Pulse

didn’t need to look up heart disease, liver disease, deformed children, blind children.
    They doped the girls because it worked. East German swimmers won medals everywhere, the women especially. Not that Andrea had got to that level. When the Berlin Wall came down and the scandal broke, when they put the poisoners – trainers, doctors, bureaucrats – on trial, her name wasn’t even mentioned. In spite of the pills, she hadn’t made the national team. The others, the ones who went public about what had been done to their bodies and minds, at least had gold medals and a few years of fame to show for it. Andrea had come out with nothing more than a relay medal at some forgotten championship in a country that no longer existed.
    Vernon looked out at the concrete strip and the shingle beach, at the grey sea and the grey sky beyond. The view was pretending it had always been the same, for as long as people had sat at this café window. Except that there used to be a row of beach huts blocking the view. Then someone had burnt them down.

At Phil & Joanna’s 1: 60/40
    IT WAS THE week Hillary Clinton finally conceded. The table was a clutter of bottles and glasses; and though hunger had been satisfied, some mild social addiction kept making hands reach out to snaffle another grape, crumble a landslip from the cliff-face of cheese, or pick a chocolate from the box. We had talked about Obama’s chances against McCain, and whether in recent weeks Hillary had demonstrated guts or mere self-deception. We had also considered whether the Labour Party was any longer distinguishable from the Conservatives, the suitability of London’s streets for bendy buses, the likelihood of an al-Qaida attack on the 2012 Olympics, and the effect of global warming on English viticulture. Joanna, who had been quiet during these last two topics, now said with a sigh,
    ‘You know, I could really do with a cigarette.’
    Everyone seemed to exhale slightly.
    ‘It’s just on occasions like this, isn’t it?’
    ‘The food. That lamb, by the way …’
    ‘Thanks. It’s six hours. Best way to do it. And star anise.’
    ‘And the wine …’
    ‘Not forgetting the company.’
    ‘When I was giving up, it was the disapproval I hated more than anything. You’d ask if anyone minded, and they all said no, but you could sense them turning away and not breathing in. And either pitying you, which was patronising, or even kind of loathing you.’
    ‘And there would never be an ashtray in the house andthey’d do a long, exaggerated hunt for some old saucer which had lost its cup.’
    ‘And the next stage was going outside and freezing to death.’
    ‘And if you stubbed it out in some plant pot they’d look at you as if you’d given a geranium cancer.’
    ‘I used to take my butts home in my purse. In a plastic bag.’
    ‘Like dog crap. When did that start, by the way? About the same time? People walking around with inverted plastic bags on their hands, waiting for their dogs to crap.’
    ‘I always think it must be warm, mustn’t it? Feeling warm dog crap through the plastic.’
    ‘Dick, really .’
    ‘Well, I’ve never seen them waiting for it to cool down, have you?’
    ‘These chocolates, to change the subject. Why do the drawings never match what’s in the box?’
    ‘Or is it the other way round?’
    ‘The other way round’s the same way round. They still don’t match.’
    ‘The pictures are only an approximation. Like a communist menu. What would exist in an ideal world. Think of them as a metaphor.’
    ‘The chocolates?’
    ‘No, the drawings.’
    ‘I used to love a cigar. It didn’t have to be a whole one. Half would do.’
    ‘They gave you different cancers, didn’t they?’
    ‘What did?’
    ‘Cigarettes, pipes, cigars. Didn’t pipes give you lip cancer?’
    ‘What did cigars give you?’
    ‘Oh, the poshest kind.’
    ‘What’s a posh cancer? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?’
    ‘Bum cancer’s got to be the bottom of the pile.’
    ‘Dick, really .’
    ‘Did I say something?’
    ‘Cancer of the heart – is that possible?’
    ‘Only as a metaphor, I’d say.’
    ‘George the Sixth – was that lung?’
    ‘Or throat?’
    ‘Anyway, it proved he had the common touch, didn’t it? Like staying in Buckingham Palace and getting bombed, and going round the East End shaking hands in the rubble.’
    ‘So getting a common form of cancer was in line with that – is that what you’re saying?’
    ‘I