I want to add “and me and Candy both hate you, so there,” but figure that I don’t really want to sound like a fifteen-year-old.

“Georgie. Where’s the fucking disk, Georgie?”

Mike’s voice is slurring—evidently he’s been drinking too. He’s also shouting, all his sentences peppered with expletives. I’m not usually too worried about what my neighbors think of me, but I’m going to have to lay low for a while after this.

Mike moves away from the intercom. “Open the fucking door,” he shouts.

I run to the window and open it wide. Looking down I can see Mike two floors below, sitting on the pavement, a bottle in his hand.

“They’re all wankers, Georgie, you know that don’t you. You think you can trust someone, and what do they do? Take your passport, that’s what. She took my fucking passport!” He starts to laugh maniacally.

“Mike, just go away, will you? I don’t want to see you again. Ever.”

I start to put the window down again but am jolted by the noise of glass smashing. Mike has thrown his bottle against the wall.

“Fine. You don’t want to give me the disk? I’m going to come up and get it.”

He starts making an attempt to climb the wall up to my flat. I grab a large ceramic vase my mother gave me for Christmas last year in case I need something to defend myself. Okay, so a ceramic vase may not be the most fearsome of weapons, but there’s nothing else at hand.

“You do know how much I hate you, don’t you?” I shout down at Mike as he feebly attempts to climb up the drainpipe leading up to my window. “You are the most pathetic creature that ever lived. I know all about you stealing money from people, and about Vanessa, too. You even got me to carry your money in through customs for you, you total bastard.”

Mike’s attempts to climb the wall are coming to nothing. He jumps up several times and clings on to the drainpipe only to slide straight down again.

“Oh come on, you’d have done anything to get in my trousers,” he shouts, giving up on the climb. “You’ve never stopped fancying me, have you? Never got over the fact that I just couldn’t give a fuck, did you? Well, I hope you’re happy with David. Boring bastard David who wouldn’t know how to seduce a fucking prostitute.”

I throw the ceramic vase down toward Mike. Not near enough to hit him, but near enough to make myself feel a bit better.

“David, boring?” I shout. “Mike, you obviously have no idea how utterly sleep inducing you are. And if you think that I fancy you, well, you can bloody well think again. Why do you think I faked feeling sick in Rome? It was so I didn’t have to kiss you, let alone sleep with you, you pathetic shit!”

I am getting into my stride with this insult hurling, and look around for another object to throw out of the window.

Mike looks very agitated. “Are you fucking throwing things at me? You don’t want to throw things at me, Georgie.” His voice is menacing now. “Bad things happen to people who really piss me off. The prick who nicked my Zip disk for instance—know what happened to him? No, well, you wouldn’t, would you. But he won’t be bothering me or anyone else again. Got friends, you see. Theydeal with things like that.” Mike has given up attempting to climb up the drainpipe and has sat back down on the pavement again.

“You mean your Italian friends?” I say sarcastically, picking up a bowl full of potpourri.

“Family,” Mike corrects me. “Italianfamily .” He laughs. “Now, let me into your flat or I am going to break your fucking door down . . .”

But before he can finish his sentence, we are both blinded by lights. I put my hands over my eyes, and as they adjust to the brightness I see ten, maybe twelve men in police uniform appear out of nowhere and surround Mike. He tries to kick out at one of them but fails miserably and is led away into one of three black cars that I hadn’t even noticed were there. A young man looks up at me.

“Sorry to trouble you like this. There won’t be any more bother this evening,” he says brightly, then nods and gets into one of the cars.

I stand at the window, dazed, and watch the cars drive off. Were the police there all the time?

How did they know Mike was here? God, what did they hear me say?

Within a few minutes the road is quiet again. I would think that I’d imagined the whole thing if it wasn’t for the smashed bottle and the broken ceramic vase, which I’m now going to have to replace so that my mother doesn’t give me a lecture about being clumsy. But just as I’m about to shut the window, I hear a noise below. I look down and my heart skips a beat when I see that it’s David approaching.

He stops a few yards away from my front door and surveys the scene. He looks at the broken vase and the smashed bottle, then slowly looks up to my window. Our eyes meet and we stare at each other for a moment or two. I can hear a cat yowl in the distance, but otherwise there is complete silence.

“Thank you,” he says. “For the disk. For getting it back.”

“You’re welcome,” I reply. It’s a cool, still night, but I can feel that my face is red and hot. I want to ask David up, but something stops me. I feel awkward, like someone at the end of a first date, not sure whether the other person really likes them or not.

“They got Mike then,” I say, not sure whether or not this will be news to David.

He nods.

“And Vanessa?”

“Oh yes,” says David. “We had serious doubts about Vanessa and were waiting for her to trip up. Quite tidy, the way it all finished.”

“Is that . . . is that why you didn’t want to introduce us in Rome?” I ask tentatively.

“Exactly,” says David, and then there is silence again.

I want so much for David to come in, to take me in his arms and tell me everything is okay. But it’s not as simple as that, I remind myself. And anyway, he doesn’t seem to want to come up.

There’s a long pause before David speaks again.

“Georgie, I need to know whether you still have feelings for Mike,” he says slowly. “I need to be able to trust you.”

“Trust me?” I say incredulously. “After everything I’ve done today, you need to know if you can trust me? David, I’ve had Mike here this evening threatening me with his bloody Mafia friends because I gave Jane that Zip disk. My mother and I broke into his flat to get it and my stepfather wrote off a car so that we didn’t get caught. Of course you can trust me.”

“That was very sweet of you, Georgie,” he smiles. “I’m sorry. But you must admit, you have caused me a bit of strife in the past few days.”

I take a deep breath in. It would be so easy now to make up with David, to give him my usual cheeky grin and say I’m sorry. To admit that I’ve been a bit silly and that I should just listen to him in the future and not be so impetuous. But I’m not going to do it.

“David, do you know why I took the disk?”

David sighs. “You thought you were helping me, I know. But come on Georgie, you believed Mike—the very person I told you not to see.”

“Exactly! David, just listen to yourself, will you? Youtold me not to see Mike? I’m your girlfriend, not a child. Why didn’t you just tell me what he was up to instead? You even told Candy not to tell me about her and Mike, so I had no idea what a liar he was. David, you are a wonderful boyfriend in so many ways and you are truly a great lover. But you can’t treat me like a little girl! Are you really surprised that I end up doing stupid things when you don’t ever let me know what’s really going on?”

David looks up, dumbfounded.

“Are you trying to say it’s all my fault?” he says incredulously.

“No, of course not,” I sigh. “What happened is all my fault. But you do need to take a bit of responsibility. What I’m talking about is us. If there is an us, that is. If there’s going to be an us . . .” I pause for dramatic effect. “I just think that you need to change the way you see me. To tell me what’s going on instead of treating me like a child and shielding me from everything. I need you to take me seriously . . .”

My voice trails off as I look at David’s face. He looks shocked. Oh God, he probably can’t believe that having put him through hell I’m now having a go at him for not trusting me. Am I being unfair?

Suddenly gripped by fear that I could be screwing up yet again, I decide to shout down to David that I was completely in the wrong and that he probably had really good reasons not to tell me about Mike. But before I can open my mouth, I notice his face changing. He still looks serious, but now he’s looking at me as if he’s seeing something he hasn’t seen before. I couldn’t be sure, but I almost think he looks a bit proud.

“You’re saying there may not be an us?” he says softly, so softly that I can only just hear him through the night air.

“Well, no, not really,” I shrug. “But it got you to listen, didn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, Georgie. Really and truly sorry. I thought, well, I thought it was up to me to protect you. I didn’t realize I was shutting you out. I just . . . I didn’t want you to know about the horrible stuff I get involved in. Could I . . . could I maybe come in so that we can talk about this with some, well, privacy?”

I nod and walk over to press the intercom buzzer. I push it several times, but I can’t hear David opening the door.

“It’s open,” I call, walking back to the window, but David isn’t on the street anymore. I lean out of the window to see where he’s got to, and to my amazement I find that he’s climbing up the wall. He is shinnying up the very same drainpipe that floored Mike.

“David, what are you doing?” I call excitedly. “You’re insane!”

“Not insane, Georgie, but perhaps a bit stupid,” David replies, grabbing onto the wall for a better grip. “I thought I was doing the right thing keeping the truth from you. I didn’t want you to worry, and if I’m absolutely honest, I probably didn’t know you really cared about it. But Georgie, the last thing I wanted was to lie to you. I just didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily.