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  'Somebody's here. It must be your son.' Masako shook her head.

  Nobuki almost never came home at this hour.

  'It's probably Jumonji,' she said.

  'You're right,' said Yoshie, relaxing slightly. When Masako looked through the peephole, she saw Jumonji standing outside, struggling with an unwieldy load of boxes. She helped him carry them in, and they both went through to join Yoshie.

  'I got them,'Jumonji told her.

  'Just in time,' Yoshie said, adopting the tone she used with junior employees at the factory.

  'How many do we need?' he asked. Masako held up eight fingers. The man had been small, and the bags were less bulky than they'd expected. Besides which, Jumonji had decided to carry the head and clothes, which could be most easily identified, rather than ship them.

  'Eight?' he said, looking surprised. 'I would have guessed more.'

  'Do you think anybody saw you?' Yoshie asked.

  'I don't think so.'

  'You didn't see anyone watching the house?' Masako added, giving him a searching look. It could be disastrous if those other, unknown people learned what they were up to.

  'No one,' he said. 'Except...'

  'Except who?'

  'There was a woman standing in the lot across the way. Though she left as soon as she saw me.'

  'What did she look like?'

  'Plump, middle-aged,' he said. Obviously the woman who had come with questions about the lot.

  'Did she seem to be watching the house?' Masako said. 'No, I think she was just looking around. Otherwise, I only saw a couple of other people, probably out shopping. I don't think they noticed anything.' It had been a mistake to insist that he use his own car; next time, her Corolla would be less conspicuous. They loaded the boxes in the car, and as soon as it was done Jumonji drove away.

  'Like the foreman wheeling away a stack of boxed lunches,' said Yoshie, which made them burst out laughing. Then they took turns cleaning up in the shower, and scrubbed the bathroom.

  Realising that Yoshie was beginning to worry about the time, Masako went to get her share of the money.

  'Your fee,' she said as she gave it to her. Holding it at arm's length, as if it were filthy, Yoshie quickly stuffed it in the bottom of her bag.

  'Thanks,' she said, sounding relieved.

  'What are you planning to do with it?'

  'I thought I'd use it to send Miki to junior college,' she explained, smoothing back her tangled hair. 'How about you?'

  'I'm not sure.' Masako now had five million of her own, but she didn't know what she'd wanted it for.

  'I have to ask you this,' Yoshie said, hesitating a moment, 'but don't take it the wrong way.'

  'What?'

  'Did you get a million, too?'

  'Of course,' said Masako, looking her straight in the eye. Yoshie reached into her bag and pulled out the stack of bills.

  'Then I want to pay back the money I owe you.' Masako had forgotten she'd lent her money for her daughter's school trip.

  Yoshie peeled off eight ¥10,000 bills and bowed as she handed them over. 'I still owe you ¥3000, but I don't have change. Can I give it to you at work?'

  'Sure,' said Masako. A loan was a loan. Yoshie looked at her a moment longer, perhaps half expecting her to refuse the money, but when it became clear she wasn't going to, she stood up. 'I'll see you tonight,' she said.

  'Tonight,' said Masako. They were used to the night shift, and it felt wrong somehow to be working during the day.

  APARTMENT 412

  1

  When she woke in the evening, Masako felt vaguely sad. The early sunset, signalling the onset of winter, was depressing. She lay in bed, watching as the light in the room gradually faded, leaving her in the dark. This was the sort of moment that made the night shift seem unbearable, and made it seem almost inevitable that so many of the women who worked it should end up slightly crazy. But it wasn't the winter dark that led to depression so much as the strain of living a life turned upside down from the normal, everyday world.

  How many busy, 'normal' mornings had there been in her life? Always the first one up, in order to make breakfast for everyone, to pack lunches. Hanging the laundry up to dry, getting dressed, putting Nobuki through his paces, getting him off to day care. Constantly keeping an eye on the clock on the wall or sneaking a peek at her watch; working like a dog at the office. No time to read the newspaper, let alone a novel; cutting back on sleep to have time to get everything else done; and then, when the rare vacation rolled around, catching up on the endless laundry and cleaning. Busy, 'normal' days, free from loneliness or guilt.

  She had no desire to go back to them, no desire to change the way things were now. When stones lying warm in the sun were turned over, they exposed the cold, damp earth underneath; and that was where Masako had burrowed deep. There was no trace of warmth in this dark earth, yet for a bug curled up tight in it, it was a peaceful and familiar world. She closed her eyes. Perhaps because her sleep was so shallow and irregular, her body felt heavy and she never seemed to recover from the exhaustion of the factory. Eventually, she descended slowly into unconsciousness, as if dragged down by gravity, and soon she was dreaming.

  She was going down in the old elevator at T Credit and Loan, staring at the familiar, pale-green panelling. The panels were pockmarked from innumerable collisions with the cart used to move cash around the building. Masako herself had lugged heavy bags of coins from this elevator more times than she could count. The elevator stopped at the second floor, which housed the finance office - her old workplace. The doors opened and she gazed into the dark, empty room for a moment. It was all so familiar she could have found her way around with her eyes closed, but she had no more business here now.

  Just as she pressed the button to close the doors, a man slipped into the elevator with her. It was Kenji, who she'd thought was dead. She suddenly found it hard to breathe. He was wearing a white shirt, grey pants and a plain tie: the same outfit he'd been wearing that day. He greeted her politely and then stood with his back to her, facing the door. She studied the nape of his rieck, which was partly covered by his shaggy hair, but then drew back in horror, realising that without thinking she'd been checking for scars from the cuts that she'd made there.

  The elevator was painfully slow, but at last it reached the ground floor and the doors opened. Kenji walked off into the dark, disappearing in the area where the reception desk should have been. Masako could feel her body breaking out in a cold sweat as she stood alone in the elevator, wondering whether she should follow him into the blackness.

  It was then, when she made up her mind and stepped off the elevator, that somebody jumped out at her from the dark. Before she could get away, long arms had closed around her from behind and she couldn't move. She tried to scream for help but her voice died in her throat. The man's hands tightened around her neck. She tried to struggle, but her limbs seemed paralysed. Sweat began to flow from her pores, as if her frustration and terror were seeping from her body. The fingers tightened, and Masako went rigid with fear. But then, slowly, the warmth of his hands, the rough breathing on her neck, began to arouse a buried impulse in her: the urge to surrender, to relax and allow herself to die. Abruptly, her fear began to dissipate, as if floating weightlessly away, and in its place came a sense of blissful pleasure. She cried out in delight.

  -

  She opened her eyes and found herself lying face up in bed. Her hand moved to her chest, feeling the throb of her heart. It wasn't the first erotic dream she'd had, of course, but it was the first time that her pleasure had been so inextricably linked to fear. She lay for a while in the dark, frozen by the discovery of this scene that had been hidden in her subconscious. Who was the man in the dream? As she tried to remember exactly how his arms had felt around her, she considered the possibilities. It wasn't Kenji. He had appeared as a ghost who lured her on toward her fears. It wasn't Yoshiki, either. He had never raised a hand against her in all their years together. N