The metal dish was piled full of butt ends, he noticed. The burning cigarette had started another couple of stumps smoking, and Connon wrinkled his nose at the smell. 'Hello,' he said. 'Sorry I'm late,' still hesitating at the door. The music and dancing seemed to be approaching a climax. The trailing hand moved slightly; a gesture of acknowledgment; a request for silence, a dismissal. Connon let his attention be held for a moment by a close-up of a contorted face, male, mixing to a close-up of a shuddering bosom, female. The cigarette smell seemed to catch his throat. 'I'll just get a cup of tea, then,' he said and turned, closing the door behind him. Back in the kitchen he found a slice of cooked ham, evidently his share of the meal whose debris he had noticed in the sink. He slapped it on a plate and lit the gas under the kettle. Even as he did so, he felt his head begin to turn again and this time his stomach turned with it. He presed his handkerchief to his mouth and moved shakily upstairs. Distantly the thought passed through his mind that he was well conditioned. Being sick in the downstairs toilet might disturb Mary. Now he was on the landing and his knees buckled and he gagged almost drily. Wiping his mouth, he pulled himself up, one hand on the handle of his bedroom door. The next time he fell, he fell on to the bed and the wheels in his head went spinning on into darkness.

'Do we have to have that tripe on?'asked Dave Fernie.

'Please yourself,' said his wife. 'You usually like it. All those girls. You must be getting old.'

'Too old for that.'

Alice Fernie glanced across at her husband with a smile, half ironical, half something else.

'Old enough for what, then?'

'Aren't you going to switch it off?'

'I didn't switch it on.'

'No. I did. So you could see your precious football results after you rushed back from your precious match. And when you didn't come, I even marked them down for you. Don't you want to see?' Fernie reached across and took the paper from the arm of his wife's chair.