On the corner of Maygood Street and Penton Street there was an employment office, where people went to sign on for dole money. A sign said: Door C surnames A-K, Door D surnames L-Z. Graham walked by, looking down to Half Moon Crescent itself; the curve of tall houses where Sara ffitch was living. His stomach seemed to lurch, tensing with nervous anticipation. He felt shivery, keyed up; the vaguely sultry, dulling air seemed suddenly sharpened. Colours stood out, smells (cooking, asphalt, exhaust fumes) became more vivid. The buildings - ordinary Victorian three-storey terraces, now mostly converted into flats-were strange and alien.

His heart beat faster when he saw a bike parked outside one of the houses in Half Moon Crescent, but it was outside the door next to Sara's, and it was a red Honda, not a black BMW. He took deep breaths to try and slow his heart down. He looked up at the window Sara leaned out of sometimes, but she wasn't there.

She will be there, though, he told himself. She won't be out. She will be in. And she won't have changed her mind.

He went to the entryphone. He pressed the button for her flat firmly. He waited, staring intently at the grille from which her voice would come. Very soon.

He waited.

He put his finger on the button, about to press it again, then hesitated, uncertain whether to wait a little longer or not. She might still be waking up, or having a shower; anything. There could be lots of reasons for her not answering yet. He licked his lips, kept staring at the grille. He leaned forward on the button once more, closing his eyes as he did so. He let the button go.

There was still plenty of time. Even if she wasn't in, he could wait; she would probably just be out getting something for the salad she'd said she would make for them.

He wondered whether he ought to press the button again. His stomach was feeling heavy, sick. He could just imagine someone from the houses on the corner of Maygood Street watching him now, looking at his back as he stood at the entryphone grille, waiting and waiting. The grille made a clicking noise. "Hello?" said a breathless voice. It was her!

"It -" he said, and choked on the words, throat dry. He cleared his throat quickly, "It's me. Graham." She was there, she was there!

"Graham, I'm sorry," she said. His heart seemed to sink, he closed his eyes. She was going to say she had changed her mind. "I was in the bath." The buzzer on the entryphone sounded.

He stared at the door for a moment, then at the entryphone, then at the still buzzing door. He pushed it quickly, just before the buzzer stopped sounding. The door swung open, and he went in.

There were carpeted steps down to a basement flat, a door straight ahead to the ground-floor flat. He went up the stairs; cheap but cheerful carpet, white paint on the banisters, fading pastel wallpaper. He could hear an old Beatles record being played downstairs. He got to the first-floor landing. There were more steps up to another flat, but the door on the first floor, into her flat, was open. He knocked and went in, looking around with obvious trepidation, just on the off chance it wasn't the right flat, or she hadn't meant to leave the door open. He heard water from a room to his right. Light showed under the door. "Graham?" she said.

"Hello," he called out. He put the portfolio down against the wall and closed the door on to the landing.

"Go on in, to your left." Her voice was soaked up by the sound of the running water. He took the portfolio up again, went round to his left, into a small, cluttered room with a couch, chairs, television, hi-fi, bookcases and a small coffee table; at the far end, raised up a few inches, separated from the main part of the room by small wood railings which each extended a third of the way across the area, was a kitchen section; cooker and fridge and sink, a larger table, and behind it, main curtains drawn, white lace ones floating out slightly on a faint breeze, was the window.

He put his portfolio down by the side of the couch. A small table at one end of the couch held the telephone; he recalled the time it had rung and rung, and she was under the1 bedclothes, hiding from the thunder. He crossed the room to the raised kitchen section, stepping up on to its worn linoleum surface and going to the sink. He rinsed his hands under the cold tap, splashed some water on his forehead. He dried his face and hands on a dishcloth; there was no hand towel. He was shaking.

He went back down onto the carpeted area and stood, heart beating quickly, in front of the bookcase beside the television. He saw a book there which he hadn't read but had seen televised. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe was the second part of the story begun in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Slater had told him that when the BBC made the series they just lumped the two books together. Graham took the slim volume out, flipped through it, looking for one bit in particular. He found it, in about the middle of the book. The scene involved a character called Hotblack Desiato, who was spending a year dead for tax reasons. Desiato was a firm of Islington estate agents, Graham had seen their signs; Douglas Adams must have lived in the area.

He put the book back. Although it was funny, it was rather light reading; he wanted Sara to find him reading something more impressive.

There were a lot of books on best things and worst things; books full of quotes, criticisms, collections of hyberboles and euphemisms, lists of lists, books full, simply, of facts; books on what had happened on each day throughout the year, books about last words, famous mistakes, most useless objects. Graham knew what Slater thought about such works. He took a very dim view indeed; they were yet more signs that the End was In Sight. "Can't you see?" he'd said, one day in March, sitting in the small, steamy cafe in Red Lion Street. "It's a society getting its affairs in order, preparing for the end, drawing a bottom line under what it's done. That stuff and all the bomb literature... we're becoming a death-based society, in love with the past, seeing only annihilation ahead: annihilation we're fascinated by but powerless to do anything about. Vote Thatcher! Vote Reagan! Let's all die! Yip-fucking-pee!"

Graham took out a book on Marxist economics, opened it about a third of the way through, started reading. His eyes took in the words, but it was dry, hard, complicated stuff, and the meanings flowed over the surface of his mind and off again like water from a sun-creamed shoulder.

"Graham," Sara said from the doorway. He turned round, heart thumping, to see her just leaning in from the hall, a white towel round her head like a turban, a thin blue dressing gown round her body. Her face looked white and painfully thin without its usual aura of black hair. "I won't be long. Have a seat." She went into the room across the hall, which he assumed must be the bedroom. He put the economics book back.

He sat down, looking around the room. After a while he rose to look at the record collection. It all seemed very dated; a lot of old Stones records, but much Led Zeppellin and Deep Purple: middle period Floyd and early Bob Seeger. Meatloaf was about the latest stuff. Funny. The collection must have belonged to the girl who actually owned the place, the one who was in America.

He inspected the bookshelf again.

At that moment, on St John Street, near the buildings of the City University and about a quarter of a mile south of the junction of Pentonville Road and Upper Street, a figure in black leathers, wearing a black full-face crash helmet with a smoked-glass visor, was crouched by the side of a BMW RS100 motorbike which was propped against the side of the kerb. The man in the black leathers sat back, looked up the road, north, in the direction he had been heading when the bike had suddenly started misfiring a quarter of an hour ago, while he was making his way, as arranged, to Half Moon Crescent. He cursed, leant forward again, quickly turning a small screwdriver as he fiddled with the settings on the carbs. STK 228T was the registration number of the bike.