All you had needed was someone to practice with, and he seemed like the ideal person. You had always got on well as children, but it is years since you last saw each other, and then suddenly you bump into each other in the Fat Cat in Bangor. Of course, you have no difficulty recognising him, and you both get up from your tables at the same time, and greet each other in the middle of the bar, uttering nonsensical platitudes, but both really pleased by the surprise encounter.

It’s the days before everyone has mobile phones, and only the IT students bother with email, so you tell him where you are living, and a few days later he turns up on your doorstep with a bottle of wine. It’s strange to see him suddenly as a grown-up, with a face that creases when he smiles, and golden bristles on his square chin. You are aware that he is seeing you differently, too, and you wish you had known he was coming, because you’re wearing jeans and a t-shirt that’s a little bit too small.

The kitchen is untidy too, but all student houses have untidy kitchens. He doesn’t raise an eyebrow at the pile of saucepans or the line of grime around the sink. At least you have a corkscrew handy, and two wineglasses that don’t match, one of which is slightly chipped. You sit at the kitchen table, catching up, explaining why you chose Bangor when you could have gone further afield; you both have the same reasons. There’s already a big enough mixture of people here, without having to go to England to see the world; and it’s easy to get home for Sunday dinner.

He tells you about the trouble he’s been having with women. His girlfriend from last year has gone home to Detroit, and he’s been seeing one of the degree students who he was mentoring. The benefit of doing a PhD, he tells you, is the constant supply of would-be biochemists who find him clever and interesting. He also visits a girl at another university, every few weeks, who thinks of him as her fiancé.

Why does she think that? you ask.

He explains that it was one of those whirlwind things, where she seemed absolutely perfect for the first few weeks, and then became clingy and difficult. He thought he was in love with her, but now he has changed his mind. He just hasn’t got round to telling her.

It will be such a major trauma, he says, with a sigh.

You fill his glass up, and tell him about your own trouble. You’ve just split up with someone, because he was tending to be violent and possessive. Now you’re determined to be a free agent, not get into anything like that again. But you need a dancing partner.

Can you waltz?

I might, if you show me how.

He puts down his glass and stands up, his left arm outstretched in what he thinks is a good position for waltzing. You giggle, and rearrange his hands on your body, bumping your knees into his. He’s much taller than you, so you are face to face with the flatness of his white t-shirt, and his clean smell.

Did we dance together when we were kids? you wonder aloud.

Only to the birdie song, at family weddings.

You laugh, and try to show him how to move his feet, but he is clumsy, and trips you up. He catches you, steadying you with his hands around your waist, which feels nice. He looks down at you with his piercing blue eyes, and there is a charged stillness.

His voice is low, and his face is close to yours. Are we allowed to do this? he asks, referring to the impending kiss.

You look at him through your lashes, and blink slowly. Do you mean because you already have two girlfriends, or because we are cousins?

He smiles with bleak humour, and tells you to shut up.

Rachel had watched his long-legged dash along the platform, and his bag-laden leap up into the carriage, barely seconds before the doors slid shut. It made no difference to her whether or not he caught the train; she could as easily pass the journey watching the girl with the pink dreads and the ring through her lip, or the three lads who were ready to doze off against each others’ shoulders, across the aisle from her seat.

This last train home always stank of fast food, and the soundtrack consisted of hands rustling in bags of chips, and the regular chime of text messages incoming. At its worst, the train was raucous, or jam-packed, or delayed; and at those times, she very much disliked travelling alone.

As the train pulled out of Waterloo, pink dreadlocks girl leaned forward and politely enquired how long it took to get to Richmond. About fifteen minutes, someone said.

There was a pause, during which everyone went about their business of eating burgers or yawning, or peering out at the London Eye, illuminated beside the moon. Then, in accented english, the newcomer asked pink dreadlocks girl how long it took.

Rachel didn’t think he understood the answer he was given, or that he had asked the right question. She peered at the green holdall that he had stuffed on to the rack above his head, trying to make out the origin of the airline tag that was still attached; but it was too far away to see. His hair had a charcoal shine, and his cheekbones and shadowed grey eyes gave him a slavic look. Her eyes rested idly on broad shoulders in a jumper that was scruffy but clean; worn jeans; comfortable looking trainers.

He didn’t get out at Richmond, but as the train started moving he put away the dog-eared book that he had not been reading, and hovered with his bag by the door. Rachel watched him go through a decision-making process at each stop: frown at the station name, check his watch, move his bag out of the way of disembarking passengers. Occasionally he looked closely at his mobile phone, which was clearly not providing him with any assistance.

At Bracknell, she found herself following through a half-formed train of thought. She hooked her handbag over her shoulder, and picked her way towards the train doors. Where are you going? she asked him, speaking clearly in case his english was not good.

The hesitation before he responded suggested that it wasn’t. Where? he repeated. Twickenham.

Then you have missed your stop,Rachel said. We have gone past Twickenham.

This information sank in, and a worried expression darkened his face. Rachel suspected that he was trying to formulate a sentence. Are you going to stay with a friend? she asked him.

The momentary delay made her think of a long-distance telephone call. She was about to repeat herself, when he held up his mobile phone and said, My friend is not answering his telephone call.

Do you know the address? Rachel thought of finding him a taxi from the next station, which happened to be her own.

He did not, nor did he have any other contact number; nor was there another train back to Twickenham that night. Rachel worked out that he should have been met at the station at midnight, and understood from his helpless puppy-dog eyes, that he was now her problem. Come with me, she suggested. We will try to contact your friend. I’m Rachel. She suppressed the nagging voice at the back of her mind, pointing out the foolishness of taking a strange man home with you, for no good reason.

He followed her obediently, making stilted conversation as they walked down the road to her house. He told her that this was the first time he had ever left Croatia. He was hoping not to go back. She was unable to work out what he did for a living, but he had a smile that lit up his eyes and glowed beneath his pale skin. You’re very kind, he told her.

Up in her flat, he tried and failed to contact his friend, while she shovelled instant coffee into a mug, working on the assumption that eastern europeans would like it to be strong. He tasted it briefly, and tried to look polite about it as he abandoned the mug and pulled a bottle out of his bag. This is for my friend. We are opening it now, no?

Rachel did not need further prompting; she found a corkscrew and some glasses, and mentally wrote off her plans for Sunday. They stood in the kitchen, laughing as they tried to share stories with each other, and he taught her several random words in his own language. He showed her how badly he could juggle, using the cork and a lime from her fruit bowl, which proved to be almost disastrous. He caught the lime, but the cork rolled too far behind the fridge, where it could be seen but not reached.

As she stood up, Rachel knocked her head against his elbow, and instinctively he touched her there, a stroke of long flat fingers. She had never felt such an electric reaction to a touch before. It froze her, her lips half-parted and her eyes fixed on his. And then dreamlike, he kissed her, and she felt him stroke her hair, and tasted the velvet of the wine that had stained his mouth.

In the morning, sun streamed into her bedroom, because she had forgotten to shut the curtains. Her body and her head competed to feel the most wholesomely bruised and aching, and she lay with her eyes closed for a few minutes, trying to reassemble her memories of the night. When she opened them, there was no-one in her bed, and she told herself she had imagined it. Gingerly, she pulled on her dressing gown, and crossed the hallway to the bathroom. There was no sign of anyone in the flat.

She brushed her teeth thoughtfully, frowning at her reflection in the streaky mirror. She remembered kissing and kissing in the kitchen, his hands under her clothing; and her body could still feel his. Most clearly of all, she recalled the blue spark that had leapt between them, when they touched. But now, as she stepped quietly around her home, there was absolutely no evidence that he had ever been here.

The front door was locked. The only dirty glass in the kitchen was one she had used yesterday afternoon. The corkscrew was in the drawer.

Rachel made herself a cup of tea, and, somewhat regretfully, started recategorising her memories as a slightly filthy dream. She smiled to herself. It was probably a good thing it had been a dream; she wasn’t really the kind of girl who picked up strangers on trains. In her mind’s eye, she recreated him, leaning against the cupboard, juggling with the cork and the lime, clumsy with the objects that were beyond his control.

And then her eye followed the train of her thought down to the floor, and along the side of the fridge, where a cork lay wedged against the back corner, just out of reach.

Anderson had a bear tattooed on his right arm. It had taken a long time for the tattooist to draw it, and it had hurt intensely, but he had closed his eyes and focused on the pain, drawing it into himself like a stream of scalding liquid that cleansed him deeply.

The tattoo gleamed blackly on his pale skin, and when he touched it he remembered the pain. Every time, it reminded him of the lesson he had learned, which was just what he had intended when he had walked into the tattoo parlour, after barely a moment’s hesitation on the street.

He liked the bear. Its sardonic snarl reflected his own way of looking at the world, and he felt that, inside, he was as powerful as the dark, sleek animal that he wore on his sleeve, a badge he had awarded himself.

There was no-one left to approve of him now. Every one of them had let him down, so he had cut them out of his life, and stepped out of their smothering cloud into the fresh air. He had made himself whole, and chosen his own solitary route.

He knew his path was not going to be easy; he must support himself, but he had only a degree in fine art, and no practical qualifications, as he refused to conform to the restrictions of the education system. His great, creative brain would not be bent and moulded into their categories, and until he found an occupation worthy of him, he was not prepared to compromise.

It suited him to take hard, manual jobs, so that the muscles beneath the bear rolled and strained. His back broadened into the work, and his mind remained free. His monosyllabic colleagues did not intrude into his world. After work, he did research at the library, and considered which of the universities he might allow to benefit from his ideas.

His routine was spartan. He ate alone, polystyrene trays of noodles and sludge-brown sauce. He did not drink. He did not socialise, apart from writing long hectoring emails to the authors of articles he had read online.

The tattoo was to remind him to keep people at a distance, so they could not affect him. Forming relationships meant giving away bits of himself, and it affected his judgement. Last time, he had found himself unable to concentrate, and unable to fit his working hours around the requirements of a woman. She needed too much from him, and the fact that she occasionally bought him a decent dinner did not move him much. When she terminated the relationship, he was angry, but he knew it had been unsatisfactory for both of them.

Now there would be no more distractions from his goal. He could continue to educate himself, to learn from experience; and one day the right opportunity would appear to him, and there would be nothing to stop him from grasping it. This was how he would be fulfilled.

Her grey silk coat floated behind her as she strode across the road, long legs black-trouser-clad, and a sense of purpose at her heels. The wind caught at her short hair, curling it across her face for a moment, and she flicked her head in a tiny, precise movement.

Derville watched her from the shelter of a doorway on the other side of the road, with his trademark newspaper and dark glasses, dressed to blend into the workday crowd. He didn’t need to check against the photograph he was holding behind the paper; she was as distinctive as he was indistinguishable. He slid out of his doorway and trailed her at a distance, finding her easy to follow.

With an anxious eye on the low grey crowds, because umbrellas would make it harder to keep her in sight, he walked the length of the high street, pausing to watch her reflection in the window of a travel agency, as she answered a call on her mobile phone. Her head dipped, and she gesticulated as she spoke. He was near enough to observe polished fingernails, and the absence of a wedding ring, and he thought he could pick out the pitch of her voice, but not her words. The call seemed urgent, not gossipy, and she appeared to cut it short.

She walked more quickly than before, and he almost lost her when he walked straight into a woman carrying two heavy shopping bags, who muttered curses as she regained her balance. Derville cast an apology into his wake, and relocated his quarry just as she stopped, quite suddenly, and stepped into a wine bar.

A few discreet moments later, he took a seat at the bar, with a good view towards the window, where she had seated herself without removing her coat, and without a drink. She was watching the door, and tapping those polished fingernails, staccato on the table. He asked for a beer, because he simply couldn’t sit there without cover, and fiddled with the camera on his mobile telephone, making sure there was enough light.

New model?

He frowned. The barman, with his friendly enquiry, was blocking his view. He grunted rudely, and was left alone again. The woman was now leaning back, her lips pressed thinly together, downturned at the edges. She lifted her sleeve to glance at her watch, and then returned her gaze to the door.

In response, it swung inwards, and two girls burst through it. Both unrealistic shades of blonde, both sporting dresses that were shorter than high school hockey skirts. They made a great deal of scraping clatter, as they pulled themselves cheaply on to bar stools, and demanded blue and amber drinks that glinted like stained-glass in the dusty daylight.

He tore his gaze away from the laddered thigh of the girl nearest to him, and realised that a man had joined the woman in the window. A broad smile transformed and animated her features, and as he watched, the man caught hold of her hands, to keep them still. She calmed herself, blinked, looked into his eyes.

Cautiously, Derville framed a picture, and made sure the camera would not flash. It came out well, and he kept one eye on the couple, while he tapped the buttons on his phone, and squirted it through the ether to his client.

The man was at the bar by now, asking for a bottle of wine and two glasses. As Derville observed him, gathering details about the cut of his suit and the size of the notes in his wallet, his mobile phone buzzed, tugging at the man’s attention. He paid for the drinks, and stood at the bar, typing a text message, and sending it before he returned to the window.

Likewise, Derville checked the message he had just received. It said That’s me.

We got married very young, by normal standards, and neither of us had ever even kissed anyone else; that’s the culture we were brought up in, and that was what we expected. It wasn’t an arranged marriage, as such, but our options were fairly limited. At the time, I considered myself lucky that he was so handsome; and I realised afterwards that I was also lucky he was kind and solvent.

Family is very important in our community, so it wasn’t long between meeting and getting married. Quite suddenly, the two of us were all set up in our own apartment, surrounded by cast-off furniture and an air of expectation. That was when we started to get to know each other, and I found it was easy to love him, and looked forward to having a happy, peaceful life with him.

I’m certain that he had no more experience than I did, but his expectations were quite different to mine. It worked, though: he constantly surprised me with new ideas, and it was always pleasant. I wasn’t so naïve as to expect to lie back and think of England while he did his business, but I didn’t know it would be so much fun. Our son was born before our first wedding anniversary.

We’ve had a computer in the house for years. He’s a printer and an artist, so it’s the sort of thing he finds interesting. When the child was born, we got it connected to the internet, and it made up for the fact that I didn’t have as much time for him as I used to. He didn’t seem to miss me; in fact, he was thrilled: there was so much out there for him. He’s into mythological stuff, Dungeons & Dragons, knights and damsels and castles. It didn’t take him long to find his way into the chatrooms.

He told me he was chatting in a fantasy room, so of course I imagined them all pretending to be kings and queens, and having virtual jousting matches. Sometimes he showed me what he was doing, but I couldn’t really keep up with it. While I was feeding or playing with the baby, or cleaning the house, or cooking, he would be up in his study, surrounded by papers and books and the little lead figures that he used to paint; these days it wasn’t the clatter of tiny paint-pots, but the rattle of his fingers on the keyboard, that I could hear from the kitchen below.

He came to bed late one night, and I moved over to kiss him. Baby was sleeping in his own room by then, and I thought it was nice to have our privacy back. He had left me alone for long enough, and I wanted his attention again. I stroked his cheek with my fingers, and he grasped hold of my wrist, suddenly animated, as though someone else’s strength was taking over his body. He pushed me down, pinning my arms to the bed, and I tried to wriggle away from him, but I felt the weight of his knee across my thighs, making it impossible for me to move. He kissed me ferociously, and it frightened me.

I think you’ve been naughty and should be punished. His breath was hot in my ear, and his fingers twisted painfully in my hair. I grabbed the chance to ask him what he thought he was doing, and he slapped my face – not hard – but it didn’t need to hurt to shock me into silence for a moment.

But only a moment; I wasn’t going to let this go any further. I gathered myself and wrenched free of him, and crouched, breathing hard, beside the bed. What’s got into you? What are you trying to do?

His breath was ragged too, and he seemed dazed. I stepped further away from the bed, and he shook his head, as though to clear it. You don’t like it? He almost sounded puzzled.

If you ever try to hit me again, I will leave you. I had no idea if I would ever be able to follow through such a threat. Our families would be horrified if I was to upset our happy home. And what if this was normal too, and I was just being naïve?

Come back to bed. I promise I won’t hurt you.

Cautiously, I crept back beneath the covers, and lay down with my back to him. Don’t touch me.

I lay awake for a long time, wondering about his strange behaviour. In the morning I refused to discuss it with him, and as soon as he left for work, I went upstairs and logged on to his computer. Lots of things opened automatically on the screen, and I waited for it all to settle down, before I looked at the history page. Last night he had done nothing except visit one chatroom, so I simply clicked on the link, and waited for it to load.

Things immediately started to become clear. The room’s title was Rough Fantasies, and I was signed in as George the Destroyer. I saw greetings appeared on the screen, so I typed hello, and then sat quietly and watched.

Before long, little flashing windows were popping up in front of me, mostly from chatters with female names. Some of them were very friendly, as though they knew me; and others were, quite simply, obscene. The overall tone was hardly one of romance. My jaw dropped as I watched the main window scroll past; it may have been virtual reality, but the casual brutality I was witnessing was incredible.

I switched off the computer, and spent a long time thinking about what I should do. There are guidelines in the collective unconscious, for dealing with discovering your husband’s stash of porn, or finding out that he’s having an affair; but nothing for this. I couldn’t consult with my mother or my friends, because they would understand it even less than I did. The only person I could ask was him.

That evening we had the strangest of conversations. First he apologised for springing it on me. He said he had been all fired up and carried away by events in the chatroom, and he tried to explain how involved you could get. I told him what I had done, and in the circumstances, he couldn’t really be angry that I had looked into his computer.

I get into character, he said. I act like a great big warrior, and all these maidens fall at my feet. In the chatroom, men are lords and women are there for the taking, and it just… kind of… spilled over. I’ve been talking to a girl online, who calls her boyfriend Master, and she’s his slave, and he ties her up, and I wanted to see if we could be like that…

He tailed off, and I just stared at him. Wasn’t it enough that I kept house for him, ran around after him, brought up his child, while he sat at his computer before and after meals? I do all these things because that’s my role in the world, and I’m happy enough, but I don’t relish the idea of describing it as slavery. And as for this tying up business; I may be inexperienced, but I do know that some things are outside the normal range of behaviour.

His kind brown eyes looked at me sadly. Darling, you don’t understand how much I want to do this. I think it’s part of me that I need to explore, and I can’t do it without you.

You want to tie me up?

And… hit you.

Have you gone completely mad?

He sighed. You used to like the games we played.

We had never played anything like that, though, and I thought, from the seriousness in his face, that it was more than a game to him. Why did he have to bring something like this into our perfectly happy world? I stood up. I want nothing to do with it. And we won’t discuss it any further.

I went into the kitchen, to prepare supper and try to calm myself down. The baby babbled at me softly, from his chair on the floor nearby. Our cat rubbed against my ankles, requesting to be fed. And I heard George go upstairs to his study, and switch on his computer.