"And the author of this book, he died, too?"
"Yes."
"It is a good thing you don't have these ingredients then, isn't it?"
"Mmm."
Sometimes at night the cathedral gates are like an open mouth: an exclamation of surprise in a street crowded with old lopsided buildings, patched up and filled in over the years like teeth. Tonight the mouth is closed. The big wooden gate is up and there's a sign telling visitors that the precinct opens again tomorrow morning at eight thirty.
No holy water tonight then. No Pedesis.
But I know it's not real, so perhaps I'm just putting off knowing for sure. I could have gone to the cathedral earlier, after all. So it's real life again for the evening, but real life with an implicit promise of something else, something fictional. Another night of that isn't bad, although now I see the closed gates, I wish I had the holy water: I wish I had something dangerous to do later on.
I walk on along the twinkling, frosty pavements, using my new map to find Heather's street. It turns out to be in a side road just behind the cathedraclass="underline" a small yellow-brick terrace with a black door. I knock twice with the silver knocker and then take a step back to wait for her to answer.
"Ariel, hello!" she says, when she opens the door. "Thanks so much for coming. Is that wine? Fantastic—I need as much as possible after the day I've had. How are you? Oh, sorry: Here I am, chatting away on the doorstep. Come in."
The door opens from the street right onto the sitting room. It's the kind of house lots of young academics seem to have before they get married and have children: pine floorboards, rugs, lots of bookshelves, framed Picasso prints, autumnal throws over the sofa and chairs, a coffee table with coffee-table books, and several lamps. It's what my place would probably look like if it had heating and no mice and I could be bothered to inhabit more than one room. I can smell garlic cooking, mingled with something in an oil burner; some combination of peppermint and lavender. The house is warm. Jazz is playing on a small speaker system. There's no sign of Adam.
"White or red?" Heather asks. "Oh, and make yourself at home, by the way. Put your coat anywhere—it's always a bit of a shambolic mess in here."
Why do people always say their houses are messy when they're not?
"Er, red, please. Your place is lovely, by the way. I love that print."
"Oh, it's cool, isn't it?" Heather says over her shoulder as she goes into the kitchen for my wine. She comes back and gives it to me in a huge glass with a silvery pink stem. "I love Picasso."
"I particularly like that one," I say, gazing up at it. "I like anything to do with four dimensions. It's kind of an obsession."
"Four dimensions?" she says. Then she groans. "Go on, tell me what I've missed. I never appreciate art properly: I just think, That's a pretty picture and then hang it on my wall. This is what happens when you're a biologist. You need humanities people to explain real life to you."
I laugh, and, after reassuring Heather that I only know a tiny bit about the cubists and the futurists, and not much else about art, say something about the way the woman's head could be said to be moving through time, or that, alternatively, a fourth-dimensional being is viewing her.
"Wow. That's so cool. I like The Scream best. But I thought it would be a bit studenty to have it on my wall, so I went for something a bit more sophisticated. I so love The Scream, though. It's how I feel most days."
"Why?"
"Oh, um..." There's a knock at the door. "That'll be Adam, I hope, and not some mass murderer." She laughs. "Hang on."
For no reason I'm aware of, my hands start to shake. I put my wine down and then pick it up again. There's a sharp blast of cold air as Heather opens the door and greets Adam. He looks exactly as he did earlier; the only difference is that his hair seems scruffier.
"Hi," he says to me, taking off his coat.
"Hello," I say back.
Heather tells him to put his coat anywhere and repeats her apology about "the mess" and then goes into the kitchen to get a glass of white wine for him. We stare at each other without moving or saying anything.
"So," she says, coming back. "I'm doing pasta and roasted vegetables. It's just simple—I hope that's OK with you, Adam."
"Yeah, thanks," he says, taking the wine while still looking at me. I'm looking right back at him, but this time he breaks the moment and focuses on Heather. "That sounds perfect."
Adam settles into a corner of the big sofa across the room from where I'm sitting. Without looking at either of us, he leans forward and examines the books on the coffee table. Once he's looked at them all he picks up a large hardback book called Weird Fish and starts flicking through it. None of us says anything for a couple of seconds. Heather must have her music on shuffle, because once the jazz track stops, a mournful acoustic guitar tune begins and a guy starts to sing about being alone in the small hours of the morning.
"Better put the pasta on," says Heather.
"Well," Adam says, once she's gone, "how's life?"
"Fine, I think. How about you? Are you settled in OK?"
"Yeah. And thanks for sharing your office with us."
"It's OK. Anyway, as I was telling Heather before, I didn't exactly have a choice."
"Ah. Right. So we were foisted on you?"
"Yeah. But I don't mind at all. Really."
Small talk, small talk. And now he's back to flicking through the pages of the book on his lap.
Heather comes back in.
"So, how's the world of religion?" Heather asks him. "How's life with God?"
"How should I know?" says Adam.
"Aren't you religious?" she says. "I thought..."
Adam smiles. "I'll give you the short answer: no."
"Oh, come on," says Heather. "What's the long answer? Oh!" Something in the kitchen has just gone "ding" and she jumps up to go and deal with it. "Sorry—it's my pasta, I think."
Adam gives me a look as if we're both about to rob a bank together. He also looks as if he doesn't really want to.
"Saved," he says.
I smile at him. "It's a shame, though," I say. "I would have liked the long version, too."
"Oh..." He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair.
"Hey—it doesn't matter," I say. "I'm only playing around. You don't have to tell me anything."
"I'd rather look at fish, to be honest," he says.
I smile. "Yeah, I think I know what you mean."
"They are weird, these fish. Have you seen them?"
"No."
"Come and look."
As I move onto the same sofa as him I'm reminded of all the times I've been with a man and chains of lies have led us first to the same house, then the same sofa, then the same bed. I'm tired. I'm cold. Come here, I want to show you something. It always ends in fucking. I'm sitting only a couple of inches from him now, but, of course, Heather's in the kitchen. I pull down the sleeves of my jumper to cover my wrists.
"Look," he says, pointing.
The book is open on a full-page image of a transparent fish. It looks like a used condom with red teeth.
"Yuck!" I say. But I actually quite like it. "Does it have a name?"
"I don't think so. Look at this one."
Adam turns the page and leans the book towards me. There's what looks like a fish, but instead of a normal fish "face" with bulging eyes and a little mouth this thing seems to have the head of a stone monkey, as if someone just slapped two things together—the fish body and the monkey head—as a joke, or even as an accident.