there's no one else

"There's no one else." That's what she said. "There's no one else."

Brett recalled the pleading whine in Fiona's voice as she'd told him it was all over, the whine of a child who's just spilt a plastic mug full of Ribena on a white carpet.

"I didn't mean it to happen....lt's just that... Well, we're not going anywhere are we?"

"The stupid bitch," he muttered into the emptiness of his Cavalier Sri.

If there really were no one else, he asked himself, then why did she have to split it all up? Why was he all right one day and then no good the next?

Just like that. It made no sense. Of course there must be someone else.

What the fuck did she think he was - stupid or something?

Brett Sales yanked the Cavalier's gear down from fifth into fourth to overtake the van in front of him before he reached the next roundabout.

The needle of the speedo crept up to seventy five as he passed the van. He shoved the gear lever back into fifth and glanced in the rear view mirror.

There was nothing coming so he stayed in the outside lane. At the roundabout he braked slightly to check that there wasn't a gravel lorry about to lumber into his path from the cement works to his right. The road was free. He put his foot down and sped straight ahead up the Westing turning as always, glancing to his left where a grassy bank swept down to the Hardright-Woolhead Business Park on the flood plain below.

For some collections of warehouses the term business park would be better replaced by a description such as l!fe-size Legoland niBhtmare or concrete and comIBated iron catastrophe. In such developments the copious plantinB mentioned in the architects' plans generally amounted to a row of two dozen, three-foot-high birch saplings, which were vandalised out of

existence within weeks. However the Hardright-Woolhead business park did actually resemble a park. It had been built beside woodland on the edge of the Hallowsmere Estate and was cloaked to the north and west by a canopy of oaks and beeches, sheltering a coppice of aspen, hawthorn and wild plum. Among the trees lived Munkjack deer, escaped from the Westingshire wildlife park, and foxes and badgers which thrived surprisingly well, judging by the number of carcasses to be seen flattened on the bypass and the high kill rate of the Westingshire Hunt. . ..

In front of the business park was a pond - complete With water lillies, goldfish and a fountain in the middle - where the deer could sometimes be seen grazing in the dusk. Even the offices looked botanical, if a little garish, with their green tinted glass facades and pointed, bright green roofs.

The Hardright-Woolhead Business Park was where Brett had first met Fiona. He'd visited the estate to drop off a couple of boxes of three-part computer paper and some bubble-jet printer cartridges at Westech Systems, and to confirm their statiOnary order for the next month. Whilst he was on the estate he'd decided to quickly pop in and see Vince Turner, the director of Turner Art Supplies, who rented one of the smaller combined office and storage warehouse units.

Vince had been in the same squash league as Brett at the Hallowsmere Valley Health and Fitness Centre. Brett had played him the week before.

Vince had narrowly won the match - ten eight in the last of five closely fought games - with a drop shot followed by a looping lob, which Brett could only turn and watch land in the back comer as he stooped stranded at the front of the court.

As they'd chatted in the bar after the match, Vince had mentioned. that business was booming and he might be thinking of moving to bigger premises. Brett had made a mental note of this. Maybe Vince had just been talking high-spirited bullshit - elated by his victory which assured his promotion to league Six A - but maybe he really was planning to move on to a more spacious unit. More space meant more desks, more chairs, more cupboards. Brett had known it was only a lukewarm lead, but It was worth a sniff given the favourable commissions on office furniture. Just a small filIng cabinet was worth at least two or three dozen boxes of paper. Not, of course that he really needed to spend his time back then following up leads, drumming up new customers. No, those had been months of plenty with businesses sprouting up everywhere.

Be your own boss with Borrow and Borrow Lendina Lcd a division of Goose and Golden Eaa Bankina. Owner occupier? Second mortgage? No problem. Ten grand? Certainly Sir? Why not make it twenty. Buy your wife a new car. Go on a Caribbean cruise. Make the most of today, there's nothina to pay (until tomorrow). Twenty grand it is then sir. Sign here. Jolly good. Businesses here, businesses there, businesses everywhere. Brett's mobile never stopped ringing.

"Hi, I've just started up on the new industrial estate. I'll be need 2000 business cards, ten reams of headed notepaper and a box of three part invoices, complete with corporate loao. No, make that two boxes. No, three. Hell, make it ten! And you supply furniture? Leather topped desks? Marvellous! And one of those padded swivel chairs. The most expensive you've got. Don't want to look a cheap skate. After all in business, as in life, one should never under estimate the importance of appearances. Oh don't worry about the cost just add it to my account and bill me at the end of the month. I con always extend my credit a little. The bank is always offering me more." Businesses going up like a thousand helium filled balloons floating high up into the clouds, expanding and scretching and stretching, never looking down.

Brett's car phone just kept on ringing and ringing. And he'd built up an everlengthening list of clients as easily as a kid builds a tower of coloured bricks. Stuart Bell's order books had never been fuller, and Brett had been rewarded generously. At twenty-one years of age, through a potent mixture of hard graft and good fortune, he'd became a wealthy young man, much to the surprise of many.

Brett remembered how at sixteen he'd stood outside the school gates shoulder-to-shoulder with his mates, each with a handful of CSEs and rotten eggs to chuck at the deputy head, old Crawford, as he'd driven past in his beaten-up Citroen. Brett remembered how old fungus-face Crawford had actually stopped him in the corridor outside the humanities department one afternoon just to tell him he was a 'no-hoper without a cat's chance in hell of ever getting anywhere.' Well, he'd shown that bastard.

After less than two years working for Stuart Bell, Brett was earning more than Crawford ever had, more than enough to cover his half of the mortgage on the three-bedroomed terraced house in Paignton Street he shared with his brother, Duncan, and have plenty left over for life's little pleasures in bottles and skirts, plenty, plenty. That was, of course, until his car phone stopped ringing. Then there'd been the calling and calling, hot and cold, closing deals, closing businesses. Closing and closing, calling and calling, dispirited answer phones and numbers disconnected. Closing and closing, going down and down, bills and bills, repayments and repayments, drowning in bills and repayments. Repayments rising and rising, up to your ears. Close your eyes, learn to breathe through your nostrils. Rising and rising and under you go.

Nobody wants to buy anything, nobody wants to buy. Can't pay one mortgage, let alone two. Threatening letters arrive from House Grabber Solicitors.

Sir, we represent Borrow and Borrow Lendina Ltd a division of Goose and Golden Egg Banking International. It has come to our attention that...our clients have not received...unless payment is forthcoming...it is our sad duty to inform you.

Keys through the letter box please and be out by nine sharp Monday morning.

Goodbye leather bound desk. So long padded swivel chair. Hello to a crumbling hovel divided in four by flimsy partitions, no bed and no breakfast.

Kids sharing a mattress up against the wall with the damp rot. Mum and dad tangled on a lilo next door to a couple of sex-crazed psychopaths who alternately spend the early hours of each and every morning either rutting like pigs or threatening to kill each other.

Knock, knock, knock. Another grey-suited, butter-wouldn't-melt man at the door. The house wasn't enough, we've come to requisition your soul. And by the way, be in court on the second to last Tuesday in December when creditors will squabble over your shirt and shoes, and the system will suck out your sanity like so much excess stomach fat, while your kids huddle in their hovel, eyes glued to elaborate TV ads for crap plastic toys assembled by third-world peasants for a few grains of rice, yet retailing in your local family superstore for the fantastic free-market price of just £39.99.

Brett knew he should be grateful. At least he still had his job. He just couldn't push her voice from his head.

"There's no one else."

Fiona had spoken the words in the same tone of voice as that weasel-faced MP on TV when he referred to a, 'temporary down-trend in work force investment,' rather than rising unemployment. She'd even had the same expressionless look on her face - the painted eyes of a dressed-up dummy.

"There's no one else."

The words just wouldn't leave him alone. It was as if they had been branded on his brain by a hot iron, like the ones cowboys used to mark prize steers, and had left a permanent scar. He felt a twinge, a brief stab deep inside his skull, as he passed the business park.

"The stupid bitch," he said again out loud into the car's emptiness.

He remembered how self-confident, how full of himself he'd felt that clear August morning as he'd parked the Cavalier in front of Turner's Art Supplies. He'd opened his brief case (brown leather with three gold initials and barrel locks) on the front passenger seat. He'd removed a spanking new furniture catalogue and slipped it from its protective plastic wallet. He'd breathed in the inky aroma of the freshly printed pages in the sweltering heat of the car, felt the glossy plastic cover smooth beneath his fingers, the never-opened crispness of the pages pressing into his palm. It was a sensuous feeling, touching those pages of pictures of things that made him all that lovely money.

Brett loved the feel of money, a wad of crisp tens and twenties between his fingers, peeled out of his wallet and left beneath a white china saucer of after dinner mints. It reminded him of the grateful caress of a feminine hand beneath the restaurant table, stroking his thigh through the soft trouser fabric of his imitation Gaultier suit, back home in his bedroom, satin-clad breasts undulating beneath the down-turned palm of his hands, kisses rich with wine, the heady bouquet of two ten quid bottles, medium-sweet and sparkling, mingling with that stench like perfumed shellfish, promising fresh pleasure. Yea, money felt so good to him then. So bloody good.

Brett remembered his reflection in the doors of Turner's Art Supplles that day, lightly-tanned, smartly-dressed and self-confident.

"Believe in yourself," Stuart used to tell him "Give 'em the old eye to eye and the old golden hand shake. No finger-breaking stuff, just firm and friendly." And back then Brett did believe in himself.

There was no denying Brett was attractive. He had a small straight nose, blue eyes, neat ears, good teeth, short hair and smooth skin. He didn't have the ruggedly handsome looks that would make women go weak at the knees with lust, but more the kind of pleasant features they wouldn't mind being passed on to their children.

In his working suit, Brett's appearance belled his rather short and skinny frame. The padded-shouldered jackets and chunky gold watch and rings he liked to wear made him seem much larger than he really was. A pipe cleaner doll dressed up as action man - the illusion completed by his inflated exuberance.

Maybe it was this arrogance that had appealed to Fiona that day Brett had strutted into the reception and asked to see Vince Turner. Just as her bashful innocence had appealed to him when he'd chucked a bit of routine chat at her. It had touched him the way she'd blushed, taking his throwaway fines to heart. Fresh out of school, she'd been flattered and flustered by his cosmetic charm - where an older, more experienced receptionist would, at best, have laughed at him, seen him for the impish buffoon he was.

Brett was intrigued by the way Fiona looked - the minimal make-up, the huge intricate black and silver earrings, the unpermed, unbleached hair tied back in a pony tail, the flimsy, flowing skirt, the firm swell of her young breasts unrestrained by a bra beneath her T-shirt. He just had to ask her out.

Maybe it was only a mutual fascination that had drawn them together at first. But over the months that had developed into a binding affection. He'd never fully realised how strong that bond had grown until she was gone.

When Fiona left him she left a large hole in his fife that had never been there before he'd met her. Evenings he would once have happily drunk away over the pool table at the IHorse and Groom' he now spent in front of the TV. He'd sit and watch humour-free situation comedies and banal quiz shows, drink mug after mug of instant coffee, and nibble away the hours with a packet of Custard Creams or Jammy Dodgers from the Eight 'till Late on the comer.

He'd been down the pub a couple of times, but there were few familiar faces, and he felt embarrassed propping up the bar for too long with people he vaguely knew but hadn't specifically arranged to meet. Held tried to rejoin the squash league at the health centre. But the new receptionist wouldn't let him go back in to league Six B. She said he'd have to spend the first session in league Eight and, depending on the level of his victories, they would then consider his appllcation for a higher league. The previous summer he would have tried to win her round with his boyish cheek. But the exuberance had drained from him. He felt flat as the battery of a car, left out in the rain, un-driven all winter.

"Oh, just bloody forget it then," he'd snapped at the receptionist before storming out of the health and fitness centre.

Brett had not been near the place since. It's their loss, he told himself.

If that's their attitude, it's no wonder they're losing money. He'd seen the health centre's desperate adverts in the Tribune, offers of Free Saunas and Jacuzzi Sessions and Half Price Membership, beneath slogans like - Get Fit, Get Slim, Have Fun in the Gym. More Muscle For Less Money - Three Work Outs for the Price of Two! Pamper Your Pectorals and be Kind to Your Purse.

He'd never really liked the place, anyway. It was full of posers - wiry women in dayglo pink leotards with sun bed tans and men with acne-scarred shoulders and bandaged knees, who wore lime cycling shorts and walked slowly through reception as if they were trying to keep an invisible medicine ball clutched between their thighs.

He didn't resent the fact that they were healthy. It was just that they were so smug about it. Pumping iron was their sacred ritual, anabolic steroids their communion wafers, Lucozade their holy wine. They considered the skinny, the pale and the flabby with the same mixture of contempt, disdain and pity that a prim Christian mother feels for a single teenage girl and her unblessed bastard in a hand-me-down pushchair.

Brett used to regard with similar contempt those that didn't have or didn't want the things he had. He was proud of what he'd achieved - his career, his Cavalier, his costly-cuisine-sparkling-wine conquests in the master bedroom of the terraced house in Paignton Street. like the coloured pills Fiona's friends would gulp down in handfuls, money made Brett feel dizziy invincible in a brighter than life world.

When Brett had been paid his first cash bonus of over two hundred pounds, instead of putting the money into his bank account, he'd stuffed the notes into his wallet and arranged to meet Barry and Trev down the pub. He had enjoyed pulling that bulging wad of notes from his pocket and peeling off a twenty.

"What are you all drinking," he'd asked glibly, knowing that the money he had in his wallet was more than Trev saw in a month on his job training scheme.

"That's all right mate, I'll get this round in," Trev'd said, noticing that his girlfriend, Christine, had edged slightly closer to Brett.

"Don't be silly Trev," Christine'd said. "You haven't got enough. You had to borrow a fiver off me earlier just to buy our drinks remember. Let Brett get them in." She'd put her hand on Brett's shoulder and giggled. "You'll let Brett buy me a rum and coke won't ya' Trev?"

"Sure," Trev'd said glumly, looking at Brett as if he wanted to punch him on the nose.

Brett hadn't even fancied Christine. But when he'd seen her one evening the next week walking home from the new Tesco's superstore where she worked as a cashier and shelf-stacker he'd offered her a lift in his Cavalier.

She'd invited him into her house for a coffee. Her parents were out. She told him Trev had called her a dirty slag after their drink the other night and had refused to sleep with her. Brett had told her Trev was a moron and that a girl as beautiful as she was deserved better. Then he'd stood behind her and kissed the back of her neck. She d turned her head and pressed her lips hard against his, invading his mouth with her slippery tongue, the taste of tea and tobacco. He'd reached inside her coat and felt her breasts through her Tesco's jumper. Then he'd slipped his hand up her skirt and felt the warm dampness seeping through her knickers. But she wouldn't let his fingers touch her flesh. She'd pulled his hand away and returned it to her sweatered breast as she kissed him harder, and reached her hand back to grope the bulge of his balls through his polyester/cotton trousers.

The sound of the key turning in the door'd made them leap apart. It was Christine's mum, carrying with her the smell of cheap perfume and three carrier bags of shopping from Tesco's.

"Oh, hello," she'd said to Brett, evidently surprised to see him standing in her kitchen with her daughter. She'd dropped the bags of shopping onto the kitchen table, then turned to Christine.

"You're back early love," she'd said. "I was going to give you a lift, but Cheryl said you'd already gone."

"Brett gave me a lift," Christine'd said.

"I see," her mum'd said.

"I better get home," Brett'd mumbled. "See you Christine. Say hello to Trev' for me." Then he'd made a hasty exit.

Brett had passed Christine walking home a few times after that.

Although once or twice he'd waved to her, he had never stopped to give her a lift again, except once quite recently when it was pouring with rain and he was with Fiona. Brett was always giving lifts to people when he was with Fiona. Her friends seemed to spend their entire lives hitching up and down the ring road into Westing.

When Brett had driven about a mile beyond the Hardright-Woolhead Industrial Park, he saw a hitcher stood on the hard shoulder. He decided to pullover and offer him a lift. It wasn't that he had any great sympathy for the hitcher, stranded by the road side, it simply occurred to Brett that he looked like the kind of person who might know Fiona and what she was up to. Fiona had not answered any of his calls or the letter he had written her during the three weeks since she had dumped him. Nor had she been in any of her favourite pubs the several occasions that he'd poked his head round the door hoping to 'accidentally bump into her.' Brett pulled up alongside the hitcher. He leaned across the front passenger seat of the Cavalier, gently slackening the seat belt with his right hand so that it didn't suddenly lock, and opened the passenger door. The hitcher peered down at Brett. To his disappointment, Brett did not recognise him as one of the gang of weirdoes that Fiona normally hung around with.

The hitcher wore a black vest, black army surplus trousers covered in pockets, big black boots and he carried a black leather jacket. Some kind of design was painted in white on the back of the jacket, but it was obscured by the folds in the leather as the hitcher gripped the jacket's collar in a tight fist. His fingers were covered in rings, dominated by a startlingly life-like blue china eye on a silver band. He wore a row of sleepers up his right ear and had tattoos on each forearm. As he looked down into the car it appeared that he was completely bald.

"You headed for Westing then mate?" asked Brett.

The hitcher silently nodded. And as he turned his head to get into the car, Brett saw that he wasn't bald after all. Although the top and sides of his head were totally shaved, a long pony tail hung down at the back.

The hitcher squeezed himself into the front passenger seat rather clumsily. This was partly because Brett kept the seat forward as far as it would go so that there was more room in the back for boxes of paper. Also, the hitcher was as awkwardly lanky as an arthritic giraffe. Even when he had pushed the seat right back a knobbly hill of flesh still rose up through the tom knee of his trousers. Brett extended his hand and introduced himself.

"Brett," he said. They shook hands. The hitcher flinched slightly from the firmness of Brett's grip.

"Luke," he responded in an unexpectedly gentle voice that belied his rather aggressive image.

Luke looked as if he was somewhere in his early twenties. It was hard to tell precisely because he was so skinny, more bone than muscle. Brett was not sure if the unevenness of the stubble on Luke's chin was due to a lingering adolescence or simply because he hadn't shaved very carefully.

As Brett pulled back out onto to the carriageway, he glanced down at Luke's tattoos. On his right forearm was an intricately designed butterfly with an eagle's head, beneath which was clumsily written Legalise Freedom. A piratical skull and cross bones was tattooed on his left forearm.

"Are you from Westing then mate?" asked Brett.

Luke shook his head and silently mouthed the word 'no'.

Just passing through?

Luke shrugged, and they sat in silence as they passed Hallowsmere Manor House, a large white building built in the style of a Brittany Chateau, with spired towers. The manor house stood above and to the left of the ring road on a tree-lined ridge at the top of a steeply sloping hillside. A patchwork of hedgerowed fields grazed by Friesian cows swept down from the house to a marshy buttercup-dappled plateau below, where the river ran beside the railway track.

As they drove past Westing Motors - a Vauxhall dealership on the edge of town, Luke looked over his shoulder up at the manor house. Beyond the garage's forecourt - lined with second hand Carltons and Novas - the fields gave way to a new housing estate. The manor house, from its isolated vantage point high above, seemed to glare witheringly down at the three bedroomed, brick-skinned concrete boxes which had eaten into the edge of its fields.

like a patch of brown rot on an apple, thought Luke but said nothing.

Brett turned to Luke.

"Do you ever go down The Nags Head?" he asked.

Luke silently shook his head.

"You ought to go sometime," said Brett. "It's quite a laugh." Thy've got all these bottled beers. Not just Holsten Pils and Grolsch. There's this Czechoslovakian import stuff - I can't think what it's called now - comes in a brown bottle with, I think, it's a green cap. It's stronger than Special Brew. Have a couple of those, I tell you, you're fuckin out of it."

The hitcher smiled.

"How about the Rose and Crown then?" asked Brett. "Ever go drinking there?"

The hitcher nodded.

Brett paused to negotiate a mini roundabout. An elderly lady in a Saab 9000 Turbo, cut him up from the left. He slammed his foot on the brakes and his fist on the horn.

"Get out of the fucking road, you dippy old bitch," he snarled. "Jesus Christ. They're fucking lethal these old dears sitting behind that much horse power. It's like giving a baby a pack of Gillette Contour Plus to play with." Brett didn't generally swear so much. But he had become increasingly tetchy during the previous two weeks - final demands for unpaid bills, his mum nagging him all the time, the boss going on about bringing in more orders, not so much as a whiff of pussy.....

Brett turned to his passenger.

"Do you know a girl called Fiona?" he asked "Drinks down at the Rose and Crown sometimes. Kind of short but pretty. Nice figure." Luke shook his head.

They stopped at the traffic lights by the launderette. 'Jet Wash System 3 - American Style Washeteria' proclaimed the sign; bright blue plastic with giant, three-dimensional, white bubbles bulging out of it. Inside, the rows of gleaming, metallic washers stood silent, the place deserted but for a tramp who didn't look as if he'd washed himself let alone his clothes for several weeks. Brett sighed and played silent arpeggios with his fingers on the steering wheel.

"Is she your girlfriend?" asked Luke.

"Who?" asked Brett.

"Fiona," said Luke.

Brett smiled ruefully.

"No...not anymore," he murmured.

Brett thumped the steering wheel clumsily with his open palm the way a child flattens a lump of plasticine.

"Women...I don't know," said Brett. "You treat them like shit and they fancy you like mad. Start to care about them a bit and they dump you".

"Yea," murmured Luke nodding his head, slow and sympathetic.

"And the worse thing is, you can't work out where you've gone wrong," continued Brett, "why they've given you the elbow." Brett mimicked Fiona's high-pitched, girlish whine, "There's no one else."

He glared into the gentle green greyness of the hitcher's eyes.

"That's what she told me," snarled Brett. "But that's a load of crap."

"For sure, man, for sure," said Luke, solemnly nodding his head.

They drove into the town centre.

"Where do you want dropping?" asked Brett.

"Wherever," said Luke.

"Well I've got to turn off at the top of the hill. So, I'll drop you here mate OK?"

"Sure," said the hitcher. "Cheers."

Brett pulled into the bus stop in front of the Woolworth's store half way up the High Street. The people waiting at the bus stop all stared at Luke as he clambered out of the Cavalier.

"Cheers man," said Luke.

"No worries," said Brett.

The hitcher shut the car door and drummed his palm on the roof a couple of times before ungainly striding up the street. Brett flicked the indicator column up and started to edge the Cavalier out into the road, looking over his shoulder down the hill. There was a white Fiesta cruising up towards him about thirty yards behind. Tyres squealing, Brett pulled out, slammed the Cavalier into second and roared off. As Brett passed Luke, the hitcher turned and waved.

Brett shook his head and chuckled as he slipped slickly into third. He watched in the rear-view mirror, his momentary travelling companion grow smaller and smaller, their destinies peeling apart like a two ply paper contract, until, as Brett cruised into fourth at the brow of the hill, the hitcher disappeared.