Why couldn't we just have stopped seeing each other? I hear you ask. Tried that. Just not poss. Sarah got married trying to get out of this whole thing, and I moved down here, but neither of us could stop thinking about the other; just couldn't forget. I suppose we must be doomed for each other.

I think you fell for Sarah a bit (though being you you made it impossible to tell; you could have been cranium-over-Achilles for the girl and still have given nothing away; acting Joe Cool as usual) and if my fucking bike hadn't conked out on me (I think some bastard put sugar in the petrol tank) we were going to let you down easier; I was to appear in the street outside while Sarah was explaining to you in the flat that she liked you too much to start anything because she was basically a bad "un and she and Stock deserved each other... well, it seemed like a good idea at the time; you hustled out the back door as Sarah panicked; unrequited but smug, knowing You Were Too Good For Her, and her, worthless bitch, back with the bad guy. Oh well.

Anyway, the election's over, as you might have noticed, and our father was one of the only two Tories to lose their seats in a Conservative landslide (to a Liberal; ha ha), and he's retiring from politics. Sarah isn't being followed any more, as far as I can tell, so the need for most, if not all, of the subterfuge is gone... sorry.

Why protect the old fascist in the first place?

What can I say? That blood is thicker than water maybe, but also that if anything had come out about Sarah and me it might not only have ruined our father but it would certainly have killed our mum, who really isn't a bad sort. (Fuck it; we both still love her. There.)

Family loyalty, in other words. I don't know.

Well, you must admit we were thorough; we even arranged for you to see "Stock" when I was there (you remember; in the pub?); that was Sarah, padded out with jeans and jumpers and walking on tip-toe with several dozen of my socks stuffed into the bottoms of my boots.

I don't know how to -

Sarah came back then, with two glasses of orange juice and a large plate with small pieces of bread topped with pate, various cheeses and honey. "Here," she said, putting the plate and one glass down by the side of the bed, on the small dressing table. "What are you writing?"

"A letter to Graham, telling him the whole truth. All of it. Nothing but," Slater said. Sarah looked at him without saying anything, took a drink from the slim glass she held.

Slater looked at the letter, reading his own scrawled lines with a frown on his face. "You know," he said to his sister, "I really wish I could send this to him."

"If you've told the whole truth, you certainly can not."

"Hmm. I know. But I need to write it anyway. For me." He looked at her. "I guess I'm still tense."

She moved closer to the bed, looked down at him, "You still worried about that crash?" she said.

Slater put the pen and the paper down on the dressing table. He rolled his eyes, then put his hands over his face. "Yes, yes!" he said, and pushed his fingers through his dark hair, staring at the ceiling while she watched him calmly. "Oh God, oh Doom! I just hope they didn't get the number!"

"What, of the bike?" she said, drinking her orange juice.

"Yes, of course!" He shook his head at the ceiling, then levered himself back up on one elbow, and read over the letter Graham would never read. What to say next? How to finish it off? Sarah watched for a while, then turned away and combed her hair. She heard a rustle of paper, the clatter of the pen on the dressing table, after a while. She turned to look at him.

"Better?" she asked, putting the comb down. Slater lay on the bed, the paper crumpled in one outstretched hand. He shook his head, still staring at the ceiling, then let the crumpled ball of paper roll out of his hand. At the same time he croaked, "Rosebud!" The paper ball rolled along the floor. She smiled, kicked the paper with one pink-shoed foot towards the bin.

She turned and studied herself in the mirror, calmly stroking her bruises.

"Have you ever," Slater said, "entertained the idea that we might be evil? I mean that despite the fact you're beautiful and I'm right... that nevertheless, for some horrible, maybe genetic reason, maybe class, even, we -"

"I have never even considered any other explanation," Sarah said, smiling, still looking at herself. Slater laughed.

He did love her. It was all that a brother-sister relationship was supposed to be, all that people meant when they talked of loving someone like a brother or a sister... it was just that, but not only that. He wanted her. At least sometimes, at least when he did not hate himself for wanting her in the way he did.

Perhaps it was possible, though. Perhaps he could just love her solely and conventionally as a sister. She was worth all that alone, after all. She could not mean less to him. Sex was only that, surely, and indeed with her only more intense...more dangerous in its feel than with others; not better. Worse, in fact, in its penumbra of guilt and self-disgust. He should, he really ought to make an effort; let what had happened to Graham, what they had done to him be a tragic landmark, a reason almost... at least not let it go to waste...

Sarah went to the old mono record player which stood on a small table on the far side of the bedroom. She took her current favourite Bowie album, his latest, and put it on at the start of her favourite track, the song which was a single and still in the charts; Let's Dance, the title track. The stylus scraped into the groove, neatly between tracks. The old speaker crackled slightly and hissed; she turned the volume up, put the arm mechanism on to repeat.

Slater lay on the bed, turned sideways, watching her. He forgot about the accident he had helped cause, about Graham and the hurt he had contributed towards, as he watched his sister sway and move in front of the record player. The music punched out, filling the small room; she nodded her head, her body moved inside the thin blue silk, in time to the first few lyrical bars of the song. He felt his desire grow for her again.

She knew the song well. Just before Bowie's voice started, just before the words "Let's dance," she turned, smiling to her brother, put her slender fingers to her shoulders, opening the blue silk gown and letting it fall from her, collecting in soft folds about the pink trainers as she nodded twice in time to the music and over the first phrase mouthed the words "Let's fuck..."

And for a moment, behind his eyes, where he felt he really lived, he felt complete despair, and the absolute necessity of keeping what he felt away from her, of stopping it from showing on his face.

He seemed to halt then, in some frozen moment, an expression of feigned delight and surprise impacted on his face, as behind it, inside him, a pain he could not name, like his wanting, with his wanting, arose and overwhelmed him.

From the notebook of Detective Sergeant Nichols; interview with Thomas Edward PRITCHARD. Islington Police Station, 28/6/83.

Q: What about the bike then did you get its no?

A: O yes I got that bastards no. alright. It was STK 228 something. Either I or T. T, I think.