his sister's dress

Adrian shivered as he stepped out of the club and into the cold darkness of the street. Outside, everything was glazed in a thick layer of frost. An evil wind swept from the east over rooftops, down alleyways and through the tops of trees. It was a particularly cruel, biting wind. And even with several hurried vodkas swilling around his veins, Adrian felt half frozen to death as he made his way along beneath whistling black branches.

When he reached the end of the road, he thought about returning to the warmth of the club and trying to call for a taxi again, but he sensed it would be a waste of time. As the lady on the phone had said, "You should have booked weeks ago if you wanted a taxi tonight, my love. It's Christmas Eve." Christmas bloody Eve!

He wrapped his arms around himself, pushed fingers into arm pits and tottered up the icy pavement on his high heels. Another gust of wind swept through him. He cursed the flimsiness of his dress, which was damp with the sweat of dancing and spilled lager, and wished he'd brought something warmer to change into it. He'd never considered it would be so uncomfortable to be a woman. His suspender belt was cutting into his stomach, his false lashes were making his eyes itch and one bollock had dropped out of the edge of his black satin panties.

As Adrian continued to stagger up the street, he paused to look at his reflection in the darkened window of a partially shuttered off-license. He could hardly recognise the bizarre, blurred image that gazed out at him obscured by a special offer on Australian Chardonnay and various seasonal salutations. For a moment, he had the strangest feeling, there actually was some separate, sozzled young woman stood inside the shop. And - shaking his head to suppress the vividness of that feminine phantasm - he hurriedly resumed the long hike home.

Although some men (generally for reasons of supposed comedy) seem to leap at any opportunity to slip into women's underwear, Adrian was not one of them. In fact (despite some prepubescent experimentation with his sister's make-up box) the thought of cross-dressing would never normally have occurred to him. But then, the club's Live Fast Die Young Xmas Extravaganza was no normal occasion.

The idea was that you dressed up as a rock or film star who had died in their prime, from a drugs overdose or a car crash or something. There were even prizes for the prettiest corpse. He liked that. The prettiest corpse. Some people had taken the concept literally, choosing to dress up as their chosen star shortly after the moment of death rather than shortly before.

One bloke, Chris, persuaded a mate (who did special effects for horror films), to make him up as a post-plane crash Buddy Holly. Chris had one arm, half a face and large splinters of metal and glass stuck in him. The outfit looked very effective (in a revolting kind of way), but was not ideal for dancing (and eventually he had to retire to the bar after almost poking Janis Joplin's eye out whilst doing the twist).

Originally, Adrian had planned to go as Jimi Hendrix. He'd even brought the wig, a ridiculous black afro. But his nose just wasn't right. It was too long and pointed. Unless he'd deliberately flattened it with a mallet, he concluded he'd have looked more like a late seventies footballer than an early seventies rock icon. So that was out.

After chucking the Hendrix idea, Adrian had toyed with James Dean for a while. He already had the short back and sides and the mousy blonde hair. The white T-shirt and the baggy Levis, were hanging in his wardrobe (at least the jeans were hanging, the T-shirt was actually crumpled in a drawer with half a dozen others and a confusion of mismatched socks and tattered underpants). Basically, all Adrian needed to complete the look was a leather jacket and a decent pair of boots. However he didn't really like wearing all that leather. And even with his hair Brylcreamed into an authentic quiff he didn't look that different from the way he normally did.

In desperation, he'd asked his mates (who were not generally known for the sincerity of their suggestions) for some ideas. Among the endless Elvises and Jim Morrisons, someone, just as a joke, had mentioned Marilyn Monroe. At the time, he'd laughed as heartily as everyone else, but the more he thought about it, the less ridiculous it sounded. Marilyn really was the obvious choice.

Adrian definitely wasn't gay. And transvestism has never held any particular attraction for him (he preferred taking knickers and bras off other people than putting them on himself). However, as a boy, he'd had a remarkably feminine face. It was hard to say precisely what it was about his features that'd made him look so girlish; his large eyes and long lashes, perhaps, or the way his small lips seemed to pout slightly (a feature exaggerated by the fact that he constantly bit his lips, a nervous action which left them permanently red and swollen). Maybe it was something to do with the angelic softness of his juvenile skin. Whatever it was, he certainly looked more like a little girl than most boys did (and more like a little girl than some girls did).

Indeed, during his junior years in the late seventies, when it was still fashionable for young boys to have hair like Little Lord Fauntleroy, he was often mistaken for a girl. In fact, when they went shopping on a Saturday, the car park attendant used to compliment Adrian's mum on what a pretty little thing he was (which she used to think was hilarious, but which Adrian didn't appreciate at all).

Once, at infant's school, whilst he'd been fumbling in the cloakroom with his coat, a new dinner lady had tried to do his buttons up the wrong way and then (leaving the coat undone) had led him by the hand to where the girls were skipping and tried to make him join in. Fearfully embarrassed, and not quite understanding why he was being ridiculed in this way, Adrian had nonetheless waited in line for his turn to skip (whilst his mates stopped playing football to watch). After getting hopelessly tangled up in the long rope (to the great amusement of girls and boys alike) he finally summoned up the courage to tell the dinner lady he didn't really want to learn to skip.

"All little girls have to learn to skip," she said, taking him to one side. "It's easy once you know how."

"But I'm not a little girl," he'd said tearfully. "I'm a boy."

"Don't be silly said the dinner lady of course you're not...."

But then she'd taken a closer look at his face. She'd frowned and lifted his soft, blonde fringe from his eyes and suddenly realised her mistake.

"Oh my gosh," she said, her cheeks turning the colour of ripe cherries. "Oh dear." She'd hastily buttoned up his coat the right way and, taking him by the shoulders, she'd swivelled him round and pushed him - not harshly but certainly very vigorously - towards where the boys had resumed their seven-aside with a tennis ball on the other side of the tarmac playground.

Fortunately, Adrian already had a reputation for being rather mischievous, and the boys thought he'd joined in with the girls' skipping of his own accord, for a bit of a lark. So his embarrassment, although severe, was not as devastating as it might have been.

As Adrian had entered his teens his features had begun to fill out. His jaw had become squarer, his eyebrows bushier, his hair much courser (which he was pleased about) and his nose much longer (which he wasn't so pleased about). By his mid-twenties his once-smooth skin was finely scarred with the tiny hollows of a thousand burst blackheads. It was also generally covered in stubble as shaving still had a tendency to bring him out in spots and he preferred, therefore, to shave every second or third day (a minor luxury afforded by his being blonde).

Under normal circumstances, no one sober or sane could any longer seriously accuse Adrian of looking feminine, let alone pretty. However, when daubed with ample dollops of his sister's foundation, eyeliner and lipstick (having plundered her beauty box whilst she was out Xmas shopping with her latest boyfriend) and adorned with false eyelashes, pearl earrings and a peroxide, bouffant wig, he did again, almost magically, regain that aura of femininity he'd exuded as a child.

Looking in the mirror in his sister's room, he'd pouted and said to himself, 'Adrian, baby, you're quite a doll,' and reflected that he could quite happily have shagged himself, and laughed showing the yellow teeth of a young man who smokes too much and doesn't care.

Although Adrian's face was more than passable for an amateur drag Marilyn, the body was more difficult to get right. It's not until he'd tried dressing as a woman that he realised how different their bodies were to men's. Adrian had never considered himself to have particularly broad shoulders or narrow hips but wearing a fifties style dress he'd bought from Oxfam, he'd looked (not to put too fine a point on it) fucking ridiculous. He'd resembled something out of Monty Python, an ugly sister, a body builder wearing a frilly, floral pinny to do the washing up in. Absurd, comical, surreal - yes. Fifties glamour icon - no!

It was partly the dress's fault. It had no real shape to it and hung off him like a sack. Sticking a couple of partially inflated balloons up the front of it only made him look even worse, deformed rather than voluptuous. He was all set to settle for James Dean again, when he remembered the dress his sister's previous boyfriend had bought her from the market for her birthday. It was a slinky, body hugging number of the type originally made famous by Coco Channel.

His sister had worn the dress only once. Partly because it reminded her of that two-timing cheapskate. Partly because it had a deep purple tinge to it (the colour of over-ripe Victoria plums). But mainly because it made her bum look two big and kept slipping off her shoulders.

However, with a touch of padding round the hips and chest, the dress fitted Adrian like a dream.

Even though his sister never wore the dress anymore, Adrian knew that she'd never let him borrow it. So he'd waited until the night before the Live Fast, Die Young party, sneaked into her room and taken it whilst she was downstairs watching TV. He'd take it to be dry-cleaned between Christmas and the New Year, he thought to himself, to remove the inevitable night-club stench of sweat, beer and smoke. And she'd never have to know it had been gone for a moment.

It hadn't been easy to find high heels in a size ten, but eventually he saw a pair in the window of a junk shop that he decided would do. They were buttercup yellow, patent leather with a wide strap and open toes like a sandal, chunkier than stilettos but with a good high heel all the same. He'd told the man in the shop he was an artist and wanted to use them for practising drawing because he liked the way the plastic shone. The man in the shop didn't seem that bothered. Foot fetishist, transvestite, artist what did he care? It was all cash in the till.

In the garage at home, Adrian'd sprayed the shoes with car paint, 1986 Renault 5 red, then covered them in layer upon layer of crimson shoe polish, which didn't look too bad after a good brushing.

The shoes weren't that high, probably only an inch or so, but it was just enough to give his calves that sexy curve and to make the cheeks of his padded arse wobble from side to side slightly as he walked. OK, so the shoes weren't perfect, but they did make him feel like a woman.

The bra, of course he had to wear otherwise he would have had nowhere to stick his cotton wool and shredded tissue paper. The tights, likewise, were essential to cover up legs made muscular by all those years spent kicking footballs. The knickers were not essential. But he felt he ought to wear them. He would have been lying if he'd said that the feeling of black satin against his genitals hadn't had any affect on him whatsoever, but he'd not solely worn them to achieve some kind of kinky thrill. Authenticity, that was the thing. Authenticity. And it had worked too. Much to his surprise he'd come second in the 'prettiest corpse' competition (sandwiched between a very convincing Sid Vicious who'd won a magnum of champagne and the mangled Buddy Holly). Adrian won a triple pack of chocolate oranges and a free pair of tickets to the club's New Year's Eve party. The tickets would ordinarily have cost him about a tenner each, which made it all worthwhile, even if he did have to have his picture taken for the local paper (albeit under an assumed name).

At the corner of the avenue in which the club was situated a group of about half-a-dozen lads had gathered. Most of the group were young men wearing bomber jackets and football scarves and bobble hats to cover up their shaved heads. One of them wore a long black trench coat and no hat. He had a tattoo on his neck and was talking to an older, posher looking man with a moustache, a hacking jacket and brown suede gloves. The older man seemed out of place, a cosseted hunter amongst hard-bitten cart horses (though he was one of the first to call out, in an abusive, sloany whine, as Adrian tottered past on the other side of the road).

They'd probably had a curry somewhere, thought Adrian, and after being thrown out of some local church by an irate vicar for singing an obscene version of Oh Come All ye Faithful during Midnight Mass or something, had decided to go and vent their unspent testosterone at queers leaving the night-club.

Normally Thursday night was gay night at the club (although almost half the people who attended such evenings were straight women, who enjoyed the freedom of being able to dress up and dance the night away without being eyed-up and hassled by herds of pot-bellied prats).

However, because it was Christmas Eve, instead of the regular gay night, they'd held the fancy dress do. As it happened, lots of the gay night regulars had come along to the Live Fast, Die Young evening. But it was by no means a sectarian event. Of course the group of thugs on the corner, who had never actually been in the club and, therefore had no knowledge of what went on there, presumed it was business as usual.

Consequently, confusing theatricality for homosexuality, they had spent a good half an hour calling out their usual uninspired collection of taunts and jeers at various revellers as they left the club, much to the bemusement of the majority who were as straight as the proverbial Roman road.

The group of yobs, stomping in the cold together like a rookery of bobble-hatted penguins, looked as if they were just about ready to call it a night as Adrian passed them, but still managed to muster the enthusiasm for one last festive barracking, a fog of hot breath rising up around them as they called out: 'Can't you handle a real man darling. Is that why you hang around with those fucking queer cunts? Fucking lesbian bitch. Like the taste of tuna do you? What you want's a fucking good shagging, you fucking boiler.'

Adrian was tempted to turn round and tell them to 'fuck right off' in his deep throated voice. However, six against one was not particularly favourable odds, and he wasn't going to be running anywhere in a hurry on those high heels. So he'd just kept his head down and walked silently on.

As the night grew colder Adrian grew more and more annoyed. He'd arranged to have a lift home, but had turned it down after two girls he vaguely knew said that, if he wanted, he could go back and stay at their place. He'd had this highly improbable, alcohol-induced fantasy of all three of them returning to the girls' flat and getting into bed together in some kind of bizarre menage a trois, the kind of mild suburban perversion that is sometimes featured in lurid exposes in tabloid newspapers.

At the end of the evening, the girls had disappeared to find something to eat, saying they'd meet him back outside the club in a little while. However, after twenty minutes they'd not returned. He felt awkward and cold stood on the pavement outside the club, dressed as a woman, clutching his three pack of chocolate oranges, as one-by-one the various people he could possibly have cadged a lift from disappeared. Eventually, after going inside and calling (in vain) for a taxi, he'd started to walk home.

He now wished he'd waited a bit longer. Maybe the girls had returned to the club a couple of minutes after he'd left? Still, he thought, it was too late to worry about that now. To cheer himself up a bit, he fantasised about what might have happened had he gone home with those two girls. Despite the cold (which had shrivelled his balls to the size and texture of pickled walnuts), the thought of all three of them entangled in some kind of depraved writhing mass, caused him to stiffen slightly. His erection was only partial and didn't last very long, but as it withered, a clump of pubic hair got caught beneath his foreskin, and, as he stumbled across the icy pavement, it tugged at his flesh in a very unpleasant way.

Adrian scratched himself through the front of the dress but that only made matters worse. So, quickly checking that no one was about, he crouched down behind a parked car, lifted the hem of the dress, and slipped his hand down his tights and into his knickers. He was in the process of extricating the offending hairs from his prick (a task made more difficult by the fact that it had once again shrunk to the size of a congealed, cocktail sausage), when suddenly he heard the murmur of an approaching engine, and looked up to see a police car cruising slowly down the street.

In his haste to remove his hand from his knickers and stand up, Adrian slipped on a patch of ice. As he struggled to maintain his balance he put all his weight onto his right foot, which folded over at the ankle with an ominous snap. Adrian waited until the police car had turned the corner, removed his right shoe and then tried to stand up. The bones of his ankle felt like they had been replaced with heated knife blades, which despite the cold and his numbing drunkenness, stabbed into the soft flesh of his foot with every step. He took his other shoe off and limped along on his stockinged feet, cursing loudly as his feet got wetter and colder.

Adrian hobbled up the hill with envious sidelong glances over fences and through frozen shrubs to the lit windows of large houses where people had stayed up to drink a greeting to Christmas day, to wrap presents, make mince pies and defrost turkeys.

The houses at the bottom of the hill were all quite posh, with mature gardens and BMWs, Jaguars and the occasional Porsche parked outside. Further up the hill were larger houses, which had mostly been turned into flats and bedsits. Many of the front lawns had been tarmaced over to provide parking space for an assortment of hatchbacks and small saloons of varying age and condition. From the open window of one of those houses, music and laughter blared out, and for a moment Adrian considered gate-crashing the party just to get out of cold for a bit. But he didn't know how well his dress would go down even if he did manage to bribe his way in with his chocolate oranges.

Beyond the flats, at the brow of the hill, was a nursing home. Although the home itself wasn't that much bigger than most of the houses further down the hill, it had very large grounds bordered by a low wall, beyond which was a profusion of conifers and other evergreen bushes. Adrian decided to sit down on the wall and rest his ankle for a bit before limping the last half mile or so home.

He'd been sat on the damp brickwork, for a couple of minutes, attempting to massage some feeling back into his frozen toes, when he heard a man's voice, which seemed to be coming from among the trees.

"You all right love?" said the voice. "You need a hand there?"

Adrian said nothing and started to buckle his shoes back on. He heard the voice again, low and phlegmy, the voice of a smoker of limited education, coming from the hedge right behind him.

"Sure there's nothing, I can do for you love?"

Adrian shook his head, lowering his chin and raising his hand to check his wig was on straight. He wasn't that worried by the strange voice suddenly coming from among the bushes. He assumed it belonged to a caretaker or some such person from the nursing home, who'd been patrolling the gardens for prowlers, had seen him sitting there and decided to investigate.

For a few seconds there was silence and Adrian thought the man must have gone away. But just as he was standing up to go, he heard a rustling of frozen foliage and felt someone grab at his arm. He pulled away and was just about to turn round and tell whoever it was to get the hell off him, when suddenly without warning, a gloved hand seemed to come from nowhere covering his mouth, and he felt something cold and pointed press into his neck.

"Make one fucking sound and I'll cut your fucking throat. Got it?" hissed the voice. And Adrian froze. He literally froze.

In the comfort of an armchair, watching Crimewatch with a nice mug of coffee, it's easy to rationalise what action you might take if some stranger were to pull a knife on you. Watching those reconstructions acted out on the screen, Adrian had often thought to himself, why, when confronted with a weapon, didn't people just turn and run into the darkness? Why didn't they try and kick the weapon from their assailant's hands, like James Bond always did? Surely they had nothing to lose, he'd thought?

Sure, if you were a burly commando trained in hand-to-hand combat you might be able to initiate some form of defence, carry out some well-practised actions to disarm your attacker, a series of robotic movements that might override your instinctive fear. Sure. But if you don't happen to be a member of the SAS, and a knife is pressed to your throat, you are totally helpless, paralysed, unable to breath let alone turn and run.

Even when the knife was removed from his throat. Adrian didn't struggle at all and limply let the man drag him back over the wall into the hard, needle-littered earth beneath the conifers. He didn't realised there were two of them at first, until he felt another pair of hands, larger, heavier and ungloved, pressing on his shoulders, pinning him to the ground.

At that point Adrian did struggle slightly, his body unconsciously trying to break free from the predatory grip. But it was no good. He was no match for the combined body weight of two men. It was like trying to wrestle with a heavyweight boxer - a heavyweight boxer five or six stones heavier than usual and with twice as many arms and legs. He had no chance, especially not with the knife once again at his neck.

The man who'd grabbed Adrian straddled his chest. It was dark beneath the trees, but Adrian could see he was wearing a Balaclava with eye holes and what looked like an oil-stained, blue boiler suit. He held a Stanley knife, which shook between leather-gloved fingers, as he slit open the front of the dress. The man ripped the frayed fabric apart and laid his hand on Adrian's chest and groped his bra. He paused for a moment. Then took his glove off and felt inside the fabric, pulling out the tissue paper.

"You flat bitch," he cursed disappointedly and Adrian was sure the other man laughed. He could feel the man's fingers vibrating on his shoulders.

At this point Adrian could easily have cried out. But the thought never occurred to him. He just shut his eyes and gulped as the man with the knife moved to one side and reached his hand down the front of Adrian's knickers. The man slid a finger past his cold-shrivelled cock and between his balls, pressing them apart. He paused and Adrian felt the man's hand tremble as he gave one testicle a little squeeze. His hand jerked away is if it had been bitten and then, taking the knife from Adrian's throat, with both hands he tugged the knickers down.

"You fucking bent bastard," said the man, squinting down in disbelief at what lay inside Adrian's shiny satin panties. He scrambled to his feet. "He's got a fucking prick."

The other man let go of Adrian's shoulders and he sensed them both move back from him. He opened his eyes and looked at both men stooping over him, peering down at his naked genitalia, uncertain of what to do next. It were as if they'd got all padded up for a cricket match and the opposing team had suddenly run onto the pitch with a rugby ball.

It's strange how fear focuses the mind. There were people Adrian had sat at the same table with for four hours that evening (give or take an occasional dance or trip to the bar). Yet he couldn't remember with any great certainty what clothes they were wearing, what colour their hair was or what they'd been drinking. He wasn't even sure he could remember all of their names.

But in the couple of seconds he lay in semi-darkness looking up at the figures of those two men he felt as if he knew everything about them. Not only their height and build and what they were wearing, but also every sick twist of their warped personalities. Forget all the superficial crap, all the niceties, all the carefully-executed mannerisms, the little white lies, that veneer of sociability by which we navigate the haphazard encounters that constitute our daily lives. Forget all that shit. In that situation, during those few moments of uncertainty in those dimly-lit, cedar-scented shadows the two would-be rapists were lain as naked as Adrian was. It felt as if he could see right through them, beyond flesh and bone, to some part of them that wasn't ever meant to be seen.

The thinner one with the Balaclava was panicky and confused. He was one of those scrawny, twitchy misfits who desperately wanted to join in with the things other people did, but had always been too shy to. A problem made worse by his scruffy smelliness. A product of socially retarded parents who were never interested in teaching him how to wash properly, in fact were probably never interested in him at all. You could tell from the way his hand guiltily trembled round the knife. Frightened of it, but not wanting to let it go. Another secret toy. He was obviously petrified. Shaking and sweating. Totally at a loss as to what to do next.

You got the feeling he'd never been involved in this kind of thing before. An apprentice attacker totally under the spell of his older, wiser accomplice, for whom he'd do anything - make cups of tea, fetch, carry, lend money, lie, steal, rape - anything to ensure the continuation of the friendship that helped him fend off, or at least sometimes forget, the loneliness, self-hatred and alienation that would otherwise relentlessly eat away at him.

The older man, on the other hand, had no feelings whatsoever. He saw no need to wear a mask or carry a knife and showed no obvious signs of fear. He was probably in his late forties, but still strong. A man who'd been doing the same menial job for twenty years before rising to the position of foreman in some factory where he now enjoyed having total control over men and women who were so lacking in skills and/or ambition and so desperate for employment they worked twelve hour shifts at fraction-of-a-penny piece rates assembling some crude piece of machinery whilst he stooped over them in that same impassive way. He was the kind of man who could recognise, the moment a new worker walked onto the shop-floor, whether or not he or she were likely to complain to the bosses about his bullying. He probably had a similar talent for picking his other victims - coolly superimposing the power he held in the workplace onto situations like these.

Adrian later wondered how the two men had met. You could hardly put a small ad in the paper, Experienced sex attacker seeks junior partner for festive assaults, must have own knife and Balaclava. Perhaps they were regulars at the same sex shop who'd exchanged rape fantasies and finally decided to indulge them together. Maybe they were both peeping toms who'd bumped into each other in the park, wanking behind the same bush whilst watching some teenage couple hurriedly shagging in the wood chippings beneath the kiddies slide. Or maybe they'd both been lurking round the same public lavatory. They did rather look like the type of men who scribbled messages and telephone numbers on toilet walls. Maybe they simply worked together. Maybe the younger, submissive chap worked for the older one who'd roped him in for a bit of unconventional overtime. Adrian, wouldn't have been surprised if this scenario had turned out to be true. The older one had that dominating, authoritative air about him. Whilst the young man twitched and trembled and scratched nervously at his face through his Balaclava, the older man just stood there totally relaxed, calmly deciding what to do next.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the half light. Adrian glanced up and realised the older man was looking down at his thighs and genitals. Adrian had a sudden fear that the man might borrow his accomplice's knife and castrate him, or at the very least stab him. He said a little prayer. Let him stab me somewhere, anywhere, but please God, remember it's Christmas day, don't let him chop off my balls.

Adrian shut his eyes. He could imagine the older man standing there relishing the terror he was inflicting. Adrian opened his eyes again quickly, trying not to show fear. He forced himself to stare directly into the older man's face. The man grinned. And Adrian suddenly realised what he was thinking. Shall I fuck him anyway?

He looked like the kind of person who'd fuck a man. He looked as if he might have spent some time in prison. He'd probably fucked plenty of men before. In fact he looked like he'd fuck anything; kids, animals, probably an oven ready chicken if no other option were available.

As the older man stepped toward him, Adrian raised himself up on his elbows, fearing the worst. But, suddenly, the man paused and raised his finger to his lips. There were voices on the street, voices that obviously belonged to a group of people who had just left one of the parties which were going on down the hill. As their laughter and drunken shouts grew nearer, the thin man in the Balaclava finally lost his nerve. And, with a cry of, "Come on Frank, let's get out of here," he flung his knife into the bushes and made off over the side wall into the alleyway.

The older man turned as if to follow him, but then looked back. Seeing the look of relief in Adrian's eye he sneered and without warning stamped on Adrian's face with the sole of his boot. It felt as if it had been hit by a slab of concrete. Adrian rolled over onto his side, raising his hands, and the man booted him twice between the legs. Adrian's balls literally felt as if they'd been kicked up into his throat. He retched, a sickly mouthful of alcohol rising up from his guts and splattering onto the earth.

As the group of partygoers passed the wall he heard a boy's voice, "Look, someone's dropped a pack of chocolate oranges."

The footsteps stopped. Adrian held his breath but couldn't stop himself retching again.

"What's that?" said a girl's voice. Adrian rolled further into the prickly shadows. And, although his eyes were tightly shut, he sensed someone peering over the wall.

"There's someone there," said the girl.

"Its probably just a cat," said a boy's voice.

"No. It was a man," said the girl. "I heard him."

There was a pause and Adrian lay very still, holding his breath, not wanting to be discovered.

"I can't see anything," said a boy's voice.

"There definitely was someone," insisted the first girl. "He was coughing."

"Well, whoever it was he's gone now."

The voices disappeared up the road.

Adrian lay there for a long time, eyes still tightly shut, oblivious to the cold and the pine needles in his back, and wondered how on earth he was going to explain to his sister what had happened to her dress.