And then ... nothing. The gas fire hissed, Banjo snored and grunted, the rain continued to throw itself against the living-room window. The Coronation Street theme music started up for the credits. Reggie, book in hand, a half-eaten violet cream in her mouth was still standing in the middle of the floor, poised for flight. ~or a moment it was as if nothing had happened.

Then she heard voices and doors banging as people from the neighbouring houses ran into the street. R. Eggie open. Ed ,the fr~n,t door and stuck her head out into the wmd and ram. A tram s crashed' a man said to her. 'Right out back.' Reggie picked up the phone {n the hall and dialled 999. Dr Hunter had told her that in an emergency everyone presumed that someone else would call. Reggie wasn't going to be that person who presumed. .

'Back soon,' she said to Banjo, pulling on her jacket. She pIcked up the big torch that Ms MacDonald kept by the fuse box at the fr~nt door, put the house keys in her pocket, pulled the door shut behm~ her and ran out into the rain. The world wasn't going to end thIS night. Not if Reggie had anything to do with it.

What larks, Reggie!

The Celestial City THE TUNNEL WAS WHITE, NOT BLACK. NOT SO MUCH A TUNNEL AS A corridor. It was very brightly lit. And there were seats, white moulded plastic benches that seemed to be part of the wall. He was sitting on one as if he was waiting for something. It reminded him of a scene from a science-fiction film. Jackson expected that any minute his sister or his brother would appear and invite him to follow them into the light. He knew it was altered temporal lobe function or oxygen deprivation to his brain as his body shut down. Or even an excess of ketamine -he'd read somewhere about that, National Geographic probably. Still, it was a surprise when it happened to you. You would think it would feel like a cliche or a dream but it didn't. He was at ease, in a way that he didn't ever remember feeling when he was alive. It no longer mattered that he wasn't in control. He wondered what was going to happen next.

On cue, his sister suddenly appeared sitting next to him on the bench. She touched the back of his hand and smiled at him. Neither of them spoke, there was nothing to say and everything to say at the same time. Words would never have been able to convey what he was feeling, even if he had been able to speak, which he wasn't.

He was experiencing euphoria. It had never happened to him before, even at the happiest times in his life -when he was in love, when Marlee was born -any possibility of clear, uncut joy had been fogged by the anxiety. He had never floated free of the world's cares before. He hoped it was going to go on for ever.

His sister moved her face close to his and he thought she was going to kiss him on the lips but instead she breathed into his mouth. His sister's signature scent was violets -she wore April Violet cologne and her favourite chocolates were violet creams, even the sight of which made Jackson feel sick when he was a boy -so he wasn't surprised that her breath tasted ofviolets. He felt as ifhe had inhaled the Holy Ghost. But then he felt himself being pulled out of the tunnel, away from Niamh, and he had to fight to resist. She stood up and started to walk away. He exhaled the Holy Ghost and shut his mouth so it couldn't get back in. He stood up and followed his sister.

Some slippage, some interruption m the space-time continuum. Something had punched him in the chest, incredibly hard. He wasn't in the white corridor. He was in the Land of Pain. And then, just as suddenly, he was back in the white corridor, his sister walking ahead, looking over her shoulder, beckoning to him. He wanted to tell her that it was OK, he was coming, but he still couldn't speak. More than anything in the world he wanted to follow his sister. Wherever it was, it was going to be the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Something jack-hammered him in the chest again. He felt suddenly furious. Who was doing this, who was trying to stop him from going with his sister?

He was back in the white corridor again, but he couldn't see Niamh anywhere. Had she got tired ofwaiting for him? Then that was it, the white corridor disappeared for good, replaced by something strange and fuzzy, like bad reception on a black-and-white television set. And more blinding pain, like lightning bolts being thrown around in his skull.

There was a word for how he felt but it took him a long time to find it in his fried-up brain. 'Heartbroken', that was the word. He had been on a journey to somewhere wonderful and some bugger ~ad come along and stopped him. Then he started to fade, slipping mto the darkness again, into oblivion. No white corridor this time just endless night. '

Chapter III

Tomorrow.

The Dogs They Lift Behind.

WHAT DID HE MEAN SHE'D GONE AWAY? GONE AWAY? GONE AWAY where? And why? To see an elderly aunt who's been taken ill, he said. She'd never mentioned having an aunt, let alone one who might get ill.

'She's only just been taken ill,' Mr Hunter said impatiently, as if Reggie was a nuisance, as if it was her that had phoned him at half past six in the morning, waking in a fumbling daze of sleep, unable to understand why Mr Hunter was on the other end of the phone saying, 'You don't need to come in today.' For a moment Reggie thought it must be something to do with the train crash, and then worse -that something had happened to Dr Hunter or the baby -or worst of all, that Dr Hunter and the baby had been involved in the train crash in some way. But no, he had phoned at an unearthly hour to tell her about a sick aunt.

'What aunt?' Reggie puzzled. 'She's never mentioned an aunt.'

'Well, I don't expect Jo tells you everything,' Mr Hunter said.

'So everything's definitely OK with Dr Hunter and the baby?' Reggie said. 'They're not ill or anything?'

'Of course not,' Mr Hunter said. 'Why should they be?'

'When did Dr Hunter leave?'

'She drove down last night.'

'Down?'

'To Yorkshire.'

'Where inYorkshire?'

'Hawes, since you must know every detail.'

'Whores?'

'H-a-w-e-s. Can we stop this catechism now? Tell you what, take a wee holiday, Reggie. Jo will be back in a few days. She'll phone you then.' Why hadn't Dr Hunter phoned her, that was the question. Dr Hunter always had her mobile with her, she called it her 'lifeline'. She used it for everything -the house phone 'belonged to Neil', she always said. But then perhaps she had been driving, in too much of a hurry to get to this mysterious aunt to stop and call Reggie. But Dr Hunter wasn't the kind ofperson not to call you. It made Reggie feel dismissed, a bit like a servant. When had she left? 'Last night,' Mr Hunter said.

It would have been darkest dark when she drove away. Reggie imagined Dr Hunter ploughing through the night, through the rain, the baby asleep in the car-seat in the back, or awake and noisily distracting Dr Hunter from the road ahead while she scrabbled in the baby-bag for a mini-oatcake to keep him quiet while the Tweenies' Greatest Hits (the baby's favourite) added further to the potential accident scenario. It was funny that Dr Hunter had driven down to Yorkshire while at the same time the train hurtled away from it into disaster, into Reggie's life.

Reggie had an aunt in Australia -her mother's sister, Linda. 'Never close, Linda and me,' Reggie's mother used to say. When Mum died, Reggie had to endure an awkward phone call with Linda. 'Never close, your mum and me,' Linda echoed. 'But I'm sorry for your loss,' as if it wasn't her loss at all, but Reggie's alone to bear. Before the phone call Reggie had wondered ifLinda would invite her to come over to Australia to live or at least to stay for a holiday (Oh, you poor thing, come here and let me look after you), but clearly this thought had never even entered Linda's mind (,Well, take care of yourself then, Regina.'). The day suddenly stretched emptily ahead. 'It'll be nice for you to have some time off,' Mr Hunter said but it wasn't nice at all, Reggie didn't want time off. She wanted to see Dr Hunter and the baby, she wanted to tell Dr Hunter about what had happened last night -the train crash, Ms MacDonald, the man. Especially the man because, if you thought about it, the fact that the man was alive (if he was still alive) was all down not to Reggie but to Dr Hunter.