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CHAPTER THREE

TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY

In most of the places that Steve had hung out in the course of his life, a story like Jim’s would have got a round of deeply ironic but sincerely admiring applause, assuming that the audience could have tolerated its enormous length—which was unlikely, given the shortage of modern attention spans. Even respectful applause, however, was evidently not de rigueur at AlAbAn meetings. When Jim finished he was greeted with a polite murmur of approval and an assortment of sage nods.

Steve hadn’t been planning to tell his story anyway, even if there had been time left for a second one, but he realized immediately that he was going to have to remember a great deal more, and organize it far more comprehensively, before he could even begin to think about taking the floor in Amelia Rockham’s front room. Even if Jim’s performance wasn’t typical, it had certainly set a standard. Steve wasn’t the kind of person to obsess about the possibility of falling below an established standard, but he felt obliged to make some effort to uphold the honor of the teaching profession, science, and youth.

The group was not only scrupulously polite, Steve observed, but exceedingly stubborn in maintaining its supportive appearances. When Walter Wainwright invited questions and comments, the gist of the opening remarks was that Jim’s experience must have been unusually disturbing, and that he was obviously coping with it extremely well, not only emotionally but intellectually and imaginatively.

Jim, who had obviously been slightly worried about the kind of reception he might get, even though he had scouted out the group before diving in head-first, blossomed in the warmth of the praise. He admitted that he was, indeed, coping very well, not only emotionally but intellectually and imaginatively, and that he was a fortunate man to be able to pass on the legacy of his experience to such understanding people.

Steve was mildly surprised that nobody even ventured to hint, let alone to suggest forthrightly, that Jim might have fallen asleep at the wheel and hallucinated the whole experience—or the ideative seed that he had since nurtured and brought to maturity by careful confabulation—in the split second before or after he hit the deer. Nor did anyone imply, by the merest word or gesture, that he might simply be telling a tall tale. Indeed, it seemed to Steve that some of the private glances exchanged between the group members were signaling that Jim’s story had made even more sense to them than it had to its teller, not just because it dovetailed with their own experiences but because their own experiences cast some light on its murkier elements. Steve was tempted, just for a moment, to throw a spanner into the works by making some slyly snide remark, but he didn’t have to make an effort to suppress the temptation; it withered and died of its own accord.

“That wasn’t quite what I expected,” he whispered in Janine’s ear.

“Nor me,” she replied. She was looking across the room at Milly, who was nodding sagely and making murmurous approving noises along with everyone else, and who seemed to have identified as forcefully with the narrator as anyone else had. Neither of the women who sat to either side of Milly, one of whom looked to be in her thirties and the other in her forties, could match her robust figure, but they didn’t seem at all frail: there was color in their cheeks and a marked liveliness in their manner a they fed on one another’s fascination and good will.

None of which signifies, Steve thought, that they’re anything but completely crazy, intoxicated by the chance to pool their craziness. Such was the atmosphere of the meeting, however, that Steve felt ashamed of the judgment as soon as he’d formulated it. He decided, on due reflection, that it didn’t matter whether he believed Jim’s story or not, or whether anyone else really believed it, or even whether Jim believed it himself. It was the kind of story that had to be treated earnestly and represented as actual experience in order to take full effect. If it were only to be reckoned a traveler’s tale, like a mariner’s account of singing mermaids, a salesman’s account of some farmer’s daughter or a scaremonger’s account of a brief encounter with a maniac serial killer, it had to be treated exactly as the members of AlAbAn were treating it in order to generate its particular frisson—and that frisson was something to be valued in itself, as a kind of intoxication far more delicate than alcohol or ecstasy could produce. As someone who prided himself on being a connoisseur of delicacy, Steve thought, he ought to be wholeheartedly in favor of that kind of thrill.

Amelia Rockham made a second huge pot of tea, although many of her guests politely refused, and began to drift away in ones and twos. Steve and Janine waited politely until Milly signaled that she was ready to depart, and then they bid farewell to their hostess and Walter Wainwright before making their way back to the Citroen.

“Is it always like that?” Janine asked Milly, as they got into the car.

“The group, yes,” Milly said. “The story wasn’t typical, by any means. Most are closer to the stereotype: little aliens in saucer-shaped spaceships, with operating tables and bright lights, with or without lengthy dialogues in which one of the aliens explains the reason for the whole enterprise, usually involving the imminent extinction of the human race by virtue of nuclear war or ecocatastrophe, or both.”

“Is that the sort of thing that happened to you?” Steve asked, tilting his head so that he could see Milly’s face in the mirror.

“Yes and no,” she replied, shortly, blushing.

“Have you told your story to the group yet?” Janine asked, as Steve switched the engine on.

“No,” Milly said. “Nobody hassles you to tell, if you’re not ready, I think Walter might worry about me, a little—he makes paternal comments occasionally—but the others have the patience of saints.”

“I’ve seen that kind of paternal interest before,” Steve said. “Some teachers are the same way—the kind who used to be always patting the kids on the head or the knee, before all physical contact was outlawed. It’s usually harmless, of course—the ones who fantasize about taking it further don’t last long in the profession—but it’s still slightly suspect.”

“Walter’s not like that,” Milly replied, with conviction. “He’s absolutely sincere.”

“That’s the salesman’s motto, isn’t it?” Steve said, as he headed off towards Alderbury. “Sincerity is the key—once you can fake that, you’re made. Did you say that he was an insurance salesman, in his working days?”

“I don’t know,” Milly said. “I think someone mentioned once that he used to work for the Prudential, but I’ve no idea what his job was.”

Steve couldn’t suppress a brief smirk. Walter Wainwright, the man from the Pru, he thought. Back in the days when the outfit prided itself on the individual attention it gave its customers, always sending its agents round to collect premiums, long before England became the Empire of the Financial Advisers. Aloud, he said “Is there something going on between him and Amelia Rockham?”

“I doubt it, at their age” Milly said, dryly. “They’ve known one another for years—since they were our age, at least, and probably since their schooldays. Amelia told me once that they knew one another before they married their respective spouses, and there might have been a wistful note in her voice, but I’d hesitate to drawn any conclusions from that. They’re both widowed now, though, and they seem to be close—they certainly see one another outside the meetings, although I doubt that it involves any hot sex. I’d like to think our friendship would last as long as that, wouldn’t you, Jan?”

“Yes, I would,” Janine replied, “Although it’s bound to be difficult once people start pairing off and getting married.”

“I’ve got no plans,” Milly said, “and Alison seems to specialize in dating men who are already married nowadays. How about you?”

Steve glanced sideways, knowing that it would be Janine’s turn to blush. She didn’t reply to Milly’s provocative question.

“It needn’t matter, anyway,” Milly said, as soon as it became clear that Janine had no comment to make. “None of us would marry the kind of husband who’d monopolize us, would we? We’d carry on being friends no matter what.”

“We ought to get together with Ali next week,” Janine said. “It’s been too long.”

“Absolutely,” Milly said. “She’s bound to have some tales to tell. She’s well on her way to becoming the Town Hall tart. Have you met Alison, Steve?”

“No,” Janine answered for him. “I’ve explained that boy-friends aren’t allowed on our girls’ nights out.”

“We could arrange something more decorous that he wouldn’t find quite as shocking,” Milly suggested. “A weekend excursion to the coast, maybe.”

“Steve plays cricket,” Janine said. “Saturdays and Sundays, most weeks.”

“Well, no one’s perfect,” Milly said. “At least he’s remembered his abduction experience, even if it did need hypnotherapy to help him remember it. You should try that, Jan—dredge up your own experience. Everybody’s had at least one, you know.”

“I’ll leave mine safely buried for the time being,” Janine replied. “I’m sure it won’t be as lurid as yours.”

“We really must try to get Ali along to the next meeting,” Milly countered. “Hers is bound to involve alien sex. I’d love to see the expression on Walter’s face while he listened to one of Ali’s adventures. Amelia would just nod her head maternally, though, and sympathize. She’s imperturbable.”

While this exchange continued between the two girls, Steve kept his eyes on the road, looking out for stray deer and wishing that the unlit stretch connecting West Grimstead to Alderbury didn’t look quite so much like a road that wasn’t really a road at all, mysteriously heading directly to nowhere. On the other hand, he thought, how wonderful would it be to belong to a world in which intelligence was everywhere, and in which the only fundamental political philosophy was creationism?

Janine and Milly’s private discussion petered out as they reached Alderbury. “Shall we stop off for something to eat?” Steve asked, as he turned on to the A36. “I didn’t get away from school until half past five, so I haven’t had a chance.”

“I’m okay,” Milly said. “I had a snack before I came out.”

“We can stop off at the Chinese takeaway on the corner of my street after we drop Milly off, if you like,” Janine said. “We can eat at my place.”

“Good idea.” Steve said.

“You will be going to go to the next meeting, won’t you?” Milly put in, quickly.

Janine tried to save Steve from the necessity of answering by saying “I don’t know,” and would probably have gone on to say that she could let Milly know when they got together the following week, but Steve had already decided that he didn’t need saving.

“We can pick you up at the same time, if you like,” he said. “I’ll give it one more go, at least. It’s free, after all—and anything’s better than watching TV.”

“Thanks,” Milly said. “I appreciate it. The bus is awful, and I don’t like begging lifts from the others, even though a couple of them drive through Salisbury on their way further west.”

“Warminster used to get a lot of UFO activity, didn’t it?” Steve said. “Cley Hill was quite famous back in the fifties and sixties, so I hear.”

“Some of the long-term members remember it fondly,” Milly said. “The whole of Salisbury Plain was said to be a hot spot. That’s probably why Wiltshire has its own branch of AlAbAn—most of the others are in big cities, although I think there’s one in Devon.”

“They used to get a lot of crop circles in the Pewsey area,” Janine said, “but I think the fashion’s passed. Maybe the aliens are attracted to Stonehenge—they probably built it, along with the pyramids.”

“The armed services have a long tradition of using the plain for military exercises,” Steve pointed out. “Lots of helicopters ferrying men back and forth—and all that empty airspace higher up for testing new aircraft.”

Milly didn’t object to the injection of skepticism. When they dropped her off at her flat, she seemed to be in a very good mood. She thanked Steve profusely for the lift, and told Janine that she would call her to firm up arrangements for the following week.

“Milly doesn’t seem the AlAbAn type, somehow,” Steve said, as he drove away in the direction of Old Sarum, where Janine had a bedsit in a triply divided terraced house. “How did she get involved in it?”

“I’m not sure,” Janine replied. “I think it was someone she knew from her old support group who got her involved.”

“But she really does believe that she was abducted by aliens?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. It’s the only thing I’ve ever known her to be reluctant to talk about. She’s always urging Ali and me to go with her to meetings, but she won’t tell us what supposedly happened to her. Now I’ve seen the group, though, I can see why she likes the atmosphere, and the etiquette. You don’t get a lot of feedback when you spend all day handing out parking tickets. She’s been threatened with violence on many an occasion—one white van man told her in great detail exactly what he was going to do when he raped her. She took a bit of the color out of his cheeks by telling him exactly what she was going to do by way of reprisal, but it shook her up just the same. She can strike an intimidating attitude, but she’s not as strong as she looks. She can be very moody—but you saw how tonight cheered her up. I know it seems a bit silly, but I think the group does her good, and probably does its other members good too. It’s harmless, at least. I was surprised that you were so quick to offer her another lift, though. Fancy her, do you?”

“I thought it would be interesting to take another look,” Steve said. “At the meeting, not Milly. I’d like to see if the other stories they tell are as enterprising as that one. If they are…well, it’ll be much better than television, and it’s only once a fortnight.”

He found a parking-spot not far from the house where Janine had a top floor flat. The house wasn’t dissimilar to the one in which his own flat was located, but he had a ground floor apartment which, though slightly smaller than its own upper-level companion, was considerably more spacious than Janine’s garret. It was only a short walk to the Chinese restaurant. While they waited for their order to be cooked and boxed, Janine said: “Do you think going to the meetings might help you remember more of your own nightmare?”

“Maybe,” Steve said.

“And that’s what you want to do?”

“Maybe,” Steve repeated. “I honestly don’t know. Part of me thinks that getting deeper into this will only make me crazier than I already am, part of me thinks that Sylvia might actually be right, and that I might learn something useful—from the group as well as from the nightmare. It’s the uncertainty as much as anything else that makes me think I ought to go back at least once. I can stop at any time, can’t I?”

“So you’re taking it seriously—the alien abduction thing?”

“It depends what you mean by seriously,” he parried.

“What do you mean by seriously?” Janine pressed on.

Steve shrugged his shoulders. “What Sylvia Joyce would mean, I guess. Even if the stories can’t be taken literally, they might still be revealing in psychological terms—generally as well as personally. In a sense, the stories might be more interesting as dreams to be interpreted than mere accidents of happenstance.”

“You never did tell me exactly why you went to see the hypnotherapist in the first place,” Janine reminded him. “What is this phobia you have?”

Steve looked away, as if to study the menu posted on the restaurant wall. “Like your friend Milly,” he said, although he knew full well that he was merely procrastinating, “I’m not quite ready to tell you everything yet. A mystery or two helps keep a relationship interesting, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps it does,” she countered, “but only in the sense that it provides a target to aim at. Am I supposed to winkle it out of you by guesswork and experiment?”

“No,” Steve said. “Just let me work up to it for a while. To change the subject, the advice Jim’s time-traveler gave him was pretty sound. If the ecocatastrophe does accelerate, survival skills might be a good thing to have. There’s a course starting at the old technical college next week, still open for enrolments. It’s ten weeks in the classroom—Wednesday evenings, so it won’t clash with AlAbAn—then a field trip in December, with two nights sleeping rough on the plain. We could do it, if you like.”

“Why not?” Janine replied. “It’s always good to know how to catch, skin and cook a rabbit—and as you say, anything’s better than having to watch television. I’m not moving to Antarctica, though, no matter how hot the weather gets.”

When Steve saw Sylvia Joyce for a second time on the following Tuesday, the therapist was almost as glad to hear that Steve had gone to AlAbAn as Rhodri Jenkins had been to hear that Steve had gone to Sylvia Joyce. When Steve added Milly’s gratitude for the forging of an extra link between herself and Janine and the convenience of regular lifts of East Grimstead into the equation, he seemed to be delighting a great many people—which made a pleasant change from all the alienating he’d done as a result of the Tracy/Jill fiasco.

“How’s the relaxation going?” Sylvia asked.

“Too soon to tell,” Steve reported. “I made the CD, as you suggested, last Friday night, and I’ve been playing it to myself regularly. I’ve only spent two days in the classroom since, so I can’t tell yet whether it’ll have a lasting effect on my stress level at work. We were playing away on Sunday and I had to cross the Test, so I tried to go through the process while I was on the bridge. Maybe I felt slightly less queasy than usual—I’ll need a lot more experiments before I can be sure.”

“That’s all good,” the therapist assured him. “I’m sure you’ll see the effects soon. Have you had any further thoughts about attempting another regression?”

“I’m not sure there’ll be any need,” he said. “I think I might be able to make more progress consciously. The AlAbAn members may be a little bit crazy, but it might turn out to be a constructive kind of craziness. I’ve only heard one report so far, and that one didn’t even get as far as outer space, but it’s already triggered some ideas.”

“Have you recovered any more of your own experience?”

“Not really,” Steve admitted. “I haven’t had any recurrence of the nightmare itself—so far as I can remember—but the imagery does keep on niggling at my mind. I think I prefer trying to deal with it while I’m fully conscious, with the aid of a scientific outlook, rather than having it seize me by the throat while I’m off guard.”

“Isn’t that just beating around the bush?” Sylvia asked him. “You can think of any number of excuses for not trying to get to grips with it, but there’s no substitute for head-on confrontation.”

“I don’t think head-on confrontation is the best way to go,” Steve said. “Some things are best approached by stealth, and a scientific attitude is never a bad thing. I need time to practice the relaxation techniques, and to bring them to bear on all the different aspects of my life in which they might be useful. This might be one race that slow and steady really can win.

“If that’s the way you want to do it, Steve,” Sylvia said, blandly, “that’s fine. I can’t talk about my other clients, as you know, but you wouldn’t be the first who wanted to talk all around his problem as a way of not facing up to it. You know, don’t you, how many psychotherapists it takes to change a light-bulb.”

“Yes I do,” Steve said. “Only one—and pretty much any one will do—but the light-bulb has to want to be changed.”

“Do you want to be changed, Steve?” the therapist followed up, relentlessly.

“My filament hasn’t gone yet,” Steve told her. “I know you’re used to working with the traditional brand of light-bulb they still sell in Sainsbury’s, but I’m the new sort—the low-energy, long-life, curled-up-radiant-tube sort. I’m not the reckless type, in spite of what Rhodri Jenkins may have told you about my love life.”

“I don’t talk to other clients about you, either,” Sylvia told him.

“Of course not,” Steve said, “but that doesn’t prevent your clients from talking about each other, does it? I bet he’s mentioned me to you, since he found out I took his advice—just by way of being helpful, of course. You might not be an orthodox Freudian, but he is, at least in the sense that he thinks that sex is the root of all psychological problems. He thinks I’m a Don Juan because I’ve had four of my female colleagues in the last two years, while he’s only had half a dozen of them in twenty, despite being made deputy head—and most of them were probably married ones bored enough to bonk anyone who could make them feel more attractive than a soggy chip. Actually, my attitude to sex couldn’t be healthier, and I’m perfectly happy with my current girl-friend. That has nothing at all to do with my phobias, or my classroom-induced stress.”

“Are you familiar with the quotation, ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’?” Sylvia asked him.

“It’s from Hamlet,” Steve said, relieved to be able to retain the intellectual high ground. “Shakespeare’s hymn of praise to methodical madness. I was just trying to make the point that my phobias aren’t symptomatic of some sexual hang-up, in spite of what you might suspect or Rhodri might have hinted to you.”

“Thanks for sharing that with me,” Sylvia said. “You’ll forgive me, I suppose, if I reserve my judgment until we can resume our attempts to get to the bottom of the problem.”

“It’s possible, isn’t it,” Steve said, “that some problems don’t actually have bottoms—that they’re just what they seem to be, and nothing more? And it’s possible, too, that some problems are better solved by whittling away patiently, rather than attempting to blast them open with dynamite?”

“Quite possible,” Sylvia conceded. “But I wouldn’t be doing my job, would I, if I didn’t explore all the possibilities available to us?”

Steve and Janine went to the first meeting of the survival course on the day after Steve’s second session with Sylvia Joyce, but it turned out to be a formularistic introduction session, with the standard icebreakers that now seemed to be universally accepted as “best practice” by teachers of every sort, although Steve loathed them. The icebreakers were followed by a long pep talk on the necessity of self-sufficiency in a fast-changing world.

On the Thursday night Janine went out with Milly and Alison, but Steve didn’t mind being deserted, because it gave him a chance to play poker on-line. He played for four hours, ending up thirty pounds down—an unusually bad result. He always played in low-stakes games that were too trivial to attract predatory sharks, and was usually able to come out ahead, but the competition had been atypically disciplined and the cards he’d been dealt had been profoundly unexciting.

On Friday he and Janine met up at the wine bar again to celebrate the beginning of the weekend.

“Did you have a good time last night?” he asked.

“Great,” she said. “And before you ask, we hardly talked about you at all. Milly told Alison how extremely good-looking you were, and that you were one more reason why she ought to start coming to AlAbAn meetings with us, but Ali didn’t seem impressed.”

“Her description obviously didn’t do me justice,” Steve observed. “I can’t imagine why Alison wouldn’t be prepared to go to the ends of the earth just to get a glimpse of me, if my magnificence had been properly explained. You must have run me down, so as to keep the opposition to a minimum.”

“It was me who suggested that we give Milly a lift to AlAbAn, remember?” Janine said. “I’d hardly have done that if I were afraid of opposition. Don’t worry—I’m sure you’ll meet all my friends eventually. You haven’t introduced me to any of yours yet.”

“They’re all cricketers and schoolteachers,” Steve said. “You’d find them incredibly boring. Besides which, I’m not as brave as you—I wouldn’t take the risk of introducing a girl as stunningly beautiful as you to any of my male friends. I may be a young Adonis—I’m quoting my deputy head there, so it must be true—but I’m too good a poker player to take that sort of reckless risk.”

“They’d probably find me boring,” Janine said. “I’m just a travel agent. I’m getting to the age now when I wish I’d tried a bit harder at school—sad, isn’t it? Milly was saying the same thing last night—she’s beginning to get a sense of unfulfilled potential. She never used to crack a book when we were at school, but she reads a lot nowadays. I told her that she ought to go to the tech and do A levels in the evenings. She might, if Ali or I would go with her—but Ali’s got a career path of sorts already mapped out for her in local government, and I’d be better off doing an in-house management training course. I’ve been thinking of putting in for one.”

“Why not?” Steve said. “Go for it. Might as well take advantage of any opportunities that are going.”

“Milly and Alison said the same. None of us is likely to get on to the property ladder any time soon unless we can bump our salaries up, even if we find a suitable partner.”

Steve was well aware of the problems of getting on to the property ladder, even if one could find a suitable partner with whom to bear the burden of a mortgage, but he didn’t want to start discussing his relationship with Janine in terms like that just yet. “Milly gave me the impression that your girls’ nights out were far too lewd for tender ears like mine,” he said. “It’s a bit disappointing to discover that you spend your time comparing salaries and promotion prospects.”

“Oh, we did the X-rated stuff too—not me, I hasten to add. They wanted all the lurid details, of course, but I maintained a diplomatic silence. Ali’s the one who usually provides that sort of entertainment, although Milly’s had her moments. Don’t let your imagination run riot, though…on second thoughts, maybe I should have let you carry on thinking that it was all shop talk. What do you talk about when you go out boozing after your cricket matches?”

“We talk about all the reasons why the umpire’s decision to give us out LBW was an absolute atrocity, how many times we nearly found the edge while bowling but didn’t quite, how many times we thought about hooking their fast bowler for six while batting, but decided to duck instead, and whether the Pakistanis really were guilty of ball-tampering in the final test. It’s riveting stuff, at least as interesting as the average teachers’ drinking session, when everyone complains at great length about the iniquities of CPD and how much we all hate the beginning of term—that’s why I always sneak off early to get together with you, if I can.”

“Well, I’m glad I can attract you away from such strong competition,” she said. “That makes me feel really good.”

Unfortunately, that Saturday’s game was an away fixture, and by the time Steve got back to Salisbury Janine was beginning to wonder, audibly, whether she really wanted to spend as much time hanging around waiting for him to favor her with his belated presence. He assured her that winter was not far off now that Autumn had begun, and that the season would be over soon enough. They patched things up on the Sunday, but they didn’t meet up again until Wednesday, when the survival course made little progress, being mostly concerned with nutrition—highlighting the deficiency diseases that might result from inadequate vitamin provision—and the elements of paramedical improvisation, which Steve had previously thought of as “first aid”.

On Thursday, Steve picked Janine and Milly up in quick succession on the way to the AlAbAn meeting. Milly seemed to be in a much more buoyant and frivolous mood than she had been on the previous occasion, presumably because Steve was no longer an unknown quantity and she no longer felt the need to be wary of him. She asked how their survival course was going in a flirtatious manner, and Janine countered by asking Milly, in a much more earnest tone, whether she’d thought any more about going to A level evening classes.

“I don’t know,” Milly said, dubiously. “I don’t really rate the tech, you know. I did a martial arts course last year, remember, and I was a bit disappointed. I wanted to learn to hurt people, but it was more about learning how not to hurt people.”

“A levels aren’t quite the same thing, are they?” Janine said. “You get a much better class of homework.”

“You’re only saying that because you were too scared to let me practice on you.” Milly retorted. “Ali let me throw her—mind you, she’s not much bigger than you are, so it wasn’t hard. If you’d been going out with Steve then I could have borrowed him, and found out whether big people really do fall harder.”

“I’m not exactly a rugby player,” Steve pointed out. “You’d be taller than me if you wore high heels.”

“I think the answer I was looking for,” Milly said, “was: You’re welcome to throw me any time, darling.” She giggled as she said it, revealing that she had a rather infectious laugh

“That might have been the answer you were looking for, darling,” Janine said, stifling the infection that made her want to giggle in her turn, “but if you’d got it, you’d both have been in trouble. You’d do better to set your eyes on Walter Wainwright, Milly—an affair with an older man would do you good, or at least calm you down.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Milly said, breezily. “Amelia looks innocent and harmless, but so did Lucrezia Borgia.”

“According to the head of history at school, Lucrezia Borgia was much maligned,” Steve put in. “She really was sweet and innocent, but horribly exploited by her relatives and direly besmirched by historians.”

“Is the head of history one of the ones you seduced?” Milly asked, clinging insistently to her flirtatious vein. “Jan told me all about your checkered past.”

“Good god, no,” Steve said. “And it’s really not that checkered.”

“Are you going to tell, your story tonight, Mil?” Janine asked—a question that immediately dampened the mood. Milly took some time before muttering a denial. Steve glanced sideways, attempting to judge whether the move had been deliberate, but Janine wouldn’t meet his eye.

They got to the meeting a little earlier than they had the previous week, although Steve wasn’t consciously aware of having pressed the accelerator any more firmly, and had time to watch the greater number of the faithful arrive. Janine drew Milly aside when they’d collected their cups of tea, so Steve slipped into scientific observer mode and studied the AlAbAn regulars—especially Walter Wainwright, who was busy greeting people as they came in. After watching him for a few minutes Steve decided that his initial judgment had been a little hard on Walter Wainwright, even if he did turn out to be an ex-Man from the Pru. On observing him more intently, Steve decided that Walter was neither as much of a lech nor as much of a con man as he’d first elected to believe. Beyond the insistent amiability and quasi-paternal attitude there was an aura of authority and competence, and there was a genuine warmth in the way he addressed people.

Walter Wainwright must have observed Steve observing him, because he came over just as Janine returned from her intimate chat with Milly. “It’s good to see you again, Steve,” he said. “I’m glad you decided to return—I’m always disappointed when people don’t give us a second chance. It’s good to see you too, Janine. I saw your parents on Saturday, and mentioned that I’d seen you. I hope I didn’t put my foot in it—they seemed rather surprised that you’d been to an AlAbAn meeting.”

“I hadn’t had a chance to mention it to them myself,” Janine said, vaguely. “I really must give them a ring some time soon—thanks for reminding me.”

Steve knew that Janine was rather dilatory in the matter of keeping in touch with her parents, although he wasn’t sure exactly why. On the one occasion when she’d taken him to meet them, on a Sunday when he didn’t have a game, they’d all gone to the local pub for lunch. It had seemed to him to be a fairly comfortable experience, as such experiences went, but Janine had been very glad when it was over. Steve had remarked that Janine and her parents didn’t see eye-to-eye on a good may issues, especially the propriety of working as an “office skivvy” for Thomas Cook’s, but they hadn’t seemed to be any harder on her than the average concerned parent Obviously, they’d expected better of her, and would presumably have been more content if she’d had a job more akin to Steve’s, but he’d seen far worse performances at every parents’ evening he’d ever been forced to attend.

“Is there anything you’d like me to say to them if I see them this weekend, my dear?” Walter said, radiating concern, “or anything you’d particularly like me not to say.”

“Nothing at all,” Janine said, with a furtive smile. Steve took this to mean that she was perfectly prepared to let her parents suspect that she might think she’d been abducted by aliens. From her point of view, he supposed, that was probably an alternative preferable to letting them believe that she was in a steady relationship with a man who thought that he’d been abducted by aliens

Steve couldn’t resist saying: “Do Janine’s parents know that you believe that everyone in the world has been abducted at least once, Mr. Wainwright?”

“Call me Walter, Steve,” the old man replied. “And yes, of course they do. I don’t hide my opinions. It wouldn’t do me any good if I tried—it would only lead to people in the pub pointing at me slyly and whispering: That’s nutty old Walter Wainwright—he thinks that everybody in the world’s been abducted by aliens. It’s better to be open about such things, don’t you think?”

“I guess so,” Steve agreed, wondering whether the old man was hinting that he ought to be a bit more open about things, even though he couldn’t possibly know how open Steve was or wasn’t.

“Friends of Milly’s are particularly welcome here,” Walter added. “We’re all very fond of Milly.”

“She’s been my best friend for years,” Janine said. “This is the one thing we haven’t shared, until now. She’s never told me what happened to her, though.”

“It often takes time,” Walter said. “We all had to wait until we were ready, and we understand perfectly why it takes some people longer to reach that point than others. You must both take all the time you need. Excuse me, please.” Walter allowed himself to be drawn away by Amelia Rockham.

Janine was still smiling, and Steve could see that she had no intention of explaining to Walter that she was only here to keep Steve company.

“You want your parents to worry about you, don’t you?” he said.

“You’re the one who thinks that a little mystery spices up a relationship,” she retorted. “Let’s sit down—we’re about to start.”

They took their places on the Naugahyde settee, which was already beginning to feel like “their” seat. When the preliminaries were over and newcomers had been duly advised of the rules, Walter invited “Mary”—a middle-aged and very well-furnished woman, who gave the impression that she had certainly never suffered from an eating disorder of the sort that had once afflicted poor Milly—to tell the story of an encounter she had had some twenty-five years before, in 1981. The prospect did not seem overly exciting, at first—but Steve found out soon enough that appearances could be quite deceptive.