91

He looks up again. There are ships all around them, the Liver birds arching above them, but they are walking quickly towards the shore, the city, the trams, away from the sea.

He blinks his eyes again, and opens them on a summer landscape: green lawns, overhanging trees. He is sitting on a bench, beside a hedge, watching a game of tennis. Diana is playing with a young man, returning the ball with great gusto, running and laughing like a spirited schoolgirl. The young man looks a little sinister, dark and toothy, and Angus frowns. He looks around for Tiny, but Tiny is no longer there.

A couple of ponies poke their heads over the hedge, and Angus walks over to pat them.

As he draws closer, they seem a little less friendly, huge teeth showing in their mouths. They are scowling and grimacing at him.

Angus looks back in Diana’s direction. The game is temporarily in abeyance; a small boy is running around looking for the ball. Diana nods encouragingly at Angus: “Give them an apple; they like that,” she shouts.

Angus reaches into his pocket and draws out an apple, clearly to his own surprise.

He offers it to the first of the ponies, who wolfs it down with huge teeth.

Looking round, he is just in time to see the arching fang-ranks of a shark’s mouth descending towards him, and draws back with a start.

It is the second pony, yet is also a shark when it opens its mouth.

He turns back to Diana.

She is still laughing and nodding, but the tennis court has become dark and deserted, as if evening has come on. A wind starts up, rattling leaves across the desolate space.

Angus turns back from the pines towards Diana. The young man, now wearing a black uniform, is leading her towards a low table covered with a white sheet. There is another man waiting there with a scalpel in one hand.

“No, Diana, no,” he yells.

“It’s all right, they’re friends of mine,” she shouts back to him, ringingly, throwing back her head and laughing.

At that the second man whips a plastic bag over her head, and we have a momentary glimpse of her eyes wide open in shock and terror when Angus again wakes up.