On the morning after the race, Roy could hardly move. The difference from the normal Roy was perceptible only to the trained eye, but painfully perceptible to Roy. The normal Roy chose not to move, but this Roy was in too much pain to move. He had never prepared for a marathon. The only physical exertion he was prepared for was getting out of bed, going down the stairs and plugging in the TV, so a marathon came as a complete shock to his body, even though he spent the race standing still.

He spent all of Watson�s Day in bed, and on the following morning he still didn�t feel like getting up. He didn�t really mind being confined to bed. Staring at a hole in the ceiling provided the perfect substitute for daytime TV, but in the late afternoon he started to get bored and he read a bit of his grandfather�s memoirs, where he came across an account of how the hole in the ceiling came about, but he didn�t really believe that Ingrid Bergman had ever been in the house or that she carried a shotgun.

He also read about how John R used to walk through a National Park, and one day he saw some deer burning old deckchairs on a bonfire. A few weeks later he saw a photo of himself burning a deckchair on a bonfire. The photo was taken a year earlier, but John R couldn�t remember it at all. His wife told him about countless other things that he couldn�t remember because of drink, but he thought that he couldn�t remember burning the deckchair because the deer were stealing his memories. To test this theory, every time he walked through the park he thought about looking at his neighbour, Angelica, through binoculars, just to see if the deer would steal this memory. One day he saw a woman who looked a bit like Angelica feeding the deer, and that was close enough for John R. If a deer ever looked at him after that, he�d shoot it in self-defence.

The shop was closed on Watson�s Day. In the morning, Harry passed the time by sitting in front of the shop, in the mist. There was almost complete silence. No footsteps, no cars, not even the sound of the trees. He remembered the man he had seen in the shed on the previous evening. What he had said sounded familiar to Harry, but he couldn�t figure out why.

He went inside when it started raining and tried to pass the time sitting in the kitchen, but it just didn�t have the same effect as sitting outside. He got bored and decided to spend the day searching through every room in the house. He started in the room above the shop, which looked as if it had once been a bedroom, but it was full of junk now. Harry looked through every drawer, beneath the bed, in the wardrobe, and examined every object.

The search of the entire house was to go on over a period of three months, but he made some interesting finds; such as a gramophone with hundreds of old records, a filing cabinet overflowing with a century of correspondence, a book about the Nile signed by John F Kennedy. On that first day of the search, he found a box of letters in the attic that had never been opened, and he remembered something about these in his grandfather�s memoirs. John R used to send letters to himself, and he never opened them because he knew what was inside. He loved those letters � they were like his pets. He gave them all names. His favourite one was Poppy.

He loved his pet letters when he was sober, but he saw them in a very different light when he was drunk. He thought the whole letter-writing thing was stupid then – climbing lamp posts was his favourite hobby when he was drunk.

Then one day he remembered sending a letter bomb to himself. He must have sent it when he was drunk, but he couldn�t remember which one it was. He had a feeling that it might be Poppy. He was often tempted to open Poppy, just to make sure, but he could never bring himself to do it. He put his pet letters in the box in the attic and tried to forget about them.

Harry felt each letter and tried to see if he could tell which one was the letter bomb. Most of them were obviously just a piece of paper, and he opened those ones. But there were three letters that weren�t so obviously just paper. Harry wondered how he�d find out which one was the letter bomb, and he came up with the perfect plan.

He went downstairs with the letters. Blamey and Hoodley had just got up. They were watching TV when Harry came into the living room. He put the letters on the sideboard and said, �I just found these three letters in the attic. I read about them in my grandfather�s autobiography, and I�ve been looking for them for ages. He was on a game show once. He won, and at the end of the show he had a choice between three envelopes. Only one of them contained the cheque. My grandfather worked out the odds in his head, and he realised that he�d have a one in three chance if he chose one of the envelopes, but he�d definitely get the money if he just took all three envelopes and ran, so that�s what he did. He must have just forgot to open them � I assume he did a bit of celebrating after winning the money, and that�s probably what made him forget. So I�ll just leave them here on the sideboard and open them tomorrow. I�m too tired to open them now.�

That night, Harry was woken by the sound of a small explosion. He ran downstairs to the living room. Blamey was sitting on the armchair, looking a bit dazed. Hoodley was lying on the ground with a black mark on his head. A charred envelope lay on the worn carpet next to him. It was Poppy alright.

�Blamey, are you okay?� Harry said.

�I� I think so� But� Hoodley!� Blamey went over to Hoodley and picked him up. �Hoodley! Are you alright, Hoodley? Say something!�

�I�m fine,� Hoodley said. �I feel fine. This is a nice house. I can appreciate a house like this, being a piece of old wood. Ha ha ha ha ha.�

�My memory!� Blamey said. �I�ve got my memory back! I know who I am. I come from Dublin. I live in a house with an acrobat and an Abba tribute band.�

�This is great,� Harry said. �So you and Hoodley are back to ye�r old selves.�

�I can remember walking into the town, coming down the hill. And that�s all I can remember� But I do have a vague memory of Hoodley embarrassing us over the past few weeks.�

�No no no. He was fine. It was a pleasure having ye. Ye can both stay for as long as ye want.�

�Thanks, but I better get home. Or get back on the road. And back to my old act. That act was just starting to come together. I hope I�m not too rusty.�

On the day after Watson�s Day, as Roy was upstairs in bed, Harry was in the shop below telling Barbara about the man in the shed on the day of the marathon. When he told Barbara that the man had said, �Danke schön, thank you for your time,� she remembered Nancy�s family under the stairs. She thought it sounded a bit like their dialect and then it dawned on her that the man in the shed might be Alexander, Nancy�s fiancé who had gone to get cigarettes in 1942 and had never returned.

Harry and Barbara went to the shed, and when Harry said hello he was thanked for his time again. Barbara asked the man in the shed if his name was Alexander. He waited for a few seconds, partly out of wariness, partly forgetfulness, before answering yes.

�We can take you home now,� Barbara said. �Nancy is waiting for you.�

This got no response, partly because of wariness, but mostly fear.

�We have your cigarettes in the shop,� Harry said.

�Oh, okay,� Alexander said. He came out of the shed for the first time in sixty years � an emaciated man with a long white beard who had shrunk to four-foot-six. They took him back to the shop and gave him the cigarettes. The shop hadn�t changed much since he had last seen it, sixty years earlier. They took him to the stairs. He opened the door, went under the stairs and said, �I got the cigarettes.�

�About time,� Nancy said.

Alexander had left his home under the stairs and gone into the shop to get cigarettes on Saint Patrick�s Day, 1942. The door of the shop was open and he heard the sound of music outside. The Patrick�s Day parade was passing by. He went out to see what was going on and he was captivated by the sound, and the sight of people marching. He followed the parade until it ended in the square, where he suddenly realised that he was in an open space in daylight. He was terrified. He went down a narrow side-street, clinging to the walls as he went, until he came to the shed. It looked as if it had been abandoned so he went inside, and the rest is history; a history that is almost completely devoid of notable events. One of the most significant dates in recent history was the day of the marathon. The sight of all the people passing by reminded him of the parade that lured him away from his home, and this added to his feeling of unease. He had a vague feeling that the race would result in the loss of his new home, and so it was to prove.

Harry had failed to attract any new customers on the day of the race, but he still had the regular customers. All thoughts of attracting new customers were put to one side because of the distraction provided by one of those regular customers. Her name was Jennifer. She was new to the town and she used to buy the newspaper in the shop every day. Harry started to pay more attention to things like wearing clean clothes and combing his hair � things that just a few weeks earlier he would have thought that only people on TV do, or people in court, or on court TV.

Barbara started to notice this change in Harry and she finally asked him about it one morning when she saw him wearing a tie. He told her about the woman he was trying to impress and how he hoped the tie would work where the new shirt, the hair gel and the aftershave had failed. Barbara advised him not to put too much faith in the tie and to have a go at talking to her instead. �Just ask her what she does for a living,� she said, �or talk about the weather. Anything to start a conversation.�

It sounded like good advice to Harry and he agreed to have a go. He then asked Roy for his advice, which wasn�t the most advisable thing to do, given Roy�s numerous failed relationships, but Roy tried to think of something useful to draw from those experiences, and he came up with this: �Grow a moustache and see if she still likes you when you look like Hitler. It always worked for me.�

This maxim arose from a few experiences, but one in particular stood out in Roy�s mind. It had happened two years earlier, at about eight o� clock on a glorious summer evening as he walked down a suburban street on his way to meet his girlfriend, Sarah. He knocked on the front door of her house and turned around to look at the garden, at the perfectly trimmed grass, the fountain; to listen to the sound of lawnmowers and children laughing.

When Sarah opened the door, Roy turned around. He was holding a bunch of flowers. His smiling face was full of warmth, charm, and a moustache like Hitler�s.

�Well, what do you think?� he said.

Sarah screamed and slammed the door in his face.

Roy explained his advice to Harry. �If a woman still likes you when you look like Hitler, you know she�s the one for you.�

Harry smiled as he remembered another piece of advice passed on by a family member. �Do you remember what Uncle Bob used to say?�

�Uncle Bob the builder?�

�Yeah, although strictly speaking he wasn�t a builder.�

�That�s why he ended up in jail.�

�That�s right. His wife changed her middle name so that it made fun of his first name. It made him paranoid about names. He used to say, �Always find out their full name before you have anything to do with them.��

�That�s why he was so sensitive about the word �shit-head� too,� Roy said.

�That�s right.�

Barbara looked out the window and saw Jennifer crossing the street. �She�s coming.�

Harry stood behind the counter and took a deep breath. When Jennifer came into the shop, she went to the counter and asked Harry for the paper.

Harry avoided the obvious response to Jennifer�s request for the paper. In fact, he managed to avoid any response at all, unless you count staring as a response. He was trying to remember Barbara�s advice (and forget Roy�s). He remembered something about talking, about asking her what she does for a living, so he said, �I work in a shop.�

�Oh?� she said. More staring. She broke the silence by saying, �I�m an artist.�

Harry was relieved at having something to talk about. �Really? I�m a big fan of the arts.�

�Whose arse?� Roy said.

Barbara suggested to Roy that they had some work to do �out back� and they both went into the living room. When they were gone, Jennifer asked Harry what type of art he was into.

�Theatre mainly,� he said. �I�m a playwright.�

�Really? I�d love to see some of your work.�

�Well, actually I�m currently directing one of my plays with the local Amateur Dramatics Society. It�s opening in a few weeks.�

�Great. I�ll look forward to seeing that,� she said.

�I�ll look forward to that too,� Harry said, and then tried to think of something else to say. �I�d love to see some of your work.�

�Some of my paintings are on show in the gallery at the moment � the one near the library.�

�Great.� Harry started nodding, and then tried to think of something to say so he could stop nodding. �I�ll look forward to that.� Phew. �Oh, here�s your paper.� He took the newspaper from under the counter and handed it to her.

�Thanks. Bye now,� she said as she left the shop.

�Goodbye.� Harry breathed a sigh of relief, wiped away a bead of sweat, thanked God, thanked God for existing, thanked God he wasn�t an atheist, thanked God that God wasn�t an atheist, apologised to God for any disrespect, went into the living room and cheered.

Barbara had been listening to his conversation with Jennifer. �What�s all this about you being a playwright?� she said.

�It�s true, I wrote a play once. �A day in the life of Billy Pony.� It was a celebration of the hard work of our Mayor and the great political party which I�m proud to be a member of. It was on at the Edinburgh festival. Thank God I�m a playwright and not an atheist.�

�It closed after one night, though,� Roy said.

�Only because of that bastard Alex McCarthy. His play opened on the same night at the festival. That was no coincidence. His play was rubbish. I think it was called �Clap Hands.� It was a musical version of venereal disease. You can sell anything with sex. My political drama didn�t stand a chance.�

�Alex McCarthy? That name sounds familiar,� Barbara said, trying to remember where she had heard the name before.

�He writes that stupid soap opera on TV � �He�s not the real father.� He�s never had any trouble finding the lowest common denominator. And he�s always trying to outshine me, ever since we were kids at school. He�s obsessed with beating me at everything.�

�Obsessed and successful,� Roy said. �He beats you at everything. Maybe that�s why he�s always trying to outshine you, because it�s so easy.�

�Not this time. I know I can make this play a success.�

�And you�re going to put on the play with the Amateur Dramatics Society?� Barbara said, sounding slightly dubious.

�Yeah.�

�You have heard the stories about them, haven�t you? A few months ago they were doing Romeo and Juliet and one of them got a spoon stuck up his nose, and the others tried to remove the spoon by supergluing themselves to it, but they superglued themselves to his nose and pulled his nose off. Some people say they haven�t been quite the same since, although I don�t think they were quite right before that.�

�I�m sure that won�t be a problem.�

�What makes you think they�ll agree to do the play anyway?� Barbara said.

�I�ll just explain the situation to them.�

�That you want to do a play about Mayor Pony to impress a woman?�

�You�ve got to be positive. I�m sure they�ll agree.�

�They�ll never agree.�