Crybbe aka Curfew

And yet the room itself stank of repression, as if the people who lived here were the narrowest type of religious fundamentalists.

Tessa was standing there expressionless, watching him. The next move was his. Because he was trying so hard not to be, he was painfully aware of her breasts under what, in his own teenage days, had been known as a tank top.

'I know what you're thinking,' she said, and Murray sucked in a sharp breath.

'But I'm not,' she said. 'I'm not imagining any of it. You don't imagine things being thrown at you in the bathroom, even if…'

Her lips clamped and she looked down at her feet.

'If what?' Murray said.

'Show you,' Tessa mumbled.

Murray felt sweat under his white clerical collar. He stood up, feeling suddenly out of his depth, and followed Tessa Byford into the hall and up the narrow stairs.

All right, Fay?'

'I don't know.'

She was going hot and cold. Maybe succumbing to one of those awful summer bugs.

All she needed.

'Give me a minute… Elton. I want to make a few adjustments to the script.'

'OK, no hurry. I've got a couple of pieces to top and tail. Come back to you in five minutes, OK?'

'Fine,' Fay said, 'fine.'

She took off the cans and leaned back in the studio chair, breathing in and out a couple of times. Outside it was still raining and not exactly warm; in here, she felt clammy, sticky, she pulled her T-shirt out of her jeans and flapped it about a bit.

The air in here was always stale. There should be air-conditioning. The Crybbe Unattended itself was probably a serious infringement of the Factories Act or whatever it was called these days.

And the walls of the studio seemed to be closer every time she came in.

That was psychological, of course. Hallucinatory, just like… She slammed a door in her mind on the icy Grace Legge smile, just as she'd slammed the office door last night before stumbling upstairs after the dog. She wondered how she was ever going to go into that room again after dark. She certainly wouldn't leave the dog in there again at night.

How primitive life had become.

'Fay!' A tinny voice rattling in the cans on the table. She put them on.

Ashpole.

'Fay, tell me again what he's doing…'

'Goff?'

She told him again about the New Age research centre, about the dowsers and the healers. She didn't mention the plan to reinstate the stones. She was going to hold that back – another day, another dollar.

'No rock stars, then.'

'What?'

'All a bit of a disappointment, isn't it, really,' Ashpole said.

'Is it?' Fay was gripping the edge of the table. Just let him start…

'Nutty stuff. New Age. Old hippies. Big yawn. Some people'll be interested, I suppose. When can we talk to the great man in person?'

'Goff? I'm working on it.'

That was a laugh. Some chance now. I'll ask my ex-husband – he owns all the broadcasting rights. God, God, God!

'Hmm,' Ashpole said, 'maybe we should…'

Without even a warning tremor. Fay erupted. 'Oh sure. Send a real reporter down to doorstep him! Why don't you do that? Get him to claim on tape that he's the son of God and he's going to save the fucking world!'

She tore off the cans and hurled them at the wall, stood up so violently she knocked the chair over. Stood with her back to the wall, panting, tears of outrage bubbling up.

What was happening to her?

'See that mirror?"

She was pointing at a cracked circular shaving mirror in metal frame.

'It flew off the window-ledge,' Tessa Byford said. 'That's how it got the crack. 'Course, they accused me of knocking it off.'

'How can you be sure you didn't?'

It was a very cramped bathroom. Murray moved up against the lavatory trying not to brush against the girl.

Ludicrous. He fell completely and utterly ludicrous; he was suffocating with embarrassment.

"Look,' she said, oblivious of his agony, 'I just opened the door and it flew off at me. And other things. Shaving brush, toothpaste. But it was the mirror that started it. I had to look in the mirror.'

'It could have been a draught, Tessa.' Appalled at how strangled his voice sounded.

'It wasn't a bloody draught!'

'All right, calm down. Please.'

'And when I picked it up, the mirror, there was blood in the crack.'

'Your blood?'

'No!'

'Whose, then?'

'The old man's.'

'Your grandfather?'

'No, the old man! He used to live here. I saw him. I could see him in the mirror.'

'You're saying he's dead, this old man?'

'What do you think?' Tessa said, losing patience with him. Tension rising. The girl was disturbed. This was not what the Church should be doing. This was psychiatric country.

'And you think you saw his face in the mirror.'

'And other mirrors.' She sighed. 'Always in mirrors.'

'Tessa, listen to me. When you first told me all about this you said you thought it was a poltergeist and you thought it was happening because you were at that age when… when… But you're eighteen. You're not an adolescent any more.'

'No.'

He saw something moving in her dark eyes, and there was a little dab of perspiration above her top lip. Murray began to feel soiled and sordid. She said softly – and almost euphorically, he thought later – 'His throat was cut. When I saw him in the mirror, he'd cut his throat. Put his razor through the artery. That was where the blood…'

Murray swallowed. There was an overpowering smell of bleach.

'Would you mind,' he said, 'if we went back downstairs?'

When the studio phone rang it was Gavin Ashpole being soft-spoken and understanding. They all knew these days that if a woman dared up uncharacteristically it had to be a spot of premenstrual tension. Tact and consideration called for.

'So, when you're ready, love,' Ashpole said amiably, 'just give us the fifty-second voice-piece. And then you can play it by ear with Goff. I mean, don't worry about it – long as nobody gets him first, I'll be happy. Must go, the other phone, thanks Fay.'

She shouldn't have exploded like that. Most unprofessional

Fay put on the cans, adjusted the mike on its stand.

'Ow!'

Bloody thing was hot.

Surely that wasn't possible with a microphone, even if there was an electrical fault. She didn't touch it again but looked round the back, following the flex to where it plugged into the console. Nothing amiss.

There was nothing to come unscrewed on this mike. It was a standard American-made Electro Voice, about six and a half inches long, gunmetal grey with a bulb bit enlarging the end, like…

Well, like a penis, actually.

Fay put out a finger, touched the tip, giggled.

Sex-starved cow. Pull yourself together.

'You ready now, Fay?'

'Oh yes. I'm ready, Elton. I really am.'

'Bit for level, then…'

She picked up the script, which would take up the story from the newsreader's link.

'It's widely known,' Fay enunciated clearly into the microphone, 'that Max Goff has been involved in setting up a charitable trust to…'

'Yeah, fine. Go in five.'

Fay composed herself. Not easy in this heat. The T-shirt was sticking to her again. Have to put in a complaint. Four, three, two…

'It's widely known that Max Goff has been involved in setting up a charitable trust to finance so-called "New Age" ventures – such as alternative healing techniques and the promotion of "Green" awareness.

'He's also interested in fringe science and the investigation of ley-lines, which are supposed to link standing stones, Bronze Age burial mounds and other ancient sites across the landscape…'

Most times, when you were putting in a voice-piece – especially if, like this, it wasn't live – you weren't really aware of the sense of it any more. Only the pattern of the words, the balance, the cadence and the flow. It was conversational and yet completely artificial. Automatic-pilot stuff after a while. Easy to see how some radio continuity announcers simply fell in love with their own voices.