Dolphin-san: Hey there! I'm back with another update. It's so much fun writing this you know. Any way, enjoy.

And thanks this time to Seto's Nice Girl, Shain and Broken Vows for reviewing the last chapter. It always makes me happy to know someone out there likes my writing, and I enjoy reading the reviews to see what people think of it (especially BV's last one, that made me laugh so much. I totally agree with you on the strangling part, he he).

Chapter 5

The view over Hampstead was breathtaking. White clouds scudded across a duck-egg-blue sky and the kite flyers were out in force. Ray, feeling the cold, dug his woolly orange beret out of his jacket pocket and pulled it on, Benny Hill style, over his tingling ears.

Florence held the glasses on her lap and Ray wrestled the cork out of the bottle. When the wine was poured, they toasted Danny and clinked glasses. Reverently taking his first sip, Ray tried hard – and failed utterly – to appreciate the finer points of a £47-a-bottle wine.

'Mm, yum,' he lied.

'Ha, and I'm the Queen of Spain. Doesn't matter if you don't like it,' Florence said cheerfully, polishing off her first glassful and smacking her lips. 'I'll manage the rest.'

To steer the subject away from his own shameful ignorance, Ray huffed on his frozen hands and said, 'So how did you and Danny meet?'

'Haven't I told you before? Oh, it's a great story.' Florence held her glass out for a refill. 'I was up here one Sunday with Bruce. He had a new bike and I wouldn't let him out on the roads. So of course he set out to prove he could ride the damn thing – he was eight, you know what they're like at that age – and the next minute he was hurtling out of control down that path there.' She nodded in the direction of the narrow path curving to the left below them. 'Poor little sod ended up going slap into a tree.'

'You've never told me this!' Enthralled, Ray leaned closer, cross-legged on the grass. It wasn't difficult to imagine Bruce as a stubborn eight-year-old. 'What happened next?'

'Blood and teeth everywhere. One wrecked bike, one sprained knee. Bruce was screaming blue murder and there was me without so much as a tissue to mop up the blood.'

'Poor Bruce.'

'Poor me! I was in a complete flap. Bruce wasn't the only one in tears, I can tell you.'

'Hang on, I can guess the rest,' Ray said excitedly. 'Then – trumpets, trumpets! – over the hill came Danny riding to the rescue on his motorbike' – he had heard all about Danny's devotion to his Norton 500 – 'with a first-aid kit slung over one shoulder and a big bag of false teeth on the other.'

Florence chuckled.

'Not quite. Over the hill came Danny, on foot and hung-over, making his way back to Highgate after an all-night party. But he came to the rescue, bless his heart, and he had a clean handkerchief, which was more than I did. He cleaned up Bruce's mouth, managed to stop him screaming and insisted on giving him a piggy-back ride home. He even carried the smashed-up bike,' Florence remembered fondly. 'It's a wonder he didn't have a heart attack there and then. Well, that was it as far as I was concerned. Love at first sight. There was Danny with his Clark Gable hair – that was when he still had hair, of course – and me trotting along carrying his dinner jacket. Bruce was dripping blood all over his white evening shirt and he wasn't even bothered. He made us both laugh. And he wasn't even doing it to impress me, because as far as he was concerned I was just a young housewife in need of a hand. When we got back to the house he said, "Your husbands going to have his work cut out for him getting that bike fixed."'

'This is so romantic,' Ray sighed. 'And . . . ?'

'I said, "He certainly is, seeing as he died three years ago."'

Ray wrapped his arms around his knees in delight. 'Then what?'

'Well, he just stood there for a minute, grinning at me. Then he said, "In that case, I'd love an aspirin and a cup of tea."'

'Oh! Did he mend the bike as well?'

'I suggested it.' Florence snorted with laughter. 'He told me he wasn't the fixing type. When things got broken, he bought new ones.'

'And did he buy Bruce another bike?'

'Certainly did, four days later.' Florence waggled her left hand at Ray. 'And so I wouldn't feel left out, an engagement ring for me.'

Having disposed of the rest of the bottle, Florence contentedly closed her eyes and said, 'Okay for five minutes while I have a little snooze?'

Ray sat back, stretching out his legs and propping himself up on his elbows. In this position he could enjoy the faint warmth of the sun on his face and view the kites performing their colourful acrobatics in the sky.

Squinting in the sunlight, he surveyed the panoramic view spread out before him. There in the distance was St Paul's Cathedral, pointing up into the sky like a silicon-stuffed Hollywood breast. And there was Big Ben. To the east stood Canary Wharf, and the old Caledonian market clock tower. To the west, the chimneys of Battersea power station and the Trellick Tower. Heavens, it made you realise how vast – and how electrically beautiful – London really was.

But the unaccustomed brightness of the sun soon made his eyes water. To give them a rest, Ray turned his attention to a battered green BMW being driven slowly along the road below him. Idly he followed its progress until it braked and reversed into a parking space. Seconds later the passenger door was flung open and a boy around five or six jumped out onto the grass verge.

Ray watched the driver emerge from the other side, open the car's boot and take out a white and yellow kite. From this angle his face wasn't visible, but at a guess he was around his mid-twenties, had dark hair like his son poking out from under his baseball cap and wearing a white rugby shirt and faded jeans.

Another Sunday father, thought Ray, bring his child out for a spot of kite-flying then whisking him of for a burger at McDonald's before depositing him back with his mother at the designated time.

Hampstead Heath was full of them.

The spiralling divorce rate had done the fast-food business no harm at all.

As Florence dozed peacefully beside him, Ray watched the boy yell out instructions to his dad. Dad was evidently no expert; as they edged their way up the hill he unravelled the nylon line and made two or three unsuccessful attempts to get the kite airborne.

Ray smirked as he threw it up again, this time narrowly avoiding decapitation. He heard his son yell out in disgust, 'You're useless! Come on, let me have a go.'

They were closer now, moving towards him. The man said, 'Charming manners, Charlie, you take after your mother.'

'She says you've always been a hopeless case. You can't even put a shelf up straight.'

'Maybe I don't want to. Anyway, you're mother's not so clever herself,' he retorted. 'Ask her how many times she's panged the car trying to reverse it into the garage.'

Ray watched the boy impatiently seize control of the kite. Playing one adult off the other, he thought, feeling sorry for him. Poor little lad, caught in the middle between two warring parents.

It couldn't be much fun.

Except . . . wasn't there something oddly familiar about the father's voice? A familiarity that for some reason didn't quite fit with the visual image of the man twenty yards in front of him, now struggling to untangle a section of line which had somehow managed to knot itself around both legs?

Ray sat up, hugging his knees and pushing his beret to the top of his forehead in order to get a better look. He was sure he wasn't a visitor to the salon.

Damn, where have I heard that voice before? he thought with mounting frustration. And why do I keep feeling something isn't right?

The kite, miraculously, made it up into the air. The boy let out a whoop of delight and galloped a few yards further up the grassy slope.

'You did it, you did it!'

'Now who's useless?' his father demanded with a triumphant grin.

'Don't let it crash!'

'It's okay, I've got the hang of it now. A genius, that's what I am, and you can tell your mother that when we get back.'

The wind was taking control, carrying the kite towards the top of the hill. Following his son, the man moved closer to Ray. Next to him, Florence snored peacefully in her wheelchair. Glancing across at them, the man smiled.

The moment his dark eyes locked with Ray's, he knew.

Oh no, it couldn't be.

But it was.

It was him.

The beggar from Brompton Road.

His whole body stiffened in disbelief. Incredibly, the man was still grinning at him.

He hasn't recognised me, thought Ray. He spends his life sitting on his bum watching the world go by. For God's sake, how can he not recognise me?

Outraged, he shoved a stray strand of hair out of his eyes. The orange beret, already tipped to the back of his head, promptly slid off.

At last, with his spiky blue-and green-tipped hair revealed, the penny dropped. His broad smile faltered and faded. The kite was momentarily forgotten.

The kite, taking advantage of this lapse in concentration, swallow-dived to the ground.

'You let it crash!' wailed the boy, racing after it. 'You're supposed to keep the line tight. Come on, pay attention, make it fly again!'

Florence woke up from her doze with a start. Next to her, using the arm rest of the wheelchair for leverage, Ray was scrambling to his feet. Florence heard him say in a low voice trembling with fury, 'You cheat, you bloody despicable liar, how can you live with yourself?'

Florence brightened at once. Well, well, this was a turn-up for the books. She'd never heard Ray have a go at anyone before.

Peering around Ray's quivering form, Florence eyed with interest the object of his rage. Tall, two-toned hair sticking out from a baseball cap and rather good-looking – if currently a bit shell-shocked – hmm, not bad at all. In excellent shape, too, from what she could see.

One of Ray's hapless ex-boyfriends, Florence guessed. Presumably one who'd done the dirty on him. Well, no wonder he was upset.

'Look, I can explain –' he began, but Ray held up both hands to stop him.

'Oh, please don't, we already know what a great actor you are.' He spat the words out with contempt. 'Tell me, is that why you and your wife split up? Did she find out how you were spending your day's and kick you out? Does your son know he has a con-artist for a father?' He longed to yell the accusations at the top of his voice but the boy was only yards away. For his sake, Ray managed to control himself.

The man, looking startled, followed the direction of his gaze. Turning back to Ray, he said with a placatory half-smile, 'I promise you, I can really explain. For a start, I'm not married. And Charlie's not my son, he's –'

'Come and help me!' howled the boy, now firmly entangled in the kite's line. 'You're wasting time – Mum said we had to be back by four.'

'You're damn right you can explain,' Ray hissed, kicking the brakes off Florence's chair and yanking her in the direction of the path. 'You can explain why you take my money and eat my prawn sandwiches when you clearly earn more than I do.' He was flinging the words over his shoulder as he jolted the wheelchair over the uneven ground. 'And you can explain why you drive a BMW,' he bellowed. 'Because you make me sick!'

'Wait,' he called after Ray, but further up the hill his son was yelling for him and Ray was by this time scooting downhill with the wheelchair at a rate of knots.

Relieved to reach the bottom in one piece, Florence said sympathetically, 'The best-looking ones are always the biggest bastards.'

She patted Ray's thin arm, sensing it was best not to mention the two rather good Waterford crystal glasses they had left at the top of the hill. 'What happened, he forgot to mention he was married?'

Poor, impulsive Ray, he deserved better than that. Still, if he wanted to impress a man, he really should learn to cook, Florence privately felt. When you invited someone round for dinner, you couldn't expect them to be too bowled over by a prawn sandwich.

Dolphin-san: Yay! The man from the street has re-appeared (I refuse to call him a beggar, because he never begs). What's going on? Why was he pretending to be poor? And how is he supposed to explain it to Ray, the poor guy? Well, you'll just have to wait until I update to find out. Ha!