The meanest Flood

threatening to get worse. Too much television, too many late nights and early mornings. Too much to think about. Too much life with Marilyn.
    He was in his shirt-sleeves and looked at her enquiringly, not an unattractive man in spite of his prominent nose. The small patches of premature silver hair at his temples helped enormously. Ellen wasn’t sure if she should be pleased or worried that her daughter’s taste in men mirrored her own. Ellen would have been quite happy on the arm of this man, or of Jeremy Paxman and many of the others. She wasn’t quite so sure about the footballer. A little too rough and ready with his overt machismo and sexuality. The kind who wouldn’t take long to get around to suggesting a threesome and who would want to take a bottle of whisky to bed.
    ‘Can I help?’ the magician said.
    ‘Sorry to bother you,’ Ellen told him. ‘I’m Marilyn’s mother. Marilyn Eccles?’
    Danny Mann shook his head. ‘I’m sorry I don’t...’
    ‘Marilyn, she followed you to Newcastle.’
    ‘Oh, my goodness. That one. Sorry, I mean, Marilyn, yes. Your daughter?’
    ‘Can I come in?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ the magician said, looking up and down the street. ‘Do we have anything to discuss?’
    ‘My daughter is a little odd, Mr Mann. I’d like to see if we can work together to stop her bothering you.’ She gave him a smile. ‘You don’t have to worry about me. I’m completely normal.’
    He stood aside and let her walk past him into the house. The living room was a woman’s room but there was no sense of a woman in the house. There was a shelf of books and the walls were covered with rather old-fashioned wallpaper. The three-piece suite had covers with a faded floral pattern. On the wall was a velvet picture of a wizard with a black cloak. On the couch the kitbag was now empty.
    ‘Do you live alone?’ Ellen asked.
    He didn’t hesitate. ‘Since my mother passed away, yes. Does it show?’
    ‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean...’
    ‘Please, sit down,’ he said. He scooped up the kitbag and made space for her on the couch. ‘Can I offer you something? Tea, coffee?’
    ‘No, thank you. I don’t want to take up your time.’ He sat opposite her. He sat on the edge of a chair, his knees together, rather prim for a man. He waited, eyes fixed on Ellen.
    ‘Marilyn told me what happened,’ she said. ‘How she followed you to Newcastle, approached you on the train.’ He nodded but he didn’t speak.
    ‘She’s a strange girl,’ Ellen added. ‘She’s formed an attachment to you, a kind of obsession. Oh, it’s nothing you’ve done. This kind of thing, it’s happened before, with other men. Prominent men, celebrities. It’s an illness. She’s being treated. On medication.’
    ‘I was rather frightened on the train,’ Danny said. ‘I didn’t know if she was dangerous.’
    ‘She wouldn’t hurt you,’ Ellen said. ‘She might hurt herself. But there’d be no question of violence towards you.’
    ‘If she thought I was rejecting her?’ the magician said. ‘Those feelings sometimes lead to violence, do they not?’
    ‘She’s ill, Mr Mann. She suffers from a condition known as erotomania. She’s preoccupied with sexual passion and morbid infatuation.’
    ‘Jealousy?’
    ‘Yes, intense jealousy. But the medication keeps everything in check.’
    ‘So I take it that she’s not using her medication at the moment?’
    ‘She wasn’t. When she followed you she wasn’t. But she is now. I don’t think she’ll bother you again.’
    ‘Why have you come to tell me this, Mrs Eccles?’
    ‘I wanted to apologize. I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea about Marilyn, or to ring the police. And I wanted to ask you to contact me if you have more trouble from her. If she stops taking the medication again or if she needs it reassessing I can take her back to the doctor. But I wouldn’t necessarily know she was bothering you unless you told me.’
    The magician got to his feet. ‘I’ll help in any way I can,’ he said.
    Ellen no longer found him attractive. She couldn’t think what it was about him that had attracted her a few minutes earlier. He was effeminate, almost fey, but with a fierce intelligence. He was co-operating and that was all she had wanted or expected. She offered him her hand and he took it and shook it gently.
    But why be so hard on him? she thought as he showed her to the door. Like most people he couldn’t see beyond the limits of his own conflict. But that