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cover and checked the windows and doors twice before going to bed. He fell asleep to images of Spencer P, wallowing in a steaming bath. That smug little smile.
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    His mental state improved with sleep and regressed with breakfast. He was drinking green tea in the sun room, taking in the day, the peace, the new addition to the collection of pot pants and herbs on the window sill. A straggly shrub with lots of six-petalled flowers, like little white starfish.
    Jasmine.
    Know the plants , it’s what he told the kids.
    On Tuesday afternoon, he got back from work and found an Amazon package waiting with the mail. A DVD of Aladdin. The back cover told him that Aladdin’s girlfriend was called Jasmine. Again, he saw Spencer P’s smug face, spluttering now as he throttled the little bastard.
    Then Eggers appeared earlier than usual on Thursday to pick him up. He left him in the kitchen and went for a shower, a sudden suspicion making him creep downstairs. A cupboard door was open. Behind it was Eggers, rubbing a particularly scented hand cream around the rims of his mugs.
    â€˜You swine. I’ve been freaking out! I thought it was Spencer P.’
    â€˜Spencer? Why would it be him? And why do you call him Spencer P? He’s not a fuckin rapper .’
    Thursday they finished early, Boss Hogg with a mysterious appointment that Eggers knew all about, damn straight, a girl named Sue and a husband far away. They stayed in town, a few beers in the park. It was Jonas’s idea to hire a boat at the lake, working the oars as Eggers worked the Stella: six cans in forty-five minutes. He fell asleep with his head on the stern.
    Jonas paddled quietly to shore, removed the oars and gently pushed the boat back out.
    â€˜You fucker!’
    â€˜Swim for it.’
    â€˜Sod off!’
    â€˜Nice day for a swim.’
    â€˜ Jonas .’
    â€˜Did you break into my house and have a bath?’
    â€˜You on about that again?’
    â€˜I can leave or I can come and tow you in. Easy is.’
    â€˜Easy AS, you knob!’
    â€˜That’s hardly the attitude.’
    â€˜Look. I didn’t break into your house and have a bath . Are you insane? Why would anyone do that?’
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    That night Jonas dreamt of boats. These dreams that came in cycles, a psychic turning every six months or so. Tonight there was no rabbit and no child. But still blood. There was always blood.
    He was crouched on the shore of a vast sea, scrubbing his sticky red hands. Eggers rowed back and forth, shouting come and join me, Jonas . Big Haakon appeared in a deerskin coracle. Then Axel in a dinghy, someone new each time he looked: family and school friends, teaching colleagues, all in different vessels, canoes and skiffs, tug boats, all shouting come and join me, Jonas . He shook his head, shouting that he couldn’t, he had to clean his hands.
    And then Mary. A gondola parting the throng, beckoning to him. Jonas smiled and the blood was gone. A rowing boat materialised but before he could push it out a storm blew up, obscuring everyone. The last thing he saw was the Hirtshals night ferry, Eva and Anya.
    He woke late, just after seven. Outside, Eggers was blasting the horn, shattering the last dream-image. Mary, beckoning him. He felt an old, old sensation and stepped into the day.
    â€˜You pulling your pud in there?’
    â€˜I did dream about you last night.’
    Eggers gunned the van and smirked. ‘Wet dream, eh?’
    â€˜Wet as your boots.’
    The smirk vanished. Eggers slammed the gear into second. He was wearing an old pair of boots. Why he waded to the lakeside without taking off his boots remained a mystery.
    Eggers said nothing for the rest of the drive to the ring road. In the silence, Jonas thought about boats; the Skagerrak trawlers and the weekend dinghies, the big boys permitted by parents to cast darrows for the mackerel, far out in their rowing boats and Jonas so envious.
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    The job pressed.