter enquiringly. The nerve in his jaw twitched again.

'Keys,' he explained. 'The spare set of keys to my flat.'

'But why?' This was just typical. There I'd been, waiting all those years for a place in W11, and now two came along at once.

'That other film,' said Walter. 'Down There . I really think you should see it. I've left the tape out for you.'

It should have struck me as odd that a person with so much expensive equipment in his flat would leave a set of keys with someone he barely knew, but it didn't. I was too busy thinking about all the advantages. I'd been squinting at a ropey old portable fourteen-inch television, and now, at last, I had access to a screen as big as a football field, Nicam stereo, forty-five cable and satellite channels, six different types of video recorder, and hundreds of titles on cassette and laser disc. It would be like having my own private screening room. Not to mention a comfortable, king-size bed and en suite bathroom with hot and cold running-water and no cracked mirrors to give me the willies.

'Why are you doing this?' I asked him.

Walter peered with his pale grey eyes over the top of his sunglasses. 'Can I be honest with you, Clare?'

'Of course.'

'I'm giving you these keys,' he said, 'because I need your help. I can't work out whether it's going to be you or Sophie, and I want to keep both options open.'

Talk about brazen. But I appreciated his frankness. I tried to look him in the eye, but those wretched sunglasses were in the way again. 'It's me,' I said. 'I know it's me.'

'Maybe.' He looked as though he was about to say something else, but we heard the noise of a taxi pulling up outside. I helped Walter down the front steps with his suitcases while the cab driver loaded the boxes that had been stacked on the pavement in readiness. Walter kissed me on the lips and then got inside the taxi and pushed down the window. 'See ya, kid,' he said.

As the taxi drove off, I realized too late that I'd forgotten to ask him for his new address. Ah well, no doubt Marsha would have it. I turned to go back upstairs, fingering the shape of the keys through the envelope.

So it was between me and Sophie.

But Walter had given the keys to me . Sophie was already history. Sophie didn't stand a chance.

With Walter out of the picture, I had to fall back on my faithful standby — Graham. Perhaps I could yet mould him into the man of my dreams. Anyway, he was better than nothing. It was time to make good on my promise of dinner.

My plan was to ply him with food and drink before suggesting, ever so casually, that we descend into the basement for a viewing session in more comfortable surroundings. And then, maybe, we'd go to bed, and Graham would submit to my will and start shopping at Paul Smith. That's how I'd envisaged it.

But things didn't happen like that at all.

The evening got off to a rotten start when he staggered in over an hour late, stewed to the eyebrows. So, instead of my greeting him as planned — breathless and giggling, Marsha's stainless steel cocktail shaker in hand and groovy sounds issuing from the tapedeck — I opened the door in a filthy mood, perfume no longer fresh, and stomach stuffed full of the Japanese rice crackers I had previously decanted into little lacquer bowls and deposited at strategic locations around the room. In short, the crackers were gone and the hoped-for effect of chic yet effortless hospitality was utterly ruined.

Graham had absorbed enough alcohol to propel him beyond the borderland of the merely frisky into the realm of excessively careful pronunciation of vowel sounds. His reactions were not so much slow as wayward. When I tried to air-kiss him, he misread my intention and jerked his head round so clumsily that my lips mashed against his cheek and clung there, like suction cups. By the time I'd peeled them off and found the mirror, my Poppy Red was no longer precisely delineated but radiating from my mouth like an exploding nebula.

I slipped into the bathroom for repairs. Graham hovered in the doorway, apologizing for being late, oblivious to the streak of scarlet warpaint I'd left smeared across his face. He told me he'd bumped into an old chum, and that they'd gone for a quick drink in Cinnabar, but then one glass had turned into two, and… well, that was all there was to it.

I didn't think this was much cop as an excuse — he'd had a date with me , not with this old chum — but when I pressed further, he was reluctant to go into detail. I had a feeling the chum had been female. I looked at my watch pointedly. 'You've still got time to go and rejoin your friend,' I said. 'We can have dinner another time.'

Graham failed to spot the sarcasm. 'Nah,' he said. 'I'm here now. Might as well stay.'

'Oh well,' I said. 'If you haven't got anything better to do…'