Four months passed and, as Britain geared up for a general election - a fetid stink of one at that - Lala was still lost in drink, and her episodes required more and more drugs to bring them under control. One night she awoke in a padded room in Cadillac, wearing a straitjacket, and seeing only a fog which coated everything. It had all been a blur since the funeral. Episodes of in and out, and Sèdonoudè’s worried eyes. And, the worried eyes of the taciturn Serge, who worried that if Lala now died as well, there was no guarantee he would not be evicted from the cottage on the estate’s grounds where he had made his life. Teddy’s false promise was not legally binding. Once Lala came home, stabilized by drugs, therapy, and rest from her destructive lifestyle, her friends came and went as before. Sèdonoudè toyed with the idea of going back to Mali to see his aging parents but knew that such a journey carried with it too many risks. Those of obligation: would his pity for his le

   The hammering on the door would have woken the dead. Instead, it woke a bleary-eyed Mr Akinwande who opened the door furiously. ‘What the god-damn business do you think this is?’ he said to the three stone faced brutes standing, intimidating him, on his own doorstep. ‘Shut it, sambo, we’re here looking for Billy O’Leary, know where he is?’ Even if he did know where Billy O’Leary was - which he did not - he was now only concerned with the use of the word ‘sambo’ in conjunction with himself, and the grave offence that it offered. Proving Billy’s suspicion that Mr Akinwande was a man it would be foolhardy to cross was right, he set his feet and began to swing punches. The thugs fought back but, as with most bullies, were only effective against those who, for either physical or psychological reasons, were unlikely to defend themselves. Their well-aimed kicks and punches merely glanced off their target, whose rage had elevated him to an adrenaline infused sphere far abo

A Small, Scientific Name in March  Jude Cameron opened the stiff window doors to the tiny balcony of his apartment on Rue Lachassaigne in downtown Bordeaux. The sky glowed sky blue and, for the first time, the warmth in the air superseded the cold, the vestiges of which glided gently as a cool undercurrent across his body as he rested his elbows on the balcony rail and looked down into the street. Down there, it was empty, apart from the meagre array of bicycles chained to the black, metal tubes meant for that purpose, the green recycling bin half in the road, Arabella’s old blue Volvo transporter, and the cigarette butts and other street detritus mixed in with the soot and dust of city life. It was quiet. A quiet, broken only by the Doppler effect of irregular cars and then, by the heavy, clunking footsteps of a jogger running down the middle of the empty road. The bearded man’s face strained red with effort as he looked determinedly into the middle distance, seeing

  Bordeaux was empty. Never, ever, had Lala seen it so. As Sèdonoudè drove Teddy’s old fiat along the Rue Aristide Briand, near Place de la Victoire, no soul was to be seen. The cafes that served the milling university students and the shoppers of the Rue St Katherine were shut. The punters, vanished. Only at food shops here and there were shoppers with scarves wrapped around their mouths, woollen gloves on hands, even though the sun had come out to kiss the benighted people of Bordeaux. Matchstick Lowry figures, clutching reusable cotton bags, seeking food for their caves. Lala rolled own the wind and, the smell! It smelled fresh as spring! The throat burning, sinus clogging foul odour of petrol fumes were gone. As they got near to the hospital, a semblance of normality returned with the urgency of flashing blue lights and now, totally unnecessary sirens. The interior of the Institut Bergoniè was a near silent study in motion, as hospital staff moved around covered i

   Sèdonoudè stood in the grocer’s shop on the corner nearest the entrance to the Institut Bergoniè. Grapes, isn’t that what all sick people have? He had not been behaving himself in Lala’s absence, or in the confinement that was now supposed to apply to everyone. Except for the most important public service workers in those essential roles of health, food, transport, and public safety. He had printed off his ‘attestation de dèplacement dèrogatoire’, and gone out for cigarettes and booze, and trysts with Linda in the back of Teddy’s old fiat. A gendarme had caught them in flagrante, and, after watching his dark buttocks heaving in between Linda’s milky white thighs for longer than necessary, he proceeded to extract a 135 euro fine from each of them, and then angrily deliver a long moral lecture of the bit ‘the public’ can do to help the nation in its time of great need. It was idiots like them, he said, which prevented him from visiting his mother in the ephad, adding tha