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Valerie Perkis was looking forward to her day out. It wasn't often that she had a reason to go into central London, and an expedition that took in both Harrods and Selfriges was, as far as she was concerned, a dream come true. For the umpteenth time, as she spooned out a generous portion of mashed potatoes onto her husband's plate in preparation for adding the sausages, she started telling him how excited she was.

Reginald loved his wife. After all, he mused, why else would he have married her? No, as far as Reginald was concerned, Valerie had been a pretty special find. Her only faults: a tendency to bore him to death and expensive shopping trips in London's West End. Reginald found he was starting to click his teeth as Valerie explained the wonderful sights that were in store for her on the morrow.

"Yes dear," he interjected for the nth time that evening as she told him what she'd heard and read about Selfridges haberdashery department's re-vamp. "I'm sure it'll be lovely."

"Oh it will, it will," Valerie gushed earnestly, managing to prop up a fourth sausage against the heaped mash before putting the plate in front of him and passing him the gravy boat. He smothered the pile of goodness with thick gravy and tucked in, paying scant attention to Valerie as he watched the news on the telly. A cell of terrorists was on the loose in the United Kingdom and had threatened to disrupt the capital during the run up to Christmas.

"Why on earth would they want to do that, dear?" Valerie asked during the commercial break. "Don't they know it would upset Santa?"

Reginald almost coughed out the mouthful of food he was masticating, and looked at his wife suspiciously. Valerie was certainly not known for her wit and repartee, yet surely that was a joke? Valerie continued to watch the news, oblivious.

"Oh, look dear. The Elephant at the zoo has given birth. Isn't that wonderful?" She looked across at him, expectantly. He smiled and nodded, piling some more gravy soaked mash over his sausage, dabbing it all with a smidgeon of mustard and wondering if maybe the terrorists would start with the zoo. 'Terrorists foiled by Chimps Tea Party'; he imagined the headline as he slid the forkful into his mouth and started counting.

'Twenty times, Reginald,' his mother used to say. 'Remember to masticate twenty times: no more and no less.' 'Yes mother', he'd reply, and ever since then he had: even though his food had often been gone by 'ten'.

Several times his inability to alter his habit had come close to ending their marriage. Soon after they'd wed Valerie had started with the common sense approach: 'Dearest, don't you think that once your food has, umm ... well, gone, you could stop chewing?' That argument had gone on for the best part of a weekend, and had ended with Valerie smashing their wedding china. The following week they'd had a dinner party with Valerie's best friend and her husband. 'Please, dearest, forget your mother's advice for just one night,' Valerie had begged. 'Please, we're starting with soup and you can't chew soup.' He'd tried, he really had, but a vision of his mother's saddened face popped up behind Valerie's smiling one, and he'd started counting again. At first, Celeste, Valerie's friend, had thought it was a joke. She'd laughed as he'd chewed through his third spoonful, and then had looked appalled as he'd agreed to seconds. Reginald frowned. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen Celeste again.

Cheese and biscuits were almost safe he thought as he helped himself. And it wasn't Valerie's fault she didn't understand. At least he had Roger. Roger was the best thing his parents had ever done for him, and the one thing he knew Valerie couldn't live without. He smiled as Roger twitched at the thought and looked across at Valerie as she browsed through the local paper, harvesting coupons.

"If you're off early, my poppet, Roger would like to have a few words." Valerie stopped looking for coupons and looked at Roger instead. He was hard as a rock and yet again she found herself marveling at how such an odd man as her husband could possibly end up with such a fantabulous cock. Primly, she straightened her dress.

"Certainly darling, I think a long conversation with Roger would go down a treat."

*

At the age of seventeen Guillermo Pike and his family had moved to the United Kingdom from America. For the first three months Guillermo had had the time of his young life. Then misery had set in as it had slowly dawned on him they wouldn't be going home. He'd been ripe for indoctrination, so ripe in fact that Kyle, his handler, had worried for a while that Guillermo might have been an infiltrator sent to destroy his cell. Then he'd realised the truth: Guillermo wasn't the brightest twig on the branch, and on reporting back he had been instructed to speed up the boy's training.

That Guillermo didn't fully grasp the difference between fact and fiction, cause and effect, wasn't a problem in the slightest. It meant that Kyle, by this time Guillermo's only 'real' friend, didn't have to bother with the religious aspect in the slightest. Guillermo wasn't interested. What he liked were comics, and preferably gory comics to boot. So it was an amazing day for Guillermo when Kyle met him at the library and handed him a brown paper bag.

"Happy Birthday, Gui."

"What is it?" Guillermo asked, his eyes wide open in expectation. He didn't often get presents, and this was the first time Kyle had given him one.

"Look and see, little man," Kyle said, his eyes roving the stacks and carrels, checking out who might be watching them. Guillermo sat down cross-legged and slid a crisp new comic out of the bag. The front showed a dark bleak cityscape with evil characters everywhere. In the foreground a boy in a hoodie and jeans with his face in shadow was holding a square box on which was stenciled 'Solution.' The title was 'Gui versus The West!'

"Oh, wow! It's me! Where did you get this from, Kyle?"

"Amazing isn't it, Gui?"

"Yeah," Gui said, "almost like, what was it you called it ... fate." Guillermo was in seventh heaven as Kyle took him out to McD's to celebrate. "Oh, wow!" he said for the hundredth time as he got to the end of the comic book just as he finished his shake. "It's like, it's like it knows what we've been thinking of doing, man."

"Shhh, little man." Kyle took a quick look at the faces around them, worried the kid was maybe too stupid.

*

Valerie screamed as Roger, Reginald and she finished together. If it'd been up to her she'd have got rid of Reginald ages ago, but Roger was worth all the embarrassment. In the warm afterglow she held onto Roger as Reginald drifted off to sleep. Some time later he started snoring leaving Valerie to ponder the idea of taxidermy. Soon she too was asleep and smiling as she dreamt.

*

Kyle had given Guillermo his first assignment the night before. It was a simple chore, Kyle had explained. All he had to do was post a box, and he could even send it from the store where he worked if he liked. Then Kyle had smiled and, rather carefully Guillermo thought, handed him a shoebox-sized package wrapped up in brown paper with a hand written address label on the front. Guillermo glanced at it and agreed without a second's thought as he flicked through his comic for the millionth time. It was fantastic to have your own comic!

"Remember it's our secret," Kyle had said later, and Gui had grunted, not sure if Kyle meant the sex thing they did, or the posting of the package.

"Sure Kyle, our secret," he'd said, grunting again as Kyle pushed the point home.

*

Guillermo was called Guillermo at the department store where he worked. He wore a smart pair of trousers, a smart shirt, and a smart jacket which had all been provided when he'd been accepted for the job. On his first morning his manager had pinned a name badge that said 'Guillermo' on his lapel. Guillermo liked his manager and knew what his manager liked, even though he'd found his reaction funny when he'd first offered. It was one of Guillermo's secret secrets. It was a secret that even Kyle didn't know about: Guillermo could tell instantly when someone fancied him, and unlike most of the people he'd met, he loved to partake. He loved every minute of every debauched situation his new friends desired.

He'd known Kyle had wanted him before Kyle had. He had also known that Kyle had to be the one in control, so he'd made it obvious - but not too obvious. Kyle had taken a few days to start up, and when he had, Guillermo had played the game the way he knew Kyle would want it played.

"Would you mind staying behind, Guillermo?" Kyle had asked as his students were trooping out of the classroom to go to the next lesson.

"Yes?"

"Sit down, please," he'd said, "You don't mind if I call you Gui, do you?"

"No," Gui had said in a quiet breathy voice that he knew would make Kyle's obvious arousal even more obvious. Kyle had groaned and put his briefcase on his lap. "May I close the blind, please, sir?" Gui had pointed to the door. Students could be seen bustling by in the corridor and Kyle had blanched at his stupidity. "I get nervous you see, sir," Gui had hurriedly added, not wanting Kyle to think it was for any other reason.

"Of course, if you want, Gui." Kyle's voice had become even deeper and filled with a desire Gui could feel. Gui had pulled the blind down and had taken the time to turn the key and lock them in, then he'd turned and let Kyle see his state.

With his manager at the store it had been different. Although Gui knew that letting him lead was probably the way it should have been, it would never have happened at all if he hadn't taken charge himself. A week after he'd started, during a lull, he'd knocked on the manager's door.

"Come in!"

"I saw you looking at me, Mister Johns," he'd said, cutting to the chase.

"Yes?" Mister Johns had first looked puzzled and then frightened.

"Don't be scared, please," he'd said as he walked over, picked up Mister Johns' right hand and placed it on his hard, hard crotch. "It's what I want, too."

Now, his manager was a different man. He'd been kind before, but there had been a deep undercurrent of misery: of 'could have beens' and 'what ifs'. Now, Mister Johns came in every morning whistling: he was happy, and not just on the surface, but deep down within, too. Guillermo knew he'd been responsible for it and he was happy as well. What none of his 'friends' really knew was that if he didn't do what he did he was afraid that, as eggs were eggs, he'd be as unhappy as they were.

*

Gui parked his scooter in the employees' section and was about to clock in when he remembered the package. Frowning at his forgetfulness he retrieved it and took it into the store with him. Christmas was getting close and the packing department where Gui worked, and where goods were gift wrapped as a courtesy to customers, was getting very busy. Gui slid the package under the counter and humming quietly to himself, started the day's work.

"Gui! There's a phone call for you," Mister Johns said. "You can take it this time, though employees aren't normally allowed to receive personal calls," he added kindly. Gui went to the office and took the call.

"Hello?"

"Gui?!"

"Yes!" He recognised Kyle's voice and slid his hand into his trouser pocket.

"Look, I'm sorry but there's been a balls up with our secret, you need to remove the label, then tonight I'll give you the proper address for it. Okay?"

"Mmm," Gui said, thinking of Kyle's balls up, and how much he enjoyed their secret. He stuck the phone between his ear and his shoulder and slid his free hand under the waistband of his trousers. "Mmm," he said again with gusto. "What should I do?" But Kyle had gone.

"Are you finished in there, Gui?"

"Almost," Gui managed to say as he bit his lower lip.

He remembered the package as he was eating his sandwich. Brushing the crumbs off his mouth he pulled it out from under the counter and carefully peeled the address label off. He was about to put the package back when he frowned and turned it over. Then he checked the sides. There wasn't a return address. Gui had never seen any package or letter without a return address, and he thought not having one was probably illegal. He took an indelible marker out of the drawer and, quite pleased with himself for remembering, wrote 'Home Address', underlined it twice, then, as neatly as he could, he added Kyle's address underneath.

*

On the train into town Valerie thought about where she should go first, and what she had to buy. She had been thinking about Celeste's Christmas present since early September. Celeste was her best, not to mention her most expensive, friend, and she didn't want her present to end up at the local charity shop, or worse, for it to come back to her next year. Most definitely not. Celeste's present was her most pressing matter and until she had it picked, bought and wrapped, she wouldn't be able to relax. Second on her list was a new box of hats for Roger. She smiled at the thought and licked her lips, thinking that maybe she'd try him with the raspberry flavoured ones, this time.

Sadly, Harrods was a wash out. Oh, it was still fun to wander around, and the food court was still magnificent if what you wanted was a pot of chocolate covered bees. But lord was it expensive, and the looks you got if you weren't wearing the very latest fashion along with, as far as her age group was concerned, thousands of pounds of plastic surgery, were just too galling.

After a spot of window shopping in Knightsbridge, Selfridges came next on her agenda, and with eyes wide with glee Valerie hit pay dirt. A sale in the shoe department! Even Celeste couldn't complain if she got a pair of shoes from Ferragamo, Prada, or maybe, some Jimmy Choo's. The shoe department -- or was it a floor, it seemed so large -- fairly took Valerie's breath away. But she wasn't deterred. She had a secret weapon: her feet were exactly the same size as Celeste's.

Unfortunately, as Reginald would have attested to if he'd been there -- which very luckily, Valerie thought, he wasn't -- she couldn't make a decision to save her life. She had planned to go to Fortnum and Mason for lunch, but she was still in Selfridges. Fortnum's would have been her choice for Tea, too. But at teatime she was still in the shoe department, driving a small team of salespeople to distraction.

Eventually, Malcolm Smith, the shoe department's manager saved the day. He'd had staff of various seniority coming into his office all day talking about 'that mad woman', and he'd laughed. Finally he'd come to see what the fuss was about and had felt his mouth drop open at the utter carnage. Boxes, shoes, tissue paper and sales staff littered the floor, and he was worried he'd have to call in the shop's paramedic for poor old Mister Jemkins. Swiftly he took charge and persuaded the woman to take an extra special deal. A pair of Prada moccasins at a four hundred pound reduction. The reduction was worth it to get his sales staff back to work, but when she'd smiled with glee and said 'super, I'll take two', he'd nearly, nearly hit her. Instead he'd taken her money with good grace and gone to try and massage the daily figures to hide the loss.

"Would you like them packed, ma'am?" asked a young lad who'd been watching Valerie shopping like a rugby supporter at the World Cup, but was now attentively standing by, ready to help.

"Just these, please," she said, handing him Celeste's Prada box and gripping his arm with the excitement of a shopping spree more than well executed. "These are for me, though my husband won't believe it! Oh, and might I have a bag for my old shoes, too?"

"Certainly, Ma'am," the young lad said, taking her old shoes. "And I'll get this packed for you, immediately," he added, smiling. He took the box to packing, had a laugh explaining to Gui what had happened and then went for his tea break.

Half an hour later Malcolm Smith came out of his office to check everything was back to normal, and was mortified to see 'that mad woman' still waiting.

"Why on earth is she still here?" he whispered to Mister Jemkins who was in the throes of recovery and wondering if he could get the rest of the day off.

"Jimmy went to get them packed," the old man said, "and hasn't come back. He's probably run away." He winked, "Sensible, I call it."

"Yes, well …." Malcolm couldn't disagree and sighed. "Oh, very well. I'll deal with it." With girded loins and a rictus smile he apologised to Valerie for the delay and set off for the packing department. There was nobody around. He checked the tables and found a shoe box neatly wrapped in brown paper and another one wrapped in Christmas paper. Whistling, he put them both in a luxury carrier bag and took them back upstairs.

"Here you are, madam," Malcolm said. "I'm so sorry you had to wait." Valerie smiled; her feet hadn't felt as comfortable in an age.

"Not to worry," she laughed, then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I'm sure it's worth a discount." Malcolm felt the blood surge to his face; felt like screaming, and it must have shown. "I'm just pulling your leg, Mister Smith," Valerie said, hurriedly. "All in all I've had a wonderful day, and you …." She patted him on the arm. "You gave me a bargain to be proud of. Thank you." With that, and watched by the entire contingent of the shoe department, Valerie picked up her bags and left.

*

Gui had forgotten about the Kyle's package by the time he'd got back from tea. He'd met a funny young trainee salesman from the shoe department who had made him roar with laughter with an unlikely story of a woman demolishing the section and of how the manager had almost given her the shoes in order to get her to leave. Gui was happy because his secret gift had flared up almost as soon as he'd sat down with his tea and scone and Jimmy. Happy because there was no waiting to see what would happen. Happy because he'd looked in Jimmy's eyes and they'd both known ... and known that the store's delivery bay was empty at that time of day.

*

Valerie was going over her day blow by blow so she could tell Reginald the best bits. She'd just managed to catch her train, and had splashed out on a cab to save her beautiful new Prada shoes. She was almost home when she looked in the carrier bag. There were two boxes. She frowned. Two? But she was wearing her shoes. Valerie took the boxes out of the carrier. One was wrapped in plain brown paper, and the other in an elegant silver and green Christmas design complete with snow dusted trees, each with a robin perched on its branches and picked out in red. She held the parcel up and shook it. She could hear tissue paper and the weight was right. No, it was definitely Celete's shoes. The second box was non descript and heavier. She turned it over and saw an address written on in a rounded childish cursive. She smiled, deciding she'd been handed her good deed for the day.

"Cabbie?"

"Yes, madam?"

"I need to deliver a parcel en route. To Avenue Road: it's four or five streets over, near the school I think."

"Not a problem," the driver said and took the next left.

The large Victorian house was in darkness as the cab pulled up outside. Valerie got out and after admiring her shoes and the way the faux jewels glittered under the streetlight, she trotted up the steps. It was a share, that was for sure, with more buttons than she thought there could be rooms. She looked at her shoes again, then decided to ring the oldest looking button. It was at the bottom and merely said 'M'. She pressed it and seemingly at a great distance a dog started yapping. The sound got suddenly louder, along with a frantic scrabbling of nails and then the beast was scratching and yipping at the other side of the door. A dim light went on.

"Down Brutus, down," a querulous voice sputtered as the door opened to reveal an old man in a wheelchair holding back a small Chihuahua. "Yearse?"

"May I speak with Kyle, please?" Valerie asked.

"Kyleoo?"

"I don't know. I have a parcel for him."

"Oh 'im."

"Kyle Im?"

"Wot? You takin' ve piss?" the man said, glaring. "I s'pose it's 'cause I'm on wheels."

"No! No, no, no. I thought you meant 'Im' was Kyle's surname, but you didn't. Nice dog by the way. So, is he im? I mean in?" Valerie was flustered. The man's cardigan was hideous, besides which he smelt. Or the dog did, or something. "Is he?"

"Na, givus 'ere 'n' 'e'll gerrit when 'e gets back."

"Fine then," Valerie said, passing the parcel over. The man looked at it and licked his lips. "You'll make sure he gets it?" she asked.

"Yearse," the man said as the door was closed in her face. She paused a moment, dubious. She'd wanted to tell Kyle the story of her day, of how she'd come by his parcel … but Reginald would do. She smiled as she watched her beautiful shoes carry her back to the cab.

"Home James," she said, wittily. The cab driver indicated, then pulled out into the traffic and sighed. How did everyone know his name was James?

*

Bernie Marchtout had been renting rooms ever since he'd signed on for sickness benefit. Not that he was sick, but since he hardly ever went out anyway the idea of sitting in a movable chair and being paid damn well for it, appealed. They'd tried to catch him out at first, the bastards, but he'd got through that, and now he found he sat in the chair out of choice, anyway.

Kyle was his son. Little fucker. He'd been everything in his time from staunch Conservative to die hard Labour; from Roman Catholic to Buddhist and now ...? Bernie found it hard to remember if he'd converted to something else or not. Little fucker! And a poof too, if he'd read the signs right. Bernie coughed as he wheeled himself back up the corridor to their rooms. Closing the door he put Kyle's parcel on the sideboard and used the remote to turn up the news. Bernie liked the news: liked thinking about the poor sods all over the world who had to go through shit whilst he lived the life of Riley at the taxpayers' expense. And now it seemed that some of them were going to bomb London again. Fuckers.

Bernie turned away from the television and looked at his son's parcel.

*

Reginald was having a snack when Valerie came through the front door. He could tell that she was in a good mood and it boded no good at all for the state of his credit card, or more imminently, his ears. "Have you had a good day, dear?" he asked, turning up the volume on the television just a little.

*

Gui was doing what he did best and Jimmy was loving it. After their introduction in the delivery bay Jimmy had invited him back to his bed-sit, which was, Jimmy had said, more a bed-floor seeing as how he didn't have a chair. For the first time in his life Gui felt like he was doing what he was doing because he wanted to, and not because he was driven to it or was doing it to help. Jimmy and he had just clicked, really clicked. Gui smiled, nibbled Jimmy's ear lobe and tenderly, slowly, pushed.

*

Kyle took the bus home. He liked to sit on the top deck right at the front and watch the myriad infidel ants as they went about their business. He'd had a clandestine meeting with his handler where he'd reported that the device had been planted according to plan. His handler had nodded and then told him to tie off all loose ends. He'd agreed readily enough as he knew they didn't know about Gui, and -- he smiled to himself -- the boy was a tight end, anyway. The bus slowed for a traffic light and Kyle found himself thinking about the bomb's design once more. As part of his training he'd been taught to envision the design of any IEDs he made and then to check the design against the finished item. He grinned to himself, proud that he'd thought to add an anti tamper device.

Kyle got off the bus and walked down the hill towards home. Home, that was a laugh. His father hardly spoke to him anymore. Didn't he know that what his son was doing was directly as a response to the way he'd been brought up … the way he'd been treated all his life. He found he was blinking back tears as he thought of his father. Old Fucker!

Bernie was holding a thin letter knife and licking his lips as he heard someone put a key in the front door.

"Kyle?!" Bernie paused. He had removed the outer brown paper wrapper from the parcel and was about to slide the knife under the first of the taped down flaps.

"Yeah, Dad. It's me!" Kyle hollered as he closed the front door.

"Okay," Bernie said half to himself, wondering if he should wait until the morning to see what was what. Kyle would be pissed either way. He shrugged.

*

Valerie had just put a tray of lasagna in the oven and was setting the timer when she heard what sounded like a very loud car backfiring. The kitchen windows rattled.

"Would you like a drink, dear?" Valerie called out as she pressed the tit on the oven's timer. She smiled and smoothed down her apron. Lasagna was a good choice as it gave her a nice forty minutes to tell Reginald about her day, her good deed, and best of all her new shoes. Then, after desert, she'd show Roger his new hats.

Valerie had just sat down in her chair to begin her story when the sound of sirens rudely interrupted.

 

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