'We're not going that way,' he said gently to the old woman.

'Of course we are,' she said. 'Where do you think we're going?'

He slept. When he woke up the suit was still tap-tapping on his laptop. Jackson checked for text messages but there were none. A station flashed by and the old woman gave him a smug look. 'Dunbar,' she announced, like an old soothsayer.

'Dunbar?' Jackson said.

'The train terminates at Waverley.'

She was obviously a little senile,Jackson thought. Unless ...

The woman in red leaned over the table, displaying her own ample and healthy breasts for his connoisseurship, and said to him, 'Do you have the time?'

'The time?' Jackson echoed. (The time for what? A quickie in the train toilet?) She tapped her wrist, in an exaggerated dumbshow. 'The time, do you know what time it is?'

The time. (Idiot.) He looked at his Breitling and was surprised to see it was nearly eight. They should be in London by now. Unless ... 'Ten to eight,' he said to the woman in red. 'Where is this train going to?'

'Edinburgh,' she said, just as a young guy who had been weaving his way unsteadily through the carriage stumbled and pitched towards Jackson, clutching on to his can of lager as if it was going to stop him from falling. Jackson jumped up, not so much to save the guy as to save himself from being showered with lager. 'Steady there, sir,' he said, instinctively finding his voice ofauthority, while using his body weight to prop the guy up. He remembered the sheep from this afternoon. The drunk guy was more pliable. He stared blearily at Jackson, confused by the 'sir', unsure whether he was under attack or not, probably no one but the police had previously addressed him in such a polite manner. He started to say something, slurred and incoherent, when the carriage jolted suddenly and he staggered and fell headlong, slipping through Jackson's fumbled attempt to catch him.

There was a certain amount of alarm registered by the carriage's occupants at this unexpected stutter in the train's progress but it was soon replaced with relief. 'What was that?' Jackson heard someone say and another voice laughed, 'Wrong kind of leaves on the line probably.' It was all very British. The suit seemed the most twitchy. 'Everything's going to be fine: Jackson said and immediately thought, Don't tempt fate.

Julia believed in the Fates (let's face it,Julia believed in everything and anything). She believed they had 'their eye on you' and if they didn't then they were certainly looking for you, so it was best not to draw attention to yourself. They had been in the car once, stuck in traffic and running late to catch a ferry, and Jackson said, 'It's fine, I'm sure we're going to make it: and Julia had ducked down dramatically in the passenger seat as if she was being shot at and hissed, 'Shush, they'll hear us.'

'Who will hear us?' Jackson puzzled.

'The Fates.' Jackson had actually glanced in his rear-view mirror as ifthey might be travelling in the car behind. 'Don't tempt them:Julia said. And once on a plane that had been bucking with turbulence he had held her hand and said, 'It won't last long: and been subjected to the same histrionic performance as if the Fates were riding on the wing of the 747. 'Don't put your head above the parapet: Julia said. Jackson had innocently enquired whether the Fates were the same thing as the Furies and Julia said darkly, 'Don't even go there.'

Looking back it was astonishing how much travelling he had done withJulia, they were always on planes and trains and boats. He'd been hardly anywhere since their break-up, just a few hops across the Channel to his house in the Midi. He had sold the house now, the money should arrive in his account today. He had liked France but it wasn't as if it was home.

Jackson was currently less concerned with the Fates and more concerned by the direction they were travelling in. They were going to Edinburgh? He hadn't caught the train to King's Cross, he had caught the train from King's Cross. The strolling woman had been right. He was going the wrong way.

Satis House WHEN REGGIE ARRIVED AT THE BLEAK BUNGALOW IN MUSSELBURGH Ms MacDonald opened the door and said, 'Reggie!' as if she was astonished to see her, although their Wednesday routine was invariable. From being a woman who took pride in the fact that nothing could surprise her, Ms MacDonald had turned into one who was amazed at the simplest things (,Look at that bird!' 'Is that a plane overhead?'). Her left eye was bloodshot as if a red star had exploded in her brain. It made you wonder if it wasn't better just to dive down into the blue and check out early.

No sign of the advent of Christmas in Ms MacDonald's house, Reggie noticed. She wondered if it was against her religion.

'The meal is on the table,' Ms MacDonald said. Every Wednesday they ate tea together and then Ms MacDonald drove across to the other side ofMusselburgh (God help anyone else on the road) to her 'Healing and Prayer' meeting (which, let's face it, wasn't doing much good) while Reggie did homework and kept an eye on Banjo, Ms MacDonald's little old dog. When Ms MacDonald returned, all prayered up and full of the spirit, she went over Reggie's homework over tea and biscuits -'a plain digestive' for Ms MacDonald and a Tunnock's Caramel Wafer bought specially for Reggie.

Reggie didn't know what kind of a cook Ms MacDonald was before her brain started to be nibbled at by her crabby tumour but she was certainly a terrible one now. 'Tea' was usually a stodgy macaroni cheese or a gluey fish pie, after which Ms MacDonald would heave herself up from the table with an effort and say, 'Dessert?' as if she was about to offer chocolate cheesecake or creme bnllee when in fact it was always the same low-fat strawberry yoghurt, which Ms MacDonald watched Reggie eat with a kind of vicarious thrill that was unsettling. Ms MacDonald didn't eat much any more now that she herself was being eaten.

Ms MacDonald was in her fifties but she had never been young. When she was a teacher at the school she looked as ifshe ironed herself every morning and had never betrayed a trace of irrational behaviour (quite the opposite) but now not only had she embraced a crazy religion but she dressed as if she was one step away from being a bag lady and her house was two steps beyond squalid. She was, she said, preparing for the end of the world. Reggie didn't really see how a person could prepare for an event like that and anyway, unless the end of the world happened very soon it seemed unlikely that Ms MacDonald would be around to see it.

Tonight it was oven-baked spaghetti. Ms MacDonald had a recipe that made real spaghetti from a packet taste exactly like tinned, which was quite an achievement.

Over the spaghetti, Ms MacDonald was blethering on about the 'Rapture' and whether it would be before or after the 'Tribulation', or 'the Trib' as she called it with cosy familiarity, as if persecution, suffering and the end of days were going to be on the same level of inconvenience as a traffic jam.

Religion had introduced Ms MacDonald, rather late in the day, to a social life, and her church (aka 'weird religious cult') was keen on pot-luck suppers and uninspiring barbecues. Reggie had been to an agonizing few and eaten cautiously of the burned offerings.

Ms MacDonald belonged to the Church of the Coming Rapture and was herself, she announced smugly, 'rapture-ready'. She was a pretribulationist ('pretribber'), which meant she would be whizzed up to heaven, business-class, while everyone else, including Reggie, had to suffer a great deal of scourging and affliction (,Seventy weeks, actually, Reggie.'). So a lot like everyday life then. There were also post-tribulationists who had to wait until after the scourging but got to bypass heaven and enter the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, 'which is the whole point', Ms MacDonald said. There were also midtribulationists who, as their name implied, went up in the middle of the whole confusing process. Ms MacDonald was saved and Reggie wasn't, that was the bottom line. 'Yes, I'm afraid you're going to hell, Reggie,' Ms MacDonald said, smiling benignly at her. Still, there was one consolation, Ms MacDonald wouldn't be there, nagging her about her Virgil translation.