Vacant Possession. Hilary Mantel

soon,’ Sylvia said. ‘You’ll all be dumped over Hadleigh way in a high-rise. How do you feel about that?’

      ‘All right.’

      ‘But it’ll break up your community.’

      ‘Not my community. I wasn’t born here.’

      ‘Oh, I see. But still, you won’t like life in a towerblock.’

      ‘I shan’t mind. You can throw things off the balconies.’

      Sylvia gave her a sideways look, then switched her attention back to the road. She slowed down. Small brown children played by the kerb, barelegged in the July heat, crouching in the gutter and darting out into the road. There was not a blade of grass for miles. Midsummer brought out the worst in it, baking the cracks in the pavements, raising a stench from the dustbins. The long ginnels that ran between the houses discharged a dim effulgence of stale sweat and stale spices; a thin ginger cat slept on a coal-shed roof, its scarred limbs splayed, its eyes screwed tight against the glare. Not a tree, not a patch of shade. ‘Displacing people from their environment,’ Sylvia said. ‘You’d think the lesson would be learned by now.’

      ‘Here it is. Eugene Terrace.’

      ‘Whereabouts?’

      ‘This will do.’ Lizzie opened the car door and began to lever her bloated body out of the seat, swivelling sideways and kicking her feet over the kerb. Her ankle chain flashed in the sunlight. Out at last, she leaned down and stuck her face in at the passenger door. ‘Thanks a million, Mrs S.’ Inside the leopard-skin jacket she was perspiring heavily, and patches of grease were breaking through her face powder; she gave a terrifying impression of imminent dissolution, as if fire had broken out at Madame Tussaud’s.

      Sylvia drew back from her grinning mouth and heavy scent. ‘Is this where you live, at this shop?’

      ‘Over the top. It’s temporary. I’m stopping with a friend, he’s got lodgings here.’

      ‘See you Thursday then.’ She watched Lizzie, waddling towards the side door of the fly-blown corner grocery. I wonder what she means about working at night? Can she possibly be a prostitute? Surely not; she was too grotesque for anyone’s taste. Lizzie stopped, ferreting in her bag for her door key. There was something unreal about her, as if she were a puppet, or an illustration loosed from the pages of a book. Suddenly, and with awful clarity, Sylvia understood her mingled repulsion and fascination, the prickling of kinship which had made her take the creature on. It was herself she was seeing, Sylvia Sidney of ten years back, the masklike maquillage, the jelly-flesh wobbling like a sow’s; the great big beautiful baby doll. She felt suddenly sick. She groped for the gear lever.

      Lizzie Blank, known otherwise as Muriel Axon, turned her key in the lock; and entered the dismal passageway of Mukerjee’s All-Asia Emporium.