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Reflected in the window, against a background of rapid greenery, repositioning her sun-glasses, tapping her teeth, smoking her cigarette, turning her page, coughing occasionally.

Of course it was possible, given the small choices I was still free to make, that I could leave the train at any of the stations before Hamburg. I could recover my senses in a remote guest house (No Smoking Please), before returning to Paris refreshed, lungs intact, and from there perhaps to England. I could find Lucy Hinton and assess the probability of living happily ever after.

Touching the middle of her top lip with the tip of her tongue. I could ask her for a cigarette.

I realized I must have forgiven Julian. I imagined him in his lab, pacing up and down between burning Bunsen-burners and frothing test-tubes, beside himself with the seemingly impossible task of finding his Mr X. I assumed he'd still recognize me. I trusted his letters, and the trouble he'd taken, and I wanted to believe this made him my friend. He'd written so often that I couldn't believe in a bet between him and Lucy. In fact, Lucy had really loved me, that was the truth. She left me because I broke my promise to smoke a cigarette. It was all my fault and I ought to be dead.

Shifting in her seat, re-positioning her bones. I was an idiot even to think it. Her bones were nothing compared to Lucy's bones. And Ginny's bones. Ginny's back-bone curled against my door, Ginny in tears. I was an idiot and I ought to be dead. Which was why, the night before, I'd smoked a stale Buchanan's Century which had once belonged to Julian Carr, a very good friend of mine.

Ginny had given up, slammed her fists one last time against the door, gone home. I lay on the bed, the unlit cigarette in my mouth and a book of matches in my hand. I stared at the wall. I thought hard about Ginny's heartache, which had nothing to do with cigarettes. I explored my own cruelty. I decided, without too much difficulty, that I really ought to be dead.

So I struck a match, but not into my cupped hands, and not like Humphrey Bogart. I watched the flame climb towards my fingers. I could make excuses. I could blame it on Uncle Gregory, and his easy charisma impressing my young mind with the attractions of an adventurous life, full of trouble and tobacco. Or, on the basis of a single half-overheard conversation, I could speculate that Uncle Gregory was secretly my real father, and this adulterous mismatch had scrambled my genes, leaving me incapable of kindness. Or I could blame my parents, citing their failure to buy me a top skateboard or a decent stereo or a motorized go-kart, and for giving me nothing to rebel against except their decency.

My fingers were burning. I tossed the match onto the floor, and waited. Nothing caught fire.

I struck a second match and watched it burn. It was my own fault for thinking that I arrived in Paris a free man. I'd cast myself as the centre of the universe, poised to rescue beautiful women, destined to live forever. With luck and time and the headstart of Uncle Gregory's money, I'd expected to stumble across everything I wanted, just by stumbling along. Disappointment was inevitable.

I threw away the second match. No fire.

My mother had been right all along. There was always something missing, and I had to learn to accept dissatisfaction, like everybody. I was no different, and I should never have laughed at her exclamation marks. She used them because what she was saying was important and she was teaching a slow learner. She only wanted me to take notice, but I never had. I ought to be dead.

I lit a third match and brought it close to the end of the cigarette. I thought of Uncle Gregory in Adelaide and monkeys in test-stations and cowboys in the desert with oxygen in their saddle-bags. I thought of 20% of all British deaths, and Buerger's disease, and benzo-a-pyrene, and tobacco heart, and the inefficiency of filters, and every threatening headline my mother had ever sent me. I searched out every positive assurance that Julian's cigarette would definitely kill me.

I lit the cigarette and drew in deeply and it tasted so vile I didn't doubt it was fatal. I inhaled again, even though each time I brought the cigarette to my lips it felt like holding nausea in my hands. I finished it and still I wasn't dead. I threw it onto the floor. Nothing caught fire.

Nothing was happening. I'd smoked Julian's cigarette and it wasn't lethal. It was just a big disappointment, like everything else, like my mother had always warned me. Julian's cigarette had no special message, no particular moral, and my life was no less fragile than any other. I was not the centre of the universe and everything was expected, unoriginal, unsurprising.

The girl on the train, unharmed by the cigarettes she'd already smoked, lit another. She pushed her glasses back up her nose.

Of course it hadn't killed me. There was no reason why my death should be any more extraordinary than my life. I had to grow up, and fast, which was partly why I hadn't brushed my teeth. I wanted to keep the taste of tobacco alive in my mouth. It reminded me that it wasn't my destiny to live forever.

From now on, I intended to replace all my heroic and ineffective desires with the simple and achievable desire to smoke. The unique and the operatic had escaped me, so instead I would set myself a derisory task which would determine everything in advance. I would accept the inevitability of repetitive days by committing myself to cigarettes, and any other constraints which Julian specified. It wasn't the future I'd planned for myself, but I preferred it to a life of re-living the dissatisfactions of others.

I'd thought it all through. Every cigarette was bound to remind me of Lucy, and Ginny, but that was fine. It would be a kind of unending penance, making me remember and suffer, just like I deserved. And as a smoker I'd have to find a new way of showing my mother I loved her, even though it probably wasn't love which made me want to die before her. At least I presumed I would. It was no great secret that cigarettes were about to seriously damage my health.

The girl in the black dress was tapping her enamelled finger-nails on the laminated table-top, drawing my attention to the single Ernte 33 she'd rolled slightly towards me. Her eyebrows arched above the tortoise-shell frames of her sunglasses. I could take the cigarette. I could start a conversation. I could find out where she came from and what she did and what we had in common apart from smoking. I looked away. Her reflection shrugged and carried on reading.

I intended to withdraw my affections and detach myself from everything. I would be indifferent to the weather and the time of day, remaining impervious to any sensation except the hourly swell between deficiency and satisfaction offered by cigarettes. No doubt the external world would continue to address information to me, but I'd no longer be inclined to receive it. Instead, I imagined myself surviving without joy and without sadness, without a future and without a past, simply, self-evidently, like a drop of water forming on a tap, like a rat. I would ask for nothing, accept nothing, and make no impositions. And all in return for smoking a fixed number of cigarettes, each and every day.

Gradually, my life would empty itself of any activity beyond this imperative routine. It would be free of all crisis and all disorder, a life with no rough edges and no imbalance. I would have no projects and feel no impatience. I would exist without desire, without resentment and without revolt. Hour after hour, cigarette after cigarette, day after day, something was going to start which would be without end: my cancelled life.

From Paris to Hamburg, interrupted only by station-stops where I failed to alight, and in the background, cigarettes etcetera.

The Suicide Club was packed. All the regulars were there, as well as Emmy and Jamie, and a large number of scientists and technicians from the Unit. I offered round a tray of sandwiches, studiously avoiding Julian Carr who was representing Buchanan's and paying his respects on behalf of the company. He was also watching Jamie, who'd been trying to convince Mrs Cavendish the Unit receptionist that Theo's lung photograph, if she only stood close enough and crossed her eyes, was actually a hidden 3D image of a red Indian chief. Behind them, Walter was arguing with Emmy. He refused to pass round any sandwiches.

‘I am increasingly
frail,'
he protested.

Lundy Foot was trying to persuade tea-drinkers to try a drop of sherry, and Julian Carr was now glaring at me over the top of Jamie's head.

Theo, restored to full health, appeared from nowhere. He smiled his closed mouth smile, made a space for himself, and danced an intricate jig which involved precise hopping and not infrequent skipping.

Theo,' I said, ‘stop that right now.'

‘Why?'

‘It's your own funeral for goodness sake.'

‘Exactly,' he said, moving to his left, jumping to his right. ‘And this is the best way to communicate with the people below.'

It was less than an hour since we'd all come back from the mid-day service at the crematorium, and I'd already smoked 27 cigarettes. I hadn't eaten all day, and I felt distinctly lightheaded.

Theo was now standing at my shoulder. Even though he was only a hallucination, brought on by too much nicotine, I wanted to be polite.

'So then,' I said, ‘how's heaven?'

‘Mustn't grumble.'

‘God smoke?'

‘Not that I've noticed. Watch out,' he said. ‘Here comes trouble.'

‘Gregory.'

‘Julian.'

‘On behalf of Buchanan's, my deepest commiserations.'

'Sandwich?'

‘I couldn't help noticing,' Julian said.

‘I know,' I said, ‘too many cheese, not enough ham.'

‘That you seem to be smoking too much.'

‘It's the occasion,' I said. ‘Helps me get a grip.'

‘Of course, I understand that,' he said. ‘But maybe you could slow it down, just a touch.'

‘Thanks, Julian. You're a good man.'

‘It may not be the best time,' he said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘But your new contract is ready.'

‘Later,' I said, and went to offer sandwiches to a medical researcher I recognized from the Unit. I lit another cigarette. My head started to spin, and I sat down in one of the armchairs we'd pushed against the wall.

‘That man has a one-track mind,' Theo said. He was making himself comfortable on the arm of the chair, just behind Walter's favourite ashtray. ‘He's not going to like it when you give up.'

I nearly choked on my smoke. ‘I've no intention of giving up.'

‘If you say so.'

‘I'm in the middle of smoking more cigarettes than I've ever smoked in a single day before. It doesn't suggest I'm about to stop.'

'Smoke another,' Theo said. ‘I can feel myself fading.'

I lit another cigarette. Theo now had a tan. He was wearing a lab-coat and Bananas was sitting on his shoulder, peering at my cigarette with green eyes.

‘It's not as though there's anything wrong with me,' I said.

‘How do you know?'

‘Because I have a full medical check-up twice a week.'

‘Ah, I see,' Theo said.

‘What does that mean?'

‘Well,' he said, ‘if there was anything wrong with you, do you think they'd tell you?'

‘Gregory!'

It was Emmy, leaning towards me holding a tea-pot. She wanted to know if I was alright. ‘I'm fine,' I said, even though I could be dying of lung cancer and heart disease and of
course
they wouldn't tell me. I felt a dull ache in my chest, near my heart. Pull yourself together, man. ‘Emmy,' I said, panicking slightly, ‘do you ever have the impression that Theo is still with us?'

‘Of course I have,' she said, ‘all the time.'

She wanted me to know that Julian Carr was starting an argument with Dr Hacket about Romans, and I promised to go and calm them both down. I took a glass of sherry from Lundy Foot, and found Julian leaning menacingly over Dr Hacket.

‘His middle name was Bombastus,' I said, correcting them both before leading Julian away. He said:

‘What are you playing at? Sitting in that corner you smoked at least three cigarettes. I saw you.'

‘It's the grief,' I said, ‘and the worry. I'm sorry, Julian. It won't happen again.'

I left him with Emmy, because there were still several things I wanted to sort out with Theo, and in the nicotine daze of the rest of the afternoon I hope I managed a fairly convincing impersonation of a normal person. I handed round sandwiches, added sugar-lumps to cups of tea, proffered my lighter to unlit cigarettes. If I didn't always follow the flow of conversation it was only because I was concentrating on Theo, and to keep him clear I constantly had a fag on the go, either wedged between my fingers or stuck between my lips.

‘I'm not giving up,' I told him. ‘Julian wouldn't let me near a one-day international ever again.'

‘You never go anyway.'

‘No opera. No motor-cycle GP. I'd lose my income.'

‘It's only money.'

‘The practical consequences are unthinkable.'

‘Unpredictable.'

‘Incalculable,' I said. ‘I don't even want to think about it.'

But Theo insisted that I couldn't go on living in retreat. I had to move on. Listening carefully, I smoked my Carmens one after the other and his voice never wavered. Stop smoking, he said, Meet some new people, which was all very well until my 37th cigarette of the day, which turned out to be one cigarette too many. I started to feel unwell, and even though Theo was still talking, I had to go outside for some air. I stood in the driveway and took deep breaths, which seemed to help. I was about to take a walk, up to the gates and back, when Julian put his hand on my shoulder.

He pulled me round so that I was facing him, and then he slapped the pack of Carmens from my hand. Immediately it hit the ground he stamped on it. Then he stamped on it again, and then he crushed it with a swivel of his foot, even though there were still three cigarettes left inside, including the one I always saved for last, turned upside down for luck. Julian said: