"April is the cruellest month."

T.S. ELIOT. The Wasteland

Chapter 1: A Handful of Dust

15th April 2001

Sometimes the rats came, but tonight, thankfully, was not one of those nights. When they did come, Mary could do little about it. They would scurry around her feet, noses twitching over the debris which people had left behind - hamburger cartons, cigarette packets, chocolate wrappers. Mary would sit in her doorway and watch them, always nervous that one of the creatures would come too close. If one did, she'd make a vague shooing motion. Sometimes that worked and sometimes it didn't. Once, a rat had sniffed at her hand.

No better, no worse. It was important that she kept hold of that thought, because it was the mantra that governed her life. No better, no worse. The day had given her nothing, and it had taken nothing from her.

A couple walked past her doorway. They were holding hands. The girl looked at her, briefly, hanging back from the man, but the look was all. Nothing was said. Nonetheless, Mary was disconcerted at the momentary loss of her invisibility.

She pulled her sleeping bag more tightly around her shoulders. The night wasn't cold, but it was useful nonetheless that the coat was warm, because good sleep needed warmth.

Colin arrived and sat down by her, squeezing into the gap she had left between her half empty bottle of cider and the wall. Without asking, he took a swig of the cider. She merely mumbled a greeting, although she was happy to see him and would have been more demonstrative if she could have found the strength. He was particularly welcome because Colin nights were few and far between since he'd started selling The Big Issue, the self-support magazine for the homeless. Usually these days he earned the money for a bed. It was generally when he didn't, when cash was short, that he came here. Sometimes, though, he came just for sex.

She didn't mind the sex. But she loved the warmth he brought. And the easier sleep.

She glanced at him, searching his face to gauge his intentions, but found only his usual blankness. His beard was wilder than she'd ever seen it, puffing up around his neck like a wire collar. His eyes were more yellow than usual. His skin was white as parchment, and he'd been in a fight, because there was a fresh, livid purple bruise under his ear.

She moved the bottle and snuggled close. His arm didn't come around her, as it sometimes did, but that was okay. She supposed that he was weary.

His heart was beating like a triphammer.

She could comfort him, she recalled.

Once, she had comforted a man on a regular basis. The man might have been her father. It might not. She couldn't get a mental grip on those things any more. Maybe she'd never got a mental grip on those things. What did it matter? She was as she was, and where she was. And a little better suddenly, for Colin's visit. Well, certainly no worse.

Comfort. She rolled the word in her head. Comfort.

A sly thing, as far as she was concerned, not always birthed from love. A flicker of passion and compassion trapped in a bubble of time.

But enough, usually, to hold sway in the battle of the night.

She reached out to touch him. It was a labour. He moved slightly, but it wasn't exactly towards her, and it couldn't exactly be described as a response. The denim around his crotch was stiff with accumulated dirt.

She worked down the zip of his pants, slipped her hand inside them. As an afterthought, she pulled the sleeping bag across to mask the activity. There were few people about this early in the morning, but the occasional stragglers from the clubs would stroll by, as with the couple a few moments before, and the police were about most nights as well of course. So concealment was the best policy.

Colin gave no indication by sound or gesture that he was aware of what she was doing, but his cock hardened quickly, and she started to pump it with a ragged determination. The muscles in her wrist ached within less than a minute, but she didn't dare expose him further, which would have helped, remembering that he always had difficulty in fastening himself up. The doorway of HMV was not the most appropriate place for complicated dressing.

In her early days on the streets, when she was nimbler and he was more alert, she had used her mouth on him from time to time, extracting from the miasma that was her past the fact that men really liked her to use her mouth...

... Men?

No.

A man.

One man.

The reason for her difficulties?

She didn't know...

... And once, they had found a comfortable and secluded spot by the canal, a spot usually fought over but on that night oddly and fortuitously abandoned, as though an invitation to treat. They had made love twice that night, a heaving bundle of rolled back old clothes.

He had touched her breasts.

He had kissed them.

She remembered little of her life, but she remembered that night.

He would never have agreed even then to pleasure her, though, in similar fashion to the way in which she was pleasuring him now. These days, of course, he was too drawn of energy, but in the past he had been selfish. That had never surprised her. Men were selfish creatures by nature, she believed. Something, again to do with the past, had convinced her of that before she'd even met Colin.

So, if she desperately needed to, then occasionally she would pleasure herself. But it was difficult without the risk that she would be seen, much more difficult than handling Colin.

She felt his erection swell slightly, a familiar sign, and she speeded up her work as best she could, squeezing him more tightly, exchanging pain for motion in her wrist.

He came finally, with a slight lift of his body and a sigh, his stomach distending then relaxing like a deflating balloon. Semen scrolled down her knuckles. She removed the hand, wiped it on her coat, and then snuggled closer. This time he did bring his arm around her.

For the first time since his arrival, he spoke. "Wanted to see you", he said.

For a moment, illogically, she considered telling him that she loved him. It would have been a lie, but she was tempted by the hope that telling him might bring about a change. They might as a result end up facing the world together rather than alone. In the end, though, she withheld, deciding that any such declaration would, in an unfriendly world, be a thing of little value to him, and also that it would involve a compromise that she was not prepared to make.

She contented herself by replying, "Keep me warm."

Her response had taken so long to frame that he was already asleep.

Chapter 2: The Roots That Clutch

April 1998

It was Mary's vulnerability, Andrew supposed, which had always attracted him. In that sense, she wasn't like the other girls at all. Mixing seemed a labour to her, the simple pursuit of dancing even more so. He'd never seen anyone ask her onto the floor, and he'd never heard anyone explain why not. People simply ignored her. It was as though she passed into their perception so slowly that they saw her as having never been there, or as having always been there. Only once had her presence been the subject of an incident, and all that had been forgotten now, except by Andrew.

One night, her father had come to take her home from the club, way earlier than normal. There had been an exchange of words. He had pulled at her arm, and she had resisted. It had all been very uncool. Andrew hadn't heard much of the conversation, but he'd known from something said earlier that her mother had been away that weekend on an Open University session. He had theorised that the father was nervous of responsibility, that he had wanted his daughter back in his line of sight as soon as possible, and Andrew had thought this unfair. After all, Mary had been visiting the Paperhouse night club for at least three months by then, and usually left at one thirty, not twelve thirty. Andrew knew that because Andrew had often watched her come and go.

Only tonight, incidentally, had he realised why he watched. Only tonight had he had hit upon her vulnerability as the key. Previously, the attraction had confused him.

Not that there was anything wrong with Mary in the looks department, and she dressed reasonably well, although never to the height of fashion and never revealingly. Because of these characteristics, he'd concluded that she was strictly parented long before the father's midnight visit.

Another thing that she rarely wore was a smile. She was animated at times, though, and her long brown hair would sway aggressively as she made points to her usual companion, an overweight blonde named Delyse.

In contrast to Delyse, Mary definitely wasn't overweight. She was better described, in fact, as a waif. Andrew always wondered about her eating habits.

The night of her father's visit had been the first and only time that Mary had been the subject of conversation in the group. Andrew had hung back from that conversation, particularly because the only thing he would have been able to contribute was rather unwholesome, and might have started a rumour.

His diificulty arose from the fact that he had heard Mary's father railing on at her about making the most of opportunity. Andrew had put that together with Mary's mother's absence, and had briefly visited an appalling conclusion, which he had since dismissed. There were after all, he had reasoned, other obvious interpretations of the situation. Father getting her home early, for example, so that she could be out of bed early, then off on a trip - parent and child together. Putting the occurences and available facts in that basket meant that the basket was equally full. With such logic, Andrew was able to lock the monster back in its cage and all was right with the world for him again.

Tonight was Mary's sixteenth birthday. It was a subdued event, it seemed, because apart from Delyse, there were only two other girls present. He recognised neither, but he did recognise easily in both of them a wish to be elsewhere.

He noted that the party dress which Mary wore had too many frills. It was a father's choice. And the new hairstyle was too affected. These things confirmed, for Andrew, a need to act.

He had decided over the previous two weeks that she required saving, and that he was the one to do that saving. As he observed her restrained celebration, he became surer of his conclusions than ever before.

He watched her move to the bar, and he followed her, knowing that he increased his chances if he talked to her without the ever present Delyse, and conscious that now was the only version of that position which might be available.

He settled beside Mary, glanced at her, caught a line of her vanilla perfume. She was overfragranced, but he liked that. Vanilla excited him, eliciting a memory of an old romance. It was an association made in his brain, like baking bread with hunger.

He continued to study her as she waited to order, until she registered that he was studying her. And when she turned slightly, he pounced.

"Happy birthday", he said. "Why don't you let me buy these?"

"Thank you", she replied, colouring slightly. "And yes, why don't I?"

He extended a hand. "Andrew", he told her.

Her grip in return was light. "Mary. I've seen you around."

Things went well after that. He accompanied her back to her table, where he was presented to the ballooning blonde as well as to the misery twins, who, he then learned, rejoiced, or more likely didn't, under the names Melanie and Lucy. Ten minutes later, said misery twins drifted off to a claimed prior engagement. Even more promisingly, five minutes after that Delyse took the huff at lack of attention from Mary and drifted into the background.

Andrew steered Mary out on to the dance floor. She was clearly uncomfortable, and that worried him a little. The implication was that she was merely going with a pleasant and unexpected flow, whereas he'd wanted to provoke a more honest and upfront attraction.

His concerns didn't prevent him kissing her, of course, and that first kiss was a hit for him. She enlivened his body, thickened the part of him that few women could affect without touching it. And very soon, because Mary adapted with a fluidity which surprised even him, the dance outside the dance speeded up. The kisses became more frequent and the caressing began - or rather, he began it, and Mary didn't object.

Later, in a dark corner of the club, she permitted him to touch a breast. He felt the nipple harden slightly beneath the silk of her dress.

"I want to make love with you", he whispered in her ear. "I need to make love with you. You're the sexiest girl I've ever met."

His intent was cynical. He was setting down a marker, in the hope of seeing her again within the next few days and cashing it in. But cynically intended or not, the compliment which concluded his words held some truth, and that truth strengthened when he saw her reaction, a colouring in her cheeks which indicated surprise and pleasure. Clearly she was unused to flattery.

No reply from her was necessary, or indeed expected. He had expressed a wish, and it could be acknowledged by a squeeze or a kiss. But Mary startled him by aknowledging more directly.

"I wish we could", she said. "But there's nowhere to go, and I've only got an hour left."

Andrew liked to believe that he could usually think on his feet, but this time he struggled. Had he been chatting up a different kind of girl, a less sedate girl, he would have hoped for just the sort of brazen response that Mary had given and would have instantly taken advantage. It took him a few seconds to realise that he should do precisely that in any event. Looking in the mouths of gift horses wasn't Andrew's style at all. Mary was indicating willingness. Not following that up would be a real waste.

"An hour's a start", he told her, the fingers of his right hand skipping through her hair. And listen. There's a covered storage area behind the building. Nobody ever goes down there at night, but there's a staff door, and it's usually unlocked. I'm not trying to press, Mary. You've only met me tonight, I know that. But I can't help how I feel. At least we could talk in private down there."

"Fine", she agreed. "Let's do it."

Except, Andrew reflected, the response didn't sound like agreement. It sounded more like submission.

Common decency suggested that he take a step back, check the ground that he was proposing to walk on for potholes. But the gift horse's shrill whinny was loud in his ears, drowning Mr. Common Decency out.

So Andrew reached for her hand, and she gave it willingly.

He led her round past the bar. He encouraged her through the door which he had described to her. Down a few steps, and they were into the open air.

She followed without a second thought.

She followed in silence.

Privacy achieved, he turned her to face him, and he kissed her, long and deeply, his tongue searching behind her teeth. She responded in kind, clutching his bottom, her eagerness in deed dissipating his concern that he was taking advantage of her.