So, the slut had met somebody else. Of course she had. And it wasn’t that nancy-boy photographer either. Dorian had been following the runt for two days. He had engaged the services of a reliable taxi driver, telling the fool that he was a private detective from Ireland, sent to find the daughter of a rich client. Alex had taken dirty pictures of the girl and that’s why they were following him. Money was no object. Good was on their side, he assured him. The cockney halfwit was delighted and, it turned out, was a nifty driver who successfully followed Alex unseen. After all, who’s going to notice a black cab in London? However, it was costing Dorian a fortune. He had followed Alex to faraway Hendon and waited outside a synagogue for hours while he attended a family bar mitzvah. Then there were endless trips to and from Fleet Street and Soho – all the time with the meter running. By far the worst aspect of all this for Dorian was having to make conversation with Bert, the driver, who complained endlessly about the immigrants in London. He occasionally remembered that Dorian was a ‘Paddy’ then would apologise to him saying, ‘The Paddies is alright though. At least you’re white – know what I mean? Anyway you don’t saand like a Paddy.’ Dorian smiled and nodded agreement. Bert wanted to say ‘you don’t look like no Paddy neither,’ but he didn’t want to bring up his looks. To be honest, the poor sod was terrifying to look at, although he didn’t frighten Bert. Bert’s brother had half his face blown off in the war. It was a nasty business looking so terribly changed when you were the same, good person inside. Bert was glad to be helping this man do his job. It wasn’t every driver would pick him up looking like that. Never judge a book by its cover. That was one thing Bert had learned from his brother’s ordeal. Sometimes people that look terrible on the outside could be soft as kittens and good as gold on the inside.

But not Dorian. Even by his own standards he was beginning to get very wound up. Despite the ordeal he had been going through he found he liked London better than Ireland. He enjoyed the anonymity here. If people looked at him with pity, they did not end up on his doorstep with a tray of scones. They simply passed him by. Sometimes he saw an expression of fear slide across the face of a shop assistant when they saw him. Dorian found other people’s fear upset him less than he might have thought.

Dorian realised that perhaps he had had enough of small town mollycoddling. There was a hard edge to the city and his own edges had hardened to match them. In a big city there was more choice. It was hard work finding love in his small town in Ireland. Over here he could buy girls, locally. He found the idea humiliating. But there were other options too. The evening before he had been taking a stroll through central London and passed by Great Ormond Street Hospital. He had specialised in paediatrics at college. Perhaps there might be a job for him there. It was something to think about while he listened to Bert wittering on.

He had decided to bankroll Bert and give his search one more day. However, when Alex pulled up outside a ladies’ clothes shop on the Kings Road Dorian was more or less ready to call a halt.

Then, the name of the shop caught his eye: That Girl. It was beginning to sink in where he had seen it before when out she came.

My God, but she was as magnificent as ever.

She was wearing a short white dress. Sluttish, of course, as were all the modern fashions, but she wore it with that sweet innocence he remembered of the child he had fallen in love with. His sight of her was fleeting, and as the car took off he anxiously told Bert to follow.

‘Is that her?’ Bert asked.

‘Yes,’ said Dorian. ‘Don’t lose them.’

‘I won’t. Poor girl. Looks so innocent too. Makes you fink dunnit?’

‘Indeed,’ Dorian said.

The MG pulled up and parked outside Lancaster Gate tube station and the photographer and Hanna walked across into the park. Dorian told Bert to wait then followed them on foot. He stayed a good distance behind and waited until they turned a corner. Dorian looked behind the hedge and saw that the photographer had set up his camera. Hanna was sitting under a tree. He walked around the area until he found a series of bushes on a mound that was large enough to cover him but had a small gap in the leaves that he could look through straight on to Hanna.

It was essential that nobody knew he was there. He could not reveal himself. Not yet. As stealthily as a fox, he bent down on his haunches and watched.

The photographer was blurting out inane platitudes. He could have killed the little shit and wished he would be quiet but after a few moments in the presence of Hanna’s beauty, even Alex’s idiotic burblings faded into the background. Unlike the photographs in the paper, Hanna had barely any makeup on. She looked exactly the same as his girl Hanna. Daughter, lover and, as he had hoped, wife. He thought he would be angry when he saw her, but instead he was filled with that feeling he described as love. He wanted her, in the same way that he’d always wanted her. Despite everything she had done, he wanted her back. He would have to punish her, of course. But she would forgive him, as she had always done and he would try to forgive her for what she had done to him. Things would never be the same again but perhaps they could start a new life, here. Jealousy and attraction washed over him. Nobody could elicit this kind of emotion from Dorian. Nobody made him feel the way she did. Most people made him feel nothing except irritation and sometimes anger, if he let them. Hanna drew feelings out of him he did not know were there. She made him feel – human. She made him feel like he thought a man should feel. When she wasn’t there he was empty of emotion. Now, seeing her again, in the flesh, it all came flooding back. He had to have her again.

As he watched, Dorian began to fantasise about how he might get her back. She would take some persuading; he knew that. He also knew that they were meant to be together and surely she would know that too. He was lost in that thought when he realised another person had entered the equation. A man. Another man was watching her! Except he was doing it openly from behind the tall hedge opposite. And now, what was this? Alex invited him into the circle as an audience. Dorian felt sickness taking him over. His head began to spin. Another man was moving in on his territory. Taking over his position as watcher, observer and, finally, sexual predator.

Then it got worse.

As Alex began to put his camera away the young man (he was young, a good deal younger than Dorian) walked over to Hanna then wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. Dorian lost all breath. The shock was terrible. She did not push him away but seemed to respond. Dorian thought he was going to throw up, but at the same time he could not take his eyes off her. She was responding. It was clear what she wanted. Doubly clear because she had never wanted it from him in that way. Part of Dorian wanted to turn away and run but he knew that would be the coward’s way out. He had to face this.

So he watched them.

He followed Alex to the gate, knowing they would not be long behind him. He dismissed Bert and followed behind the young lovers on foot for the rest of that day and late into the night. He stood with his head down in bus shelters while they sat on street benches, talking. He dipped into doorways when they stopped walking to kiss. When they went into a cafe in Soho for breakfast in the early hours, he sat on the pavement opposite, pretending to be a poor beggar so that he would not lose sight of them.

As the night wore on the hurt hardened.

At 3 a.m., he sat in the back of a night bus to Chelsea. At this point, even he was wondering how they could not have seen him. How they had not noticed that for most of ten hours a crippled man had been following them. Love is blind. He had heard the expression but never understood what it meant before.

At this point Dorian thought he could go face-to-face with Hanna and the man and they would neither care nor notice. They were so heedlessly, carelessly in love that Dorian might as well not exist.

Well, he would show them that he did exist.

Dorian followed them as they walked up the Kings Road. When they stopped outside a door, Dorian dived into the yard of a derelict basement flat and watched as the skinny young man took Hanna to the door, where he assumed she lived. He was skinny and delicate looking. A pathetic physique. Dorian was broader and stronger. More of a man than that kid could ever be. What use was such a wimp to a girl like Hanna? After all, she had almost killed a man Dorian noted, almost admiringly now. She needed a man who could keep her in check. She’d walk all over a boy like that. Dorian burned with hate as the young man kissed Hanna on the doorstep. He did not follow her inside, which Dorian took as indication that she didn’t live alone.

He allowed himself one last look at her face as she entered the house. She was smiling, beaming like a fool. Dorian had never liked Hanna’s smile. He hadn’t seen her smile often. It was a cause of annoyance to him that even when he tried to amuse her, he rarely elicited a smile. When she smiled for other people he took it as a direct slight to him. In any case, even as a child, the subtle beauty of her face was more sublime when it was resting. Her face was certainly not resting now as she waved and blew kisses. Her eyes were dancing with joy. Dorian had never hated or wanted her more.

As the young man came down the steps Dorian clenched the iron bars of the basement to steady his anger. He felt one of them come loose in his hand. It was a sign – a gift. He pulled the bar off then, keeping a safe distance, stuck to the shadows and followed the boy. He waited until the boy walked in front of a side alleyway that Dorian picked out when following them earlier.

‘Hello,’ he shouted to him from a few feet behind.

Matthew nearly jumped out of his skin. Lost in a reverie of love, the voice of this stranger brought him back down to earth. Matthew stopped walking then turned and saw a man running towards him. It seemed like he was in trouble of some kind.

Matthew said, ‘Can I help you?’ The next thing he knew the man had strong-armed him into an alleyway and thrown him to the ground. He was strong and as Matthew tried to get up he put his foot on Matthew’s chest and raised what looked like an iron bar in his fist.

Shocked, Matthew said, ‘What do you want? Money? I can get you money.’

The man laughed.

‘You have something I want but it’s not yours to give – it’s mine to take.’

He was talking as if he knew him. Confused, Matthew asked again, ‘What do you want?’

As the blows began raining down on his body, searing pain slammed his head, his chest, his shoulder, over and over again until he knew he was going to die and gave in to the pain. Just before he lost consciousness, Matthew’s hands fell from where he had been trying to protect his head. It was then that he caught sight of his attacker’s face. It wasn’t a man at all, but a hideous demon. Perhaps, even the devil himself.