“If I’d known he was back I, well I wouldn’t have come out.”

“You can’t dodge him forever.” Said Daisy. Clyde’s curiosity, whilst avid, had been insufficient to draw him into the ladies’ loo. He was probably slavering outside, where they’d left him. Sam watched as Daisy pouted at herself in the brilliant glare of the mirrors and made minute adjustments to her flawless makeup.

“I know, but I don’t have to, you know, socialize with him.”

“Maybe you should.”

“What?”

“Maybe you should pal up to him. Normalise relations.” Daisy was now regarding her rear view over her shoulder, tweaking her skirt. “Am I straight?”

“Daisy, I ran out of his flat while he was taking a leak!” Not that you believe that. Nobody much did believe it among the limited circle that was aware of ‘the problem’. Sam pretended to adjust the line of Daisy’s hem, which you could have used to calibrate spirit levels anyway.

Whilst her non-work friends were more generous with the benefit of the doubt, the consensus among those in the office, who knew that there had been an ‘incident’, was that it had involved Sam bonking Dave Slater. Frankly, she wished it had. Some benefit in pleasure might have offset the sheer cringiness of the whole thing but no, she had bolted before the final hurdle. Or jump.

In a fit of sheer lasciviousness quite alien to her character, she had shamelessly led the poor guy on, even to the extent of going with him to a steamy movie and thence to his flat. He had been at such an extremity of erotic anticipation that he had apparently not noticed denting his beloved Lancia on a skip whilst parking, and had then scratched his front door with a skittering key. He had finally gained entrance, but alas only to his own premises.

“You ask me, I don’t think its that big a deal for him, whatever happened” Daisy said.

“Oh great! Build up my self esteem why don’t you?”

“No, I mean that however embarrassing it was at the time he seems to have put it behind him. And maybe you should do the same thing. It was over a year ago Sam.”

“Was it?” She totted up in her head, discovering that Daisy was right. At the time she’d made little effort to rationalize her behaviour. The connection with David had grown naturally and slowly out of a close working association, and had become rather quaintly romantic. She’d reached a point of genuine uncertainty, not knowing quite how much of herself, her inner self, to invest in it. Then had come the news of his promotion. It rapidly emerged that he was to go on the US secondment and, after a tiny interval during which she waited for him to say something meaningful to her, she had vamped him into a frenzy, then scarpered. “Doesn’t make any difference. He left me to mix the drinks while he went off to, to steady his hands. . .”

“Check the dates on his johnnies, more like.”

“And I buggered off in a cloud of hormones! Major, major humiliation on both sides whatever way you look at it.”

“But nobody died, nobody got pregnant, nobody got sacked. And when you did next talk to him what did he say?”

“He talked about how excited he was about San Francisco.” And he left me a really sweet note about how much he would miss seeing me around the office while he was away and hoped there were no hard feelings, but I never told you that did I. And now here he is back again and I, frankly, don’t know what to do about it. She had panicked, behaved stupidly, and been unable to unbungle the thing. And now, now that he was back, she found herself still in the grip of the same paralysis.

“So, like any normal person, he’s moved on.” Daisy continued, “Maybe you should too. I’m going to go and talk to him later on. You should come with me, bit of chit-chat, put it all to rest. Come on.” They left the over-lit toilet, Daisy’s heels clicking on the chequer-plate aluminium flooring as she straight-armed the outer door. Sam, following obediently, heard the impact as the door swung round towards its stop, collecting something heavy as it went. Resuming her seat Daisy glanced back at Clyde, in negotiation now to replace the drinks he had flailed to the floor as he went down. “Bit of a bonus.” She said.

Sam tried to focus. Daisy was right, of course. But even if relations could be ‘normalised’, how would she like them to proceed? Did she want Dave back on side? She had never apologized or explained herself and had no reason to suppose he might be carrying any torches for her. She hated torchbearers anyway, with all their gloopy unrequitedness. No, what she really wanted was just to reset the part of her brain that dealt with him. Turn it off and turn it on again.

When Clyde rejoined them he seemed hardly chastened. “Could have been anyone behind that door, Daize. Fifteen quid you owe me.”

“You’re lucky its still Happy Hour. You shouldn’t be hanging around outside women’s toilets Clyde, not in places like this.”

“No mate, I can show you some much better ones. How you goin’ Sam, Daisy?” Sam felt some of the tension drain from her as Shane Giorgiou dropped into a loose-limbed heap next to her.

“Mr. Giorgiou, always a pleasure,” she said.

“See that Clyde? My reputation is once again enhanced by the kind sentiments of an elegant lady.”

“They indulge you merely as a plaything, Colonial.”

“Well, better a plaything than a utensil, Mate. Miss Burnes, will you be taking to the floor later tonight? I believe this establishment offers dancing as well as. . sumptuous perching.” He poked the vinyl of the banquette experimentally.

“I think it unlikely that I’ll have the stamina for that,” said Sam. “I’m sure Mr. Melton would not object to your steering Miss Norris around the floor, however.” Daisy gargled something through a mouthful of Toxic Avenger, as her drink was now known to be called. Swallowing this obstruction she continued,

“Mr. Melton can bugger off if he does.”

“Good. Denied the pleasure of swooping across the floor with the divine Miss Samantha, I am even now buoyed up again by the prospect not only of the fragrant embrace of Miss Daisy, but also of seeing Mr. Melton buggering off.”

“Shane, how long can you keep this up?” asked Clyde.

“Not bloody long, mate, frankly. Seriously though, you guys all up to scratch?” Behind the cobber shtick Sam had long since found qualities to warm to in Shane, an affection that was widely shared it seemed. He had arrived some months before to take up some arcane responsibilities on the fifth floor, heralded by the MD as “a warm wind of progress from the antipodes” but gleefully paraphrasing this as “a damp gust from down under” at the very first opportunity. His affable self-deprecation and ready humour tempered what might otherwise have been a slightly scary professional aptitude; Sam loved to watch him punctuate otherwise stultifying meetings with sudden insights, like a collie nipping a wayward flock up a hillside. A very likeable man indeed, the better for the fading of his Bondi tan, and apparently not even slightly gay.

Clyde answered. “Daisy’s homicidal for some reason but her attempts on my life have failed so far. And I’m fine, but it seems that Sam is emotionally disturbed by a historical event of some kind.”

“How so?”

“Dave Slater’s back; they had a thing.” This from Gina Guinness, who had drifted in from the bloke-talk. Daisy winced and Sam felt colour suffuse her cheeks. “Oops. Is that a cat out of the bag? Sorry Sam. Nothing happened guys, just a misunderstanding wasn’t it?” Sam reflected on the clothing that she had chosen for the date with Dave and decided that if there was anything that could definitely be ruled out it was a misunderstanding.

“Something like that. All over with now. I just wasn’t expecting to see him.” You, Gina, will find something in your breakfast latte if you go on like that. Or maybe the copier could be rigged to spew fire at her, or shoot out multiple sheets of A3 like a paper-cut machine gun. Gina was gifted in some ways, certainly creative in a slightly floral, girly way, but was one of those people who seem blissfully unaware that their actions might sometimes effect others adversely, at least until it was too late.

“Sounds like no harm done,” said Shane. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou. “I don’t know Slater much but I haven’t heard he’s any kind of a bastard.”

“Lucky bastard maybe,” offered Clyde.

“Not on tonight’s evidence. I’ve gotta talk to Mick the Nerd but don’t go ‘way.” And Shane unfolded himself from the seat, clapped Sam lightly on the shoulder and departed into the throng. Sam replayed his comments in her head, as Daisy caught her with another photo-flash of a grin.

* * * * *

“Probably I should go to casualty if I blacked out.” They were walking now and, whilst Sam could recall no sense of transition, the night had calmed and softened. The breeze still riffled the remaining leaves but somehow it felt rather less relevant to her than it had. “If I’m bleeding into my skull there isn’t a moment to lose.”

“Do you want to? I can go with you.” The tall man had thrown back the hood of his coat to reveal waves of rather romantic hair. She had been wrong about the stubble, which was present but very blonde, but not about the eyes. There was vertigo waiting for her under those jutting brows even now that her dizziness had passed; she avoided his gaze.

“No. I feel okay actually. Mostly.”

“Good.”

She sensed his smile, collected her thoughts and began, “Look, I know that there are some quite decent laws these days.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Laws. To prevent…” She checked herself and began again. “I’m fuzzy right now but I heard you use my name. I don’t know how you could know it unless you had gone to some trouble to find it out. In advance. And I don’t know you.” There were a few strides in silence. They had reached the next corner, only a few dozen yards on from where she had fallen although it seemed to have taken a while. She looked about at the newsagent, the solicitors’ office and the other filling station on the far side of the road, taking strength from the familiarity of these buildings and from the continuing sporadic traffic. An early twitter from above presaged the onset of the diurnal routine of birds, milkmen and commuters, only a short span of time away.

The road surface they were crossing gleamed obscurely and she found her gaze caught upon the crystalline texture of the stones embedded in the tarry matrix, each one a little chip of granite filled with an infinitely reducing lattice of structure right down to the spinning, pulsing atoms. How bizarre to have all that arranged beneath her to support the squiggly tread of her trainers. It seemed banal to tread on it. Focus Sammy, focus. Whaddygonna do? Run on or go home? Call an ambulance. Didn’t somebody do that already? I should wait for it. “I think that I should go home and that you should go in the other direction.” He seemed about to speak but she went on, “I know you helped me and I’m grateful, but now it frightens me and I need you to go.”

“You’ve no need to be frightened.” They had stopped on the far pavement and now she couldn’t avoid his gaze, was momentarily lost in it again. “Someone should stay with you.” He looked away and up. “It’s a fine night!” he said, and she saw his face split into a broad smile again as he gestured her to follow his eyes. As she did so she caught her breath.

“Blimey! Is that the, the wossname, the Milky Way? I didn’t think you could see that from here!” The sky, a depthless field of black unmarked by cloud, was split by an astonishing swathe of light, almost seeming to ripple and flex as its innumerable constituents twinkled in complex rhythms. She raised her hands and examined the scuffed palms, crusting blood on the left as black as the heavens in the strange radiance. Looking upward again she saw now the outlying stars, chips of gemstone shedding discrete splinters of white or coloured light. “Jesus,” she breathed. “What you don’t see if you don’t look.” She turned on the spot, taking in the whole stunning dome of the sky.

“On some nights there is almost nothing you can’t see,” said the stranger, and pointed. “There. That’s Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, and from it you can trace the triangle of Procyon, Betelguese and the whole of Orion, The..”

“Hunter, yes I know. But never like this before, surely?” The heavens swept out to fill her whole field of view, the road and the buildings squashed away into some other dimension beyond the boundary of her attention.

Later, with the rippling sky above and the fizzing atoms of the pavement beneath, the tall man, of whom Sam was not afraid, walked at her side, still southward, still away from home. Here there was a large shop front, illuminated even at this hour to display a great array of garden furniture. Elegant steamer chairs were laid out with attendant awnings and tables, the latter bearing bowls of fruit and glassware suggestive of slumbrous afternoons and long, warm evenings. Further in was a vast dining table, wanting only a leafy vine-wrapped pergola above and a voluble crowd of friends and relatives to occupy its multitude of handsome chairs.

“So if we put aside the possibility that you’re my secret stalker, and I haven’t yet, who can we conclude you to be? It was a nice diversion, the sky thing, but I still need to know who you are.”

“You seem very certain that you don’t know me. Perhaps you only need to remember.” Sam liked this response. It gave her something to get a grasp on, some possibility of a reasonable way out of a strange situation. “Do you often run at night?”

“I don’t run nearly often enough at any time. Don’t try to change the subject.”

“I’m not. Why do you run?”

“You are. I run because I enjoy it and because it keeps me . ..” She paused. “It keeps me how I want to be.”

“Strong? Fast?”

“Maybe. Mostly it makes sure that I’m still a runner, someone who runs. It’s something I’ve always done.” Which wasn’t true, but she thrust the knowledge away.

“Why did you run tonight? It’s a strange thing to do.”
Sam snorted out a laugh. “Indigestion. Sometimes I can run it off. My own fault for eating a fried egg on an acid stomach at midnight and going straight to bed; it gets me right here.” She pressed a fist under her breasts and immediately wished she hadn’t, but the man kept his eyes on the middle distance. In looking at her, she realized, his eyes had scarcely strayed from her face at all, even when she had rolled up her sweats to survey her battered knee. The Mark of Figgis had escaped obliteration. “I was out with some people, should’ve eaten properly but it seemed too complicated.” Lame Sam. That’s not how it was.

“Friends?”

“Colleagues.” She felt reproach rising within herself. “Friends too. My question now. I need a name for you, since you’re not going away.” He stopped and looked at her again, rather directly, and she took a few more years off her estimate of his age. This estimate had been falling since her head had cleared. Her first assumption had been that he was very much her senior but now she felt that his height had fooled her; she was tall herself, a touch under six foot, and had always had a slight complex about those who topped out above her, feeling that they had her at some undefined disadvantage. Now his face seemed as full of uncertainty as that of a small boy in a dark room.

“Mark,” he said, and looked away again, resuming his stride.