Standing room only. All attention on me at the front of the room. A light blazed in my face alongside the unblinking shark’s eye of the TV camera. Nerves rioting in my gut like a nest of snakes sprayed with petrol. Pencils poised. I speak and I can’t hear the words. They fold and jumble in my head like shapes I once knew but no longer recognise. Journalists transcribe anyway. I see the jag of graphite on paper, the weird hieroglyphics of Pitman and Teeline. And a shadow growing. Romy Toussaint with a collapsing smile on her mouth, nodding in encouragement, but perhaps taken aback by the savagery of what I’m saying. Ian Mawker looking tired and worn, stretched thin like his underpant elastic. I stare into that lens and see the soul of The Hack welling like black oil from the cracked engine block of a car too dangerous to drive any more. The words go straight into him like hooks. All distance is concertinaed; I’m pulling him into the midst of us. The shadow grows. He’s here. Everyone touched by that elongating black figure shrinks in pain, cradling charred limbs.
