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the limp carcasses of two pit bulls into a hastily dug grave.
    â€œThat’ll teach you for eating my poor little pussy cat,” she sniffles, but the mirage evaporates instantly as the dogs spy her peering out of her kitchen window and launch themselves against the wire fence.
    â€œShut up! Please shut up!” she says as she clamps her hands over her ears, but the pulsing thunder of a bass drum beats into her.
    â€œShut up! Shut up!” she yells as she escapes the kitchen with the teapot, but the noise tracks her through the hallway into the living room.
    â€œShut up! Shut up!” she screeches as she stands, rigid, in the centre of the room, then she lets go, drops the pot, and slumps onto the settee where she buries her head under a pillow and bursts into tears.

chapter two
    F our unopened birthday cards lie on David Bliss’s hall floor on Saturday morning, but none bear a French stamp.
Daisy’s forgotten
, he tells himself, but resists the temptation to phone in case he is proved right. “She’ll probably call later,” he muses as he drags himself to the kitchen for a coffee.
    Samantha, his married daughter, called just as he was getting into bed. “Sorry, Dad, we thought you’d be going to visit Daisy in France,” she explained, after apologizing for the fact that she and Peter, her chief inspector husband, had made alternate plans for the weekend.
    â€œOh, don’t worry, Sam. I’m far too busy to bother with birthdays at my age,” Bliss protested with a brave lilt, “and I’ve got a lot of work to do on the Queen’s visit.” But sleep evaded him. “Hot and sticky,” the late-night forecaster had predicted, and Bliss’s mind wandered the hallways of his life, peeking into rooms — some distant, full of warmth and smiling families, balloons, cakes, and candles; others,more recent, empty and cold — as he sought a comfortable spot on the perspiration-soaked sheet.
    â€œFifty years,” he muses as he pulls a face in a grimy mirror and sees a bleak day ahead. At least nothing fell off or fell out during the night, he wryly tells himself, although cracks are beginning to appear. The crinkles may be laughter lines — nonetheless they are lines, and the morning stubble has a definite greyness.
    The phone buzzes. “At last,” he sighs, but it is Samantha with another apology.
    â€œDon’t worry about me,” he repeats valiantly, “I’ve got masses to do.”
    The fridge calls, but one glance reminds him that he hasn’t found time to shop.
What am I doing?
he questions.
It’s my birthday. I’ll treat myself
.
    Daphne Lovelace, in contrast, has shopped. Since the pan-demonic invasion next door she has become a frequent loiterer at Patel’s corner store, and her larder would be more at home in Mumbai than Westchester. But it’s Saturday morning and, unless she beards the beasts and ventures into the wilderness that until recently was her vegetable garden, she is hopeful that peace will reign until the neigh-bours surface around lunchtime.
    It is barely nine-thirty when the spell is broken as Mavis Longbottom bangs on Daphne’s back door and wakes the dogs.
    â€œHow on earth do you put up with it?” asks Mavis as she pushes her way into the kitchen and slams the door in the face of the snarling pit bulls. “It’s like the Hounds o’ the bloomin’ Baskervilles.”
    â€œIt’s worse,” says Daphne with her hands over her ears.
    â€œCan’t you do something?”
    â€œMaybe,” replies Daphne, but her projected stratagem has stuck at blasting a broadside of Tchaikovsky or Straussfrom her stereo and incinerating a pan of vindaloo day and night. However, in her more rational moments, she realizes that if it comes to open warfare she has a limited arsenal. “I phoned the noise-abatement people at the council,” she complains as