(Victim and attacker meet in prison.)

'Why did you do it?'

He stares sullenly at the wall behind me. He's here against his will, just like I am.

'You can't imagine what it's like for a woman living alone. Don't you read what's in the papers or see it on the news? Women are being raped and robbed and beaten every day. Can you blame me for being scared?'

He scrapes his chair and turns to look at the lady who is sitting near us, but she says nothing. The idea is for us to work out our problems together. Me and the person who wrecked my life.

Sitting across from me at the regulation grey table, he's everything I expected. Mean little eyes, tight mouth, hair impossibly short. I know he's sixteen, and I know where he lives. I know his parents abused him and that he has two small sisters who are on the 'at risk' register. It all came out at the trial.

He knows about me too. Twenty-seven, PA to the director of a cable TV firm - or should I say, ex-PA. My boss was marvellous when it all happened, gave me an incredible amount of support. But in the end I couldn't do the work any more. I don't know if I'll ever be able to work again.

Believe me, I'm bitter about it all, but the counsellors seem to understand. They do a good job, I can't deny that. They sit and listen to me for hours, but when all's said and done they can just go home afterwards and forget all about it.

The lady glances down at her watch, trying to do it as surreptitiously as she can. I have no idea how long we're allowed. Nobody mentioned a time limit. It all seems rather disorganised.

Quite frankly, I'd been very dubious about the whole plan. It's the trendy thing these days to get the criminal and his victim together, to let them have a cosy little chat and begin to understand more about each other. Okay, it's a good idea in principle and the lady at the counselling centre told me that it helped to get your life back in order, to see the person face to face, find out their motives and discover they're a human being, just like you.

I've never really studied his face before. He'd been drunk the night we had our, for want of a better word, encounter. At the trial he insisted he never meant to hurt anybody. He's just your average teenage thug, chucked out at closing time and tempted by the thought of easy pickings in an empty shop.

He drums his fingers on the formica to give me the impression that he's terribly bored. Sometimes, when he's not tapping, I notice his hand shaking.

'You just can't imagine how I felt, can you?' I say. 'I was there all alone, no phone, nothing. What else could I do, jump out of the window?'

My voice is unexpectedly loud. He actually looks at me, but somehow his eyes are dead. I have no idea whether he's on drugs. It came up at the trial but it didn't seem to make any difference to the outcome. No wonder I'm bitter about it. My life's been hell since it all happened.

He scrabbles in his pocket and brings out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. I'm amazed when he offers me one and I wave the packet away. He shrugs, cups his hand around his mouth and lights up. His sleeves have ridden up and there is a bright red scar on his left wrist. It makes me shudder. He inhales deeply and is instantly more relaxed.

'I was having a look,' he says. 'I didn't know you was up there.'

Is this progress? I glance at the lady but she is staring at the door. The door is slightly ajar. I suppose that's in case she needs to call for help.

'I was terrified,' I say. 'Can you blame me? I heard you downstairs. You started coming up. Humming to yourself. Kicking things over.'

'I was having a look,' he insists.

(Set about thirty years hence. Keanu and Courtney have applied for a partnership contract so they can live together.)

'So.' He leaned heavily back in his chair and surveyed them with a practised eye. 'Either of you ever had a partnership contract before?'

They shook their heads solemnly.

'Right.' The registrar made himself comfortable and prepared himself for the spiel he was obliged to give by law. 'As you no doubt are aware the Partnership Act of twenty-twelve was designed for those people who choose not to marry yet want to spend a secure and recognised life together till death or voluntary euthanasia do them part. Any questions so far?'

They hesitated; Courtney opened her mouth, then closed it.

'The beauty of it all,' eulogised the registrar, 'is that you can amend it so easily. Add a partner or two, put in clauses about type of children, holidays, amount and category of sex, loan of transport and so forth. Of course you can have optional time limits, but they cost a little more and require special permission from Brussels. Six months - that's a popular one - a year, two, five, ten and even twenty if you feel so inclined.' He took a deep breath and added confidentially, 'We don't sell many of those.'

Keanu tossed a piece of eurogum in his mouth and began masticating earnestly.

'And this week' - the registrar's eyes bulged with vicarious pleasure - 'we're doing a special offer. Fifty-eight point three euros instead of sixty.'

'Yeah. Great.' Keanu straightened up. 'We'll 'ave one. Just the basics, mind.'

'Oh, jolly good,' said the registrar, clapping his hands excitedly. 'I must just ask you one thing. It's the law, you know. Try not to take it too personally. Are either of you - ' he leaned nearer and kept his voice down - 'married?'

Keanu snorted in disgust. 'Fort it din't matter.'

'Just asking, Keanu. No offence intended. Indeed, the Partnership Act says marital status is unimportant, as are sex, qualifications, children and HIV strain. But we do have to know for the contract,' he stressed. 'It's all totally confidential. Just occasionally we may give your number to other carefully selected governmental agencies but for a small cost we'll take you off the emailing list.'

'Yeah, well.' Relaxing again, Keanu squeezed Courtney's thigh. 'Nyver of us is married. Nyver of us wants to be married. That's why we're 'ere, in't it?' Courtney nodded her head madly like a virtual Cyberpets R Us nodding dog. 'Yeah! Well, er...think so, yeah. I mean - '

'Doubts?' At this worrying development the registrar's mouse stopped in mid swirl. 'Legally,' he said in a stern tone, 'legally,' he emphasised more strongly, 'I do have to tell you that if you've any doubts at all about living together you should really be looking at marriage, small office down the corridor on the left.'

'Nah, marriage is out. It don't mean nuffin. We don't want dresses and rings and stuff.'

'He's got loads of them already,' Courtney pointed out, then said, in a tone of hopeful intimacy, 'Keanu doesn't - we don't, I mean, think we need a piece of paper to show how much we love each other. Er...'

Keanu brazenly adjusted his alice band. 'Dunno why we 'ave to come 'ere at all. You didn't 'ave to 'ave a contract in the old days. My mum never - '

'Oh, dear oh dear,' interrupted the registrar. 'Our government designed these contracts to protect you and they'd be so upset to hear you say that. Let me put it this way, Keanu. Suppose you manage to stay together twenty years - '

Courtney gave a nervous giggle and laid her hand lovingly on Keanu's bony knee.

' - twenty years,' repeated the registrar emphatically, 'and you want to leave Courtney here a nice house, lots of euros, decent hovercar, etcetera. Now what stops any old bod - male, female, animal, android, cyberpet - turning round and saying they were your partner and they're entitled to the goodies? A nightmare scenario,' he put in gravely as Courtney stifled a gasp. 'Oh, yes, before the Partnership Act we had some horrific probate cases. Partners of thirty, forty, fifty years standing, imagine that' - he crossed his hands and then pulled them apart dramatically - 'nothing. Nowt. Zilch. They'd done their time, might as well have been married. Nothing to show for it.'

There was a thoughtful silence. Courtney opened her mouth to speak.

'You've go' a point there,' Keanu suddenly said through open-mouthed chews. 'If our govingment says it's fer the best, it's fer the best, that's what they tell us, in't it? All we know is, like, we don't want a commitment. Y'know, wiv a piece of paper.'

The registrar nodded benignly and took hold of his mouse again, circling it efficiently on the mat as Keanu and Courtney huddled together and watched every move.

'Now,' he smiled, 'I just need you to put in your SINs and then we're all done.'

They both tapped in their Secret Identification Numbers, gazed lustily at each other and, job over, pushed themselves away from the desk.

'Oh, yeah,' Keanu remembered in mid-push, 'what 'appens if we cancel the contract?'

Courtney's mouth dropped open.

'Just arsking,' Keanu said unrepentantly.

'Not a problem at all!' The registrar's jolly eyes could afford to twinkle now his commission was in the eurobag. 'Just email us with your PINs and SINs and we wipe your file. We have to make a small adjustment to your benefits, of course - can't expect Brussels to foot the bill, can we?'

Halfway through, Courtney had remembered what she'd meant to ask and now came hesitantly out with it. 'S'pose,' she faltered, 'only one of us wanted to cancel?'

The registrar's eyebrows winced unhappily.

'Oh, dear,' he said, 'I do wish you'd asked me that before.'

(Catherine is a self-acknowledged anorexic. She has applied for an job in a company owned by the man who, at school, had triggered off the condition.)

The receptionist checked her face in her PC screen, turned a page of her novel and smiled dutifully at me. There were no photos in the reception area. I needed to see Luke, I needed something to lessen the impact of meeting him again. I'd been trying to envisage him all week but had only been able to conjure up flashes of his face that disappeared as soon as I realised they were there. Was he really that wonderful? It almost made me laugh to think of my fourteen-year-old self elevating his very average looks and personality to heights they just could never have reached.

At least this experience would do me good. Secretly, I had to admit that I'd never really got him out of my system and after the interview his paper-thin memory could be pulled from my mind and screwed up and thrown away along with his letter. I wasn't scared, far from it. I wasn't going to let myself be scared. I looked upon it as an opportunity to tell myself that Luke didn't matter.

I dragged my stiff shoulders down, straightened my fingers and tried to relax like I was once taught at hospital: breathe deeply, fill my lungs, count to five and slowly exhale. As usual, it worked for a couple of minutes and then I thought of him again and the panic moved back in.

I changed tack. I tried to visualise him. He'd be in his mid thirties now. His blond hair would be cropped short to try and disguise the grey, or indeed the baldness. That in turn would emphasise the frown lines, etched between those once intense green eyes. He'd have thick black NHS glasses. A pot belly. I probably wouldn't even recognise him.

And he certainly wouldn't recognise me. Was that what I wanted? Or did I want him to go cold at the sight of me and struggle to remember why? Why we hung somewhere in time, glued together by some stupid words and childish anger?

I had to concentrate on my breathing. I had to put the past out of my mind. I wanted this interview to be adult to adult, professional to professional. I wanted to be judged on my experience, not my history.

Suddenly a muted laugh soaked through the wall, a laugh that hadn't changed in seventeen years. It affected me like a scream in a sunny playground. My head began pounding, my stomach churned.

We were all just kids then.

(Set the morning after journalist Roxanne's best friend finished her music column for her (rejected by her latest lover,she'd drunk herself unconscious.))

'Howard wants you,' were Russell Lomax's first words the moment Roxanne walked in the newsroom, having had to make a detour to avoid a slow-moving council van spewing yellow paint from its behind. Driving in Great Merton was just about becoming an impossibility. If it wasn't traffic jams, it was demonstrations; if it wasn't demonstrations it was bloody pedestrians trying to jaywalk to avoid having to wait at the zebra crossings.

'I'll just get a coffee,' she said, throwing her bag on her chair.

'Now, he said, like, the moment you step through the door.' Russell's mouth twitched into a tiny smirk and his hand, grafted on to a pack of Bassett's allsorts, waved her over to the glass door with the word Editor displayed on it in faded gold lettering.

'Know what it's about?'

'Would've thought that was obvious,' Russell said.

She cleared her throat and stood with hand raised to knock, but as she swung her fist Howard yanked open the door.

'Good. You're here. In. Now.' He stepped to one side, clicking his heels like a soldier.

'Er...morning, Howard,' she said, sidling past him, wondering if this was some sort of practical joke.

'Sit,' he boomed, like a dog trainer with a disobedient pupil. He strode round his desk. What with his lightbulb swinging above her head she felt like a traitor spy about to be interrogated by the enemy. Glancing up, she saw the latest edition of Backbeat spread open, in the right hand corner the drawing of Julian Clary with her name underneath it. A tiny glow of guilty comprehension started spreading like daylight in an early morning bedroom as the connotations of this summoning began to sink in.

'Sorry about the column. I know it was too short. I'll pad it out.' Should she mention that it was sent by an over-zealous friend? That would sound like she was loading the blame onto someone else. The honest truth was that she'd been too pissed to know exactly what she was doing, and Howard wouldn't be impressed by that at all.

'Aren't we all,' Howard said slowly. 'Roxanne' - he leaned on his elbows - 'do you have any idea how much it costs to get into Legoland?'

I must have been drunker than I thought, she decided, and began wringing her brain to squeeze out some recollections of last Wednesday. She'd had some silly ideas that night, like (a) killing herself over Matt's rejection (b) tipping thinners over Matt's beloved car or more sensibly, (c) writing an article slagging him off. As it was, she'd woken up Friday morning, dug into three chocolate croissants, a large mug of Options and a packet of chocolate Hob-nobs and decided life was probably worth living again.

'In other words, Roxanne, this is my day off and my family are currently on the M25 wending their merry way towards Windsor and I, either in foolishness or wisdom, depending on how your mind works, am stuck here trying to alleviate an embarrassing faux pas on behalf of someone who, I imagined, was one of our more senior, responsible writers, someone who knows a colon from a comma and gets their copy in on time.'

'How awful,' Roxanne said, wondering who he meant.

'It's not just awful, it's bloody tragic.' Then in one jerky movement he grabbed the paper and thrust it so near her nose she could smell the chemical tang of the print. 'What were you thinking of? Sometimes you're a bit near the knuckle but this' - he shook the crackly paper and she flinched - 'this is personal stuff, it's just bitching, it's nothing to do with anything. Strange looking. Piggy eyes. Big mouth. Stringy hair. Faceful of flawed features. And the final insult, as if that wasn't enough, lack of brains!'

He shook his head and flung himself back against his chair. Roxanne looked blank. She reached out for the paper but it was snatched back. 'Right,' he concluded. 'Tell me what you were playing at.'

She squinted to try and read the small print upside down, aware from past experience that in the egg-timer of Howard's temper the sand was quickly trickling out.

'Well?'

'Look, Howard, I didn't - ' The words dwindled to a croaky halt as she realised that she did remember writing them, because she could remember 'a faceful of flawed features', in particular trying to say the words to herself as she sat scratching at her notepad in the kitchen. 'I mean, I must have done, but I was pi - p - panicking about the length and I thought it needed, you know, a little spicing up, I mean, it's a jokey column. It's not supposed to be gospel - ' she broke off, trailing into a nervous little giggle.

'And it's not supposed to be libel, either,' Howard said bluntly.

'Libel...?' she gasped, in horror, jerking bolt upright, thinking of Ian Hislop, thinking of thousands of pounds, her job, her reputation.

'Lie. Bell.' Howard said slowly, each syllable digging into her heart like a knife-tip.

'Oh, shit.'

'Shit indeed, as in the Missile's in the. This might bugger up our sponsorship deal over the Mare's Field do and God knows we need all the help we can get at the moment what with Bunty Burton trying to get Ted to sell up. Suppose the bloody Messenger decided to take it over? Had a fax from Ni last night, the band are going to do it. So what do we do? We instantly accuse the lead singer of a faceful of flawed features. Great stuff, Roxanne. You couldn't have timed it better with a stopwatch.' He flung the paper on the desk. 'I think we'd better get an apology sorted out, don't you? Before the solicitors get on to us.'

The phone rang and Howard looked at it almost triumphantly. 'Are you getting it or shall I?'

Let no-one ever say Roxanne Harvey couldn't fight the battles she seemed to drop herself into like a parachutist in a war zone, she thought as she reached for the phone. 'Roxanne Harvey.'

Howard watched her in glittering revenge. He had to admire the way she took the call, listening sensitively to the caller with just the odd 'Yes. Yes. Right,' casting him the odd glance, nodding gravely. 'Thank you. Bye.'

'Well, I'm sorry, Roxanne, but that's what happens when you blatantly break the rules. I'm afraid there's worse than that to come. Tell me, then. Who was it?'

'Sketchley's. Your fluffy duvet cover's ready.'

(Imogen, a debutante, and Darren, a roofer, have to get married in order to inherit Imogen's ex-husband's mansion, something which he planned in order to get revenge on both of them. None of their parents know the real reason for their impending marriage.)

'Do you like Andy Williams?'

Darren was staring round the living room and didn't hear the question, or rather, it didn't sink in. What was sinking in, quite rapidly, was that Imogen's mum and dad were seriously rich. He'd expected the house to be big and flash (any house with carved hedges and those Greek pillars outside the front door had to have a couple of marble fireplaces and nice grouting in the kitchen), stood to reason. But it was the simpler things that got him: they had the dado rail his mum had always craved, they had little round windows in the living room (except they called it a lynge) with that sort of luscious speckled ivy his mum was always buying because she was always killing it off. (His mum didn't have a way with plants. Brown fingers, his mum had.)

Plus they had a chair in the bog and paper that matched the walls and it was almost with shame he realised his mum's loo hadn't been decorated for twenty-three years and still had the same dusty knitted crinoline lady on the windowsill. And the kitchen had shiny mahogany cupboards and the worktop was empty; bit different to his mum's where the teapot, teabags, junk mail and his dad's stinking ashtrays were always left out.

There were three dark green leather sofas in the lynge. That was dead posh too. They all faced towards a bare, glass-covered coffee table in the middle. And they all matched exactly. Her mum had one, her dad had one, and he and Imogen were perched on the third like a couple of estranged budgies. They must look bloody funny, Darren thought, too nervous to appreciate the humour. This time he had Teabag's black suit on, Barjee's dark grey Paisley tie, his own black socks with the left big toe poking uncomfortably through, and Ginge's brother's new black shoes he was wearing under pain of death – Ginge would kill him if they so much as got a scuff. Immerjen, his so-called fiancée, had on a black knee-length effort. Black earrings, black tights, black shoes. He expected a bleedin' coffin to be carried in any second.

''oo?' Brian's stiff and uninterested question had only just leaked into his subconscious. 'Sorry,' he muttered, 'just admirin' the antiques.' He scratched his nose and hoped the old-looking stuff was antique or he'd be in the shit.

'He's an American singer,' Brian said dryly as the last notes of "Watching the Girls Go By" bounced into a final cadence. He hadn't been too impressed to start with to say the least, but now he wondered what the hell his daughter was playing at. When he'd heard this lover of hers was a roofer he half understood it – he'd once spent a good deal of his teens pining over a checkout girl in Tesco's - but now he'd met the man and felt his sweaty handshake, he knew Casanova was not what Darren Potts reminded him of. Conman was what Darren Potts reminded him of.

He scanned Darren again while he was leaning forward to get his sherry, though he knew it wouldn't change his mind. Bulky. Shoulders too wide for his jacket. Thin mouth. Hair – what hair he had - like a toilet brush. And to top it all, a bloody earring.

Immy used to have far better taste, he pondered now. Even Edwin Myers – was he the second or third? - thin and grey as a lamppost and with a hairline receding quicker than Twyford Down - had had that dash of understated elegance about him, the assurance of being a member of one of England's most ancient and revered families. Why couldn't she have stuck with him, instead of putting everybody through not one, but two changes of mind?

Darren took a slug of sweet sherry, uncomfortable with the way it coated his throat on the way down. Posh people must like it like this, but the last time he'd had such sweet wine was at the age of nine at Birkup Parish Church - he'd sneaked in with a couple of mates, finished off half a bottle of communion wine and three packets of wafers and thrown up in the main aisle. Made the papers, that had, he remembered proudly.

He stared into the side of his glass and was temporarily fascinated by his red, distorted face, nose a mile long, cheeks shrunk back, ears sticking out and idly wondered if you already looked like that, would you look normal in a glass. This was doing his head in, he decided next. The music had finished, thank God, but now every single creak of the settee, every swallow, every breath even, was amplified in the uneasy silence.

He wondered if he should say anything then decided they wouldn't want to hear it anyway, not unless it was about earning money or saving it, the first of which he never talked about and the second which he never did. He wiggled his toes but soon stopped when the shoes squeaked like a fart. He moved his glass to his left hand and sat on his right. Pins and needles started pricking so he moved his glass to his right hand and sat on the left. Still no-one spoke. His tummy rumbled and he coughed to disguise it but fuckin'ell, was he hungry. He hadn't eaten since old Mrs Tibbett on Cork Street had given him a couple of chocolate Hobnobs at half past five. His box of After Eights, bought at the last minute from Gupta's on the ring road, sat on the sideboard and he wished someone would offer him one.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Imogen's hands criss-crossed on her lap. He didn't mind admitting to himself that the dark crimson fingernails were nice. He liked fingernails. Debs had nails like that when she could be bothered and it made Darren's spine tingle to think of them trailing slowly up his cock the way they used to – somehow he couldn't imagine snotty Imogen (Imms? Immo? Could you shorten that name to make it more friendly? He didn't think so) having the knowhow to turn a man on. Perhaps that was why her marriages hadn't worked.

He didn't know a lot about her but the most important thing, that she'd been married three times, was branded on his mind. One was understandable, yeah; two was unlucky, hum, but three? Three blokes couldn't be wrong. He wished he knew something about whatisname, Max, try and work out some sort of motive. After all, even if you had pots of money you didn't chuck it about, did you, especially when you had a son to leave it to. The bloke must have been bloody rolling in it if he could play about with the best part of a million quid.

'You know about antiques, do you, Darren?' said Tilly suddenly from the facing sofa, just as Darren was coming to grips with the thought that when you're dead you probably don't care what happens to your money, you could set it alight and watch people's faces –

'Well, um, sort of.' He squirmed himself out of that thought, having just reached the conclusion that you might get better and then you'd be well buggered. He could see Imogen turning her head to look icily at him. 'Sort of,' he said again, taking a massive swig from his glass. The stuff wasn't so bad when you got used to it.

'Oh, how lovely.' Tilly put her glass excitedly on the table. 'Did you hear that, Brian? Darren knows about antiques! You'll have to show him some of your carriage clocks.'

'Carriage clocks, yeah, great,' Darren said unenthusiastically as Brian snorted and folded his arms. 'I like carriage clocks.'

'Brian collects them. His most valuable one one dates from 1802. Or is it 1822?' She looked worriedly at her husband, who rolled his eyes, then coughed delicately and turned back to Darren. 'Do you collect anything? Stamps? Stamps are quite interesting. Imogen used to collect stamps.' By Imogen's expression her mother might as well have been showing nude baby photos around.

Darren thought about it. 'Well, I used to collect cans, like.'

'Cans?' Tilly looked at Brian, who was studying the Andy Williams CD cover with expanded, grotesque interest. 'Old cans? How fascinating. Isn't that fascinating?' she suggested sportingly to Brian. 'I read somewhere - The Times, I think - that scientists opened a can of soup Captain Scott had taken with him to the Antarctic, and the contents were still edible. '

'Blimey,' Darren said, sitting up. 'Mine were all empty. I didn't fink they was that intrestin'.'

'Did you get much for them?'

'Well, nah,' he admitted, not liking to say his ex had thrown them away. They weren't her thing, empty Heineken cans with pictures of near-naked women. He was beginning to wish he hadn't let her now. He didn't know nothing about that sort of thing, suppose she'd chucked away a fortune?

'Is dinner ready, Mummy?' Imogen said with undisguised irritation. 'Darren's got to get home early.'

''Ave I?'

'Where is it you live, Darren?' Tilly poured herself a quarter of an inch more sherry.

'Birkup,' Darren said, and saw Imogen grimace. He couldn't help it if it had the highest crime rate in the county, could he? Was it his fault the police had to go round in gangs? To see her expression you'd think he did all the graffiti himself or something when in fact he'd only done a couple of Fuck Offs and a Darren Luvs Debs. 'I got a little 'ouse of me own, bought it off the council. Two bed. Mr mum and dad live up the road, like, they've got free.'

'Free what?' said Brian sarcastically.

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Copyright 1996-1999 Anne Barrett
Last revised: 23 January 1999