Dave leaned on the fence and sighed. She was going on about her husband’s bad back again, as though Dave worked for the DSS. She didn’t realise that he was hardly going to grass up the scrounging bastard. He might need that excuse himself one day. But her life of lies had made her paranoid, and she went on and on. He found his mind wandering, then his eyes drooping, and though ostensibly awake he even began to snore, and then fell back onto the trampoline which, though old and grimy, was in fabulous working order, and he bounced off it, somersaulting wearily across the garden and into the pond, sinking unconsciously beneath the surface scum into the toxic waste below, his skin quickly dissolving and exposing his muscles, bones and everything else to a slightly slower but equally total annihilation as she tutted and waddled off to bore someone else.