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She looked at Charlie. ‘What would I have to do?'

He shrugged. ‘Could be anything.' He reached for the phone and dialled the number, but nobody answered.

On Monday Glade took Charlie's paper into the restaurant with her. She waited until she had finished setting up, then she called the number again, using the pay-phone near the toilets. The first three times she dialled, the number was engaged, but she kept trying. At last a man's voice answered.

‘I'm calling about the advert,' she began.

‘Yes?'

‘This money,' and she paused, ‘what am I supposed to do for it?'

Like so much of what she said, it came out wrong and yet the man didn't laugh at her. Instead, he explained that he was a member of a medical foundation which was attached to the university. At present they were researching sleep staging – polysomnography, to be precise. They were advertising for subjects who might be willing to participate in their research.

‘I see,' Glade said uncertainly. ‘And what does it involve?'

The man told her she would be required to spend two nights at a clinic in North London. While she was sleeping, she'd be monitored.

‘Is that all?'

‘Think of it like this,' and the man sounded as if he was smiling, ‘we'll be paying you to sleep.'

Glade stared at the advertisement until it began to vibrate, slide sideways off the page.

‘We're starting a new programme on Wednesday,' the man went on. ‘You could come in then. Or Friday, if that's more convenient. What do you do?'

‘I'm a waitress,' Glade said.

‘May I take your name?'

‘Glade Spencer.'

Still holding the receiver to her ear, she turned and stared back down the corridor. The restaurant's double-doors stood open to the street. The sunlight that shone into the building reflected off the polished floor and almost blinded her. She watched two people walking in. They looked insubstantial, weightless, like pieces of burnt paper. They didn't appear to have feet.

We'll be paying you to sleep
.

She could think of nothing better.

When Glade returned from work that afternoon, she found a letter on the door-mat in the hall. It was from her mother. She bent down and picked it up, handling the envelope much as her father would have done, she realised, turning it over in her fingers, trying to discover what its purpose was, what it meant. ‘Glade Spencer,' she murmured. ‘Inglaterra.' With its loops and dashes, her mother's handwriting seemed to convey both generosity and carelessness.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Glade opened the envelope. One neatly folded sheet of mauve paper. She unfolded it and began to read.
Glade, darling, I know I should have written before now, but I've been so busy with the new apartment. Gerry says
– Glade lifted her head and stared out of the window. Whenever she received a letter from her mother, she always felt as if she had opened someone else's mail. Though she could see her own name on the envelope, its contents never seemed to be addressed to her. But she read on. Her mother talked about
whitewash and seafood. About Gerry's friends, who all had swimming-pools. About the heat. She seemed to expect Glade to understand, to enthuse with her – to
agree
. She might as well have been speaking a foreign language.
I don't blame them, do you? The sunshine, the maracas
…

That evening Glade built another fire, even though the weather was warmer and the trees outside her bedroom window were beginning to release their blossom; the winter had lasted so long that she had forgotten spring might be a possibility. At half-past six Charlie rang, to thank her for the weekend. She described what had happened when she called the number in the paper, then she asked him what he knew about sleep research. He began to tell her about sleep laboratories, somnolence, electrodes –

She interrupted him. ‘Electrodes?'

He laughed. ‘You won't even know they're there. They're like bits of sticking-plaster with wires attached to them. Or sometimes they use physiological glue. They monitor your brainwaves. Your eye-muscle movement as well.'

She shuddered slightly. ‘It won't do me any harm, then?'

‘I can't see how. And it's a hundred quid, remember.'

‘That's what the man I spoke to said.' She poked a piece of wood deeper into the fire. ‘So you think I can do it?'

‘Why not?' Charlie said. ‘It's a dress.'

She felt much better for having talked to Charlie. He seemed to bring clarity to situations that she found confusing. You needed people like that – people who would tell you that everything was all right, that you weren't mad.

Or if you were, then they'd look after you.

The front door slammed; her bedroom windows rattled in their frames. She turned round, looked out into the corridor. She saw the back of Sally's head rise into view. At the top of the stairs Sally stopped and kicked off both her shoes. One of them flew in strange slow-motion through the air, glancing off the wall, which it marked with a precise black tick, as if to
prove that it had been there. Sally vanished into the bathroom. The sudden, vicious crash of water on enamel.

Glade moved cautiously out of her room and down the corridor. ‘Sally?' As she reached the doorway to the bathroom, Sally brushed past her, trailing steam. Glade followed her into the kitchen. ‘Sally, would you do me a favour?'

‘Don't tell me. Feed the cat.'

‘It's only for two days.'

Sally looked at her for the first time since arriving home. ‘Miami, I suppose.'

‘No,' Glade said. ‘I'm going into a clinic.'

‘Nothing wrong, is there?' Sally's eyes widened and glittered. She lit a cigarette. ‘Are you all right?'

‘I'm fine,' Glade said. Which almost made her feel guilty. She felt she should have invented an illness, a disease. Something an American might give you. ‘I'm taking part in a sleep-research programme.'

‘Whatever for?'

‘They're paying me. I need a dress –' Glade bit her lip. She had given it away.

‘You
are
going to Miami.'

‘I'm not. It's just that Tom's invited me to a wedding.' Glade hesitated, then she said, ‘In New Orleans.'

‘New Orleans? I don't believe it.' Sally turned away and stood at the window, her cigarette held just below her mouth. ‘New Orleans,' she said, more mistily this time. ‘The French Quarter, Bourbon Street …'

Glade looked puzzled. ‘Bourbon Street?'

‘You don't know how lucky you are.' Sally's voice was faint, as if she was very far away – or even dead, perhaps, and appearing to her flat-mate in a dream. ‘You don't know anything.'

Shortly after take-off, Glade felt thirsty. She waited until a stewardess was passing, then she reached out and touched the woman on the arm.

‘Do you have any Kwench!?'

‘Kwench!?' The stewardess bent down, smiling.

‘It's a new soft drink,' Glade explained.

‘I haven't heard of it.'

No, Glade thought. Nor have I. How odd.

‘Would Coke do?' the stewardess asked her.

‘Just water,' Glade said. ‘Thank you.'

Kwench!? She must have seen the name on TV. Or in a magazine. Her water arrived. It tasted faintly of chemicals, but at least it was cold. She drank half of it and sat back in her seat. There were things in her mind she knew nothing about, things she didn't even realise were there. She looked out of the window. The Atlantic Ocean lay below, bright-blue in the spring sunlight. Something disturbed her about seeing water from so high up, something about the way the surface wrinkled. Like watching lice. Or maggots. It happened every time she flew. She leaned back, closed her eyes.

She thought of Tom, who she hadn't seen for months, who she had hardly spoken to, not recently, and wondered how it would be this time, in New Orleans. He would sound so enthusiastic on the phone, while they were planning things, but when the moment came, when they actually met, she always
had the feeling that she wasn't quite what he'd imagined, that she was somehow less than he'd expected, and she would catch him looking at her, his eyes puzzled but amused, as if he'd fallen for some kind of trick, or even, sometimes, resentful, as if she'd deliberately deceived him. Once, she had arrived at his apartment in Miami to find a group of people sitting round a low black coffee table. They were sitting close to each other, as if trading secrets, or taking part in some complicated game. She remembered their shoulders, which were raised against her, like barriers, and she remembered the angle of their necks, haughty and forbidding. When she first entered the room, they peered at her, but only their heads moved, somehow their shoulders and necks stayed in the same place, and there was nothing in their eyes, their eyes were like the eyes of dead fish, hard and shiny, blind. And Tom looked no different to any of the others, who she had never seen before and did not know. Tom's eyes were as dead as theirs. She backed out of the room, away from that black table, those dead eyes, and, closing the apartment door behind her, walked quickly down the stairs. Tom found her sitting on a cane chair in the lobby, among the potted palms.

‘Glade?'

She smiled up at him. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I didn't see you.'

‘You didn't
see
me?'

‘I walked into the room and it was dark suddenly. There were so many people.' She nodded to herself, remembering. ‘I didn't see you. I thought you weren't there.'

‘
It's my apartment, Glade
.'

She was still smiling at him. ‘I thought you weren't there.'

Confused, he glanced down at his shoes, which were like moccasins, only made of straw. He shook his head. When he looked up again, though, he was smiling too. ‘Jesus, Glade,' he said. ‘You scared the hell out of me back there.'

It was all right after that.

He had this idea about her, though, which he kept attempting to fit her into, and since he spent far longer with the idea than he did with her, it had become more familiar, more real than she was. She didn't know what the idea was exactly, but every time she saw him she felt her corners bump against the smooth, round shape of it; she felt the awkwardness, the gaps. It was strange because, when she was in London, she forgot what he was like as well – only she didn't try and make him up. Seeing him again, after months, she often found it too much for her, literally too much, to see everything so completely realised, to see all of him at once, when she had only been able to remember his teeth, or the blond hairs on his wrists, or the way he said her name. It was this sudden avalanche of detail – a surfeit, really – that made her hesitate in doorways.

Tom.

She wondered how it would be this time. She wondered how often in her life she would fly to him like this. She wondered what he would think of the picture she was going to give him.

Jesus, Glade
.

She walked out of the air-conditioned building into the heat of early afternoon. A highway lay in front of her, its surface pale-brown, four lanes of traffic travelling in each direction. Airport Boulevard. It had been a fifteen-hour flight, with a connection in New York, but she didn't feel tired yet. She stood on a strip of grass at the edge of a car-park, the sun bright and fierce against the right side of her face. She liked the way American air always seemed to glitter.

Tom had told her to take a cab to the Hotel Excelsior, which was in the French Quarter. He would be waiting there for her. They could spend the afternoon on the roof, he said. They could order Mint Juleps and watch the sun go down over the Mississippi. But somehow she found herself out by
the road, beyond the line of taxis, wanting to delay things. She thought she'd have a drink first. Perhaps, if she had a drink, she wouldn't hesitate in front of him. Perhaps, if she had a drink, her voice wouldn't be so small. She was proud of herself for having the idea. For thinking like him.

She looked around for somewhere. Silver-bellied planes drifted over every few seconds, no more than two or three hundred feet above the ground, bringing everything into a strange, unnatural proximity. A van painted a metallic dark-blue coasted past, bass notes shaking its smoked-glass windows. She couldn't see anything resembling a café or a bar. Maybe there wouldn't be, out near the airport.

Then, almost opposite her, she noticed an Italian place. Café Roma, it was called, the letters alternating red and green on a white background. She crossed the road between rows of hot, slow-moving cars. Once on the other side, she peered through the plate-glass window. There was no one to be seen. She tried the door. It was locked. She was about to walk away, disheartened, when she heard a loud click. A man was standing behind the door, unlocking it. There must have been three different sets of bolts, but finally he managed it.

‘We're not closed.' The man stammered slightly. ‘We're open.'

‘No,' Glade said, ‘it's all right.'

‘No, really. We're open.'

He was about thirty, with smooth, light-brown hair that fitted the shape of his head so closely that she thought it might be a wig. Though he wore a long white apron, he didn't look like somebody who ran a restaurant. Perhaps she should just get in a taxi, like Tom had told her to.

‘This city,' the man said, and his eyes moved past her, shifting constantly from one part of the highway to another, ‘I don't know. In the last six months it's gone crazy. I have to keep the door locked all the time. You never know what's going to come in off the street.' His eyes veered back to her,
deep in his head and bleached of all colour, and then he smiled. It was too sudden to be entirely reassuring, which was what she thought he intended it to be. She found that she was no longer wary of him, though.