hen she hung up the phone, Masako noticed that the words on the calendar hanging right in front of her looked blurry. It was the first time she could remember being dizzy from shock. She had known something was wrong with Yayoi last night, but she didn't like to intrude in other people's lives. Still, here she was, getting involved. Was she just asking for trouble? She steadied herself against the wall and waited for her vision to return to normal, then suddenly remembered that her son, Nobuki, had been stretched out on the couch watching television. She spun around, but he was nowhere to be seen. He must have gone up to his room while she was talking to Yayoi. Her husband, Yoshiki, had had a drink after dinner and gone to bed early, so it seemed that no one in the house had heard what she'd said on the phone. Feeling slightly relieved, she began to think about what to do next. But she realised there was no time to think; she had to act. She would come up with some sort of plan in the car.

Grabbing her keys, she yelled up the stairs, 'I'm leaving for work. Make sure you turn off the gas.' There was no answer. She knew that Nobuki had begun smoking and drinking recently while she was out of the house, but she also knew there was little she could do about it. He was heading into the summer of his seventeenth year, apparently without any idea what he wanted to do or be, without any hopes or passions.

As a freshman at a public high school, the boy had been caught with some tickets to a rave that someone had forced on him. He was accused of trying to sell them and expelled from school. The harshness of the punishment was clearly meant as a warning to the other students, but, whatever the reason, the shock seemed to affect his nerves and he suddenly stopped talking. For a time, Masako searched desperately for a way to reach her son, but no one seemed to have the answer; and she suspected that Nobuki himself had become resigned to this state of affairs. At any rate, the time for searching for solutions had passed. It was enough, perhaps, that he went each day to his part-time job as a plasterer. When you had children, Masako believed, you couldn't just cut them off if things didn't go as planned.

She stood in front of the small room off the entrance hall, listening to the faint sound of her husband snoring through the thin door. The room had originally been intended for storage, but at some point he had begun sleeping here. She lingered by the door for a moment, thinking. In actual fact, they had begun sleeping in separate rooms before they'd moved to this house, while Masako was still working in an office. She was used to it now, the three of them in different rooms, and she no longer thought of it as lonely or abnormal.

Yoshiki worked for a construction company that was affiliated with one of the big real estate conglomerates. The name of the company sounded impressive enough, but he'd once said that when things got tough financially the parent company didn't treat them very well. Beyond that, though, he had never had much to say about work, and he disliked it when she brought up the subject. She had no idea what sort of businessman he was, what he was like at the office.

He had been two years ahead of her in the high school where they'd met. She had been attracted to what seemed to be a personal integrity that kept him aloof from the world, but she had to admit that this same integrity, this unwillingness to deceive or embellish, made him uniquely unsuited to a competitive business like construction. And the proof was he had already strayed far off a successful career track. More than likely Yoshiki had his own path to follow, one that had very little to do with other people. It was his alone; no one else had made him follow it. Masako knew that there was more than a little resemblance between her husband, who hated the business world and spent his free time shut away in this little room like some mountain hermit, and her son who had given up communicating with the world altogether. For her part, she had decided that there was very little she could do or say to either of them.

They were quite a trio: a son who had given up both education and conversation, a husband in the grips of a depression, and Masako who had opted for the night shift after being downsized from her own company. Just as they had decided to sleep in separate bedrooms, they seemed to have chosen to shoulder their own separate burdens and inhabit their own isolated reality.

Yoshiki had said nothing to her when she was unable to find another job and ended up on the night shift at the boxed-lunch factory. Masako had sensed, however, that his silence wasn't so much a sign of apathy as an indication that he had abandoned the • futile struggle and had begun building his own cocoon, a cocoon that she couldn't penetrate. Her husband's hands, which no longer reached out to touch her, were busy at work now constructing a shell. Both she and their son were somehow tainted by the outside world and so they had to be rejected along with everything else, no matter how much it hurt them.

So if she couldn't even manage to get things right in her own family, why was she getting mixed up in Yayoi's affairs? At a loss for an answer, Masako opened the flimsy front door and stepped outside. The air felt much cooler than it had last night. She looked up, catching sight of a dim, reddish moon floating above the rooftops. An evil omen, she thought, looking away. Yayoi had just killed her husband. What could be more ill-omened than that?

Her Corolla was squeezed into the small parking space in front of the house. The driver's side door could only be opened a crack, but Masako managed to slip in. Starting the car, she pulled out into the street and set off. The noise of the engine seemed to echo through the quiet residential streets and surrounding fields. The neighbourhood was a remote and peaceful one, but no one had ever complained about the late-night noise. Instead, when she had started at the factory her neighbours had grilled her about where she was going so late at night.

Yayoi's house was quite close to the factory in Musashi Murayama. She would go there before heading to work, but she was already conscious that she would have to avoid being seen. She suddenly remembered her standing agreement to meet Kuniko at the parking lot at 11.30 to walk together to the factory. She might not be in time for that. Kuniko was always suspicious when it came to things like this, so she would have to find a way to throw her off the scent.

Still, the whole errand would probably be useless. More than likely, someone in the neighbourhood had already guessed that something had happened at the Yamamoto house. Or maybe Yayoi herself had already gone to the police. It was even possible that the whole thing was some fantasy that Yayoi had made up. Suddenly impatient, Masako stepped on the accelerator. As she did so, the scent of gardenias growing in the hedge that lined the road came pouring in through the open window. It filled the car for a moment and then disappeared again into the darkness. In much the same way, the sympathy she'd felt for Yayoi seemed to be dissipating. What does she want from me? What a nuisance this all was! She decided to wait until she saw Yayoi face to face, and then decide whether she would help her.

A white figure was standing at the corner of the cinderblock wall that ran along the alley where Yayoi lived. Masako stepped on the brake.

'Masako!' Yayoi seemed bewildered. She was wearing a white polo shirt and loose jeans. As she looked at her, Masako swallowed hard, moved by the defencelessness of this pale shadow floating in the darkness.

'What are you doing?' she asked her.

'The cat's run away,' Yayoi said, beginning to cry as she stood by the car. 'The kids love it, but it saw what I did and it was terrified.'

Masako put her finger to her lips to signal for silence. It took a moment, but finally Yayoi seemed to understand what she meant and glanced around nervously. Her fingers were braced against the glass of the car window, and the instant Masako noticed they were trembling ever so slightly, she decided that she would do what she could to help.

As she drove on slowly down the alley, Masako looked up at the windows of the neighbouring houses. At eleven o'clock on a weekday night, the only lights left on were shining dimly in what appeared to be bedroom windows. Everything else was quiet and dark. Since it was cooler now, air-conditioners had been turned off and windows were open. They would have to be careful about noise. She was suddenly conscious of the clatter of Yayoi's sandals.

The Yamamotos rented a place at the very end of the alley, one of a cluster of prefabricated houses put up about fifteen years ago. Despite the relatively high rent for places like this, the house was small and inconvenient, and the family would have been saving up to get out of here. But that was all over now. People were always being driven to do stupid things. What could have driven Yayoi to do this? Or rather, what was it her husband had been driven to do that made Yayoi so angry? Turning these questions over in her mind, Masako climbed out of the car as quietly as she could. Yayoi was running down the alley toward her.

'Now don't be shocked,' she said, seeming to hesitate slightly before opening the door to the house. Masako realised immediately that Yayoi had been referring not to what she'd done but to the sight that greeted her as the door swung open: there was Kenji, right in front of her, laid out limp on the floor. He was very clearly dead, the brown leather belt still wrapped around his neck. His eyes were half open and the tip of his tongue protruded between his lips. His complexion was pale and bloodless rather than red and congested.

Masako had been prepared for a shock, but now that she was actually staring at the body, she found that she was surprisingly calm. Perhaps because she didn't know Kenji at all, the corpse seemed to be nothing more than a person who was lying absolutely still and whose face looked ridiculously relaxed. Still, the idea that Yayoi, who had always seemed like the image of the perfect wife and mother, was in reality a murderer - that would take some getting used to.

'He's still warm,' Yayoi said. She had rolled up the leg of his pants and was feeling his shin. Her hand played over his skin, as if needing to confirm that he was dead.

'So it actually happened,' Masako said quietly in a grim voice.

'Did you think I was making it up?' Yayoi asked. 'You know I would never do something like that.' She almost seemed to be smiling, in spite of the dark look Masako gave her, though it could have been just a twitch.

'So what are you going to do? You're not going to the police?'

'I'm not,' Yayoi said with a firm shake of the head. 'You may think I'm crazy, but I don't feel like I've done anything wrong. He deserved to die, so I've decided to pretend that he just went off somewhere instead of coming home tonight.'

Masako glanced at her watch, the wheels beginning to turn in her brain. Already 11.20. They needed to be at the factory by 11.45 at the latest.

'Well, I guess there are a lot of people who just wander off and are never heard from again. But do you think anyone saw him coming from the station?'

'You don't usually pass anybody at this time of night. I really doubt it.'

'If he phoned anyone along the way, it's all over,' Masako told her.

'I could still say that he never made it home.' Yayoi was warming to her role.

'I suppose. But if the police question you, could you really play dumb?'

'I'm sure I could. I'm sure ' Yayoi nodded, her eyes wide. She looked so sweet, and much younger than thirty-four. With a face like that, no one was likely to suspect her. Still, the whole thing was risky.

'Then what do you want to do?' Masako's tone was cautious.

'Put him in your trunk, and then... '

'And then?'

'Go somewhere tomorrow and get rid of him,' she concluded. Masako knew that was probably their only option, and all too quickly she found herself agreeing to it.

'All right, but we've got to hurry. Let's get him out to the car.'

'I don't know how to thank you, but I'll find a way. I can pay you,' Yayoi said.

'I don't want your money.'

'Why not? Why would you be willing to do all this?' she went on as she lifted Kenji by the arms.

'I'm not sure,' said Masako, grabbing the limp legs of the man who had once been Yayoi's husband. 'But I'll figure that out later.' Kenji had been about 168 centimetres tall, roughly the same height as Masako. But men were heavier, bigger boned, and the two of them were barely able to lift him and carry him out the door. If someone had seen them, it would probably just have looked like two women carrying a man who was dead drunk. Except for the belt... which was still wrapped around his neck and was now scraping along the ground. Masako watched in silence as Yayoi yanked it off and wrapped it around her own waist.

'You haven't left anything he had with him?' she asked.

'No, he wasn't carrying anything.' They bent his arms and legs and stuffed him into the trunk.

'We can't miss work tonight,' Masako said when they'd finished. 'For one thing, we've got to start building your alibi. So we'll have to leave him in the parking lot overnight. We can think about what to do with him while we're at the factory.'

'I suppose I'd better take my bike like always.'

'Right. And act as though nothing's happened.'

'OK then. Masako-san, I'm grateful to you for taking care of him like this.' Now that the body was out of the house, Yayoi suddenly seemed almost businesslike. There was even a hint of relief on her face, as if she'd just finished a particularly difficult chore. Or had she already convinced herself that Kenji really had simply vanished off the face of the earth? Feeling a bit rattled by the change that had come over her, Masako walked around and got in the car.

'You'll give yourself away if you're too cheerful,' she murmured as she fastened her seat belt.

Yayoi's eyes grew wide and she pressed her hand over her mouth, as though trying to control her excitement. 'Is that how I look?' she asked.

'A bit,' said Masako.

'Okay,' she said. 'But what should we do about the cat? It might be a problem if the kids make a fuss.'

'It'll come back,' said Masako, but Yayoi shook her head as if she knew better.

'It might be a problem,' she repeated. 'What'll we do?'

***

Masako started the car and pulled out of the alley. As she drove, the body in the trunk began weighing on her mind. What if she were stopped and searched for some reason? Or rear-ended? But thoughts that would make most people more cautious sent Masako speeding through the darkened streets as if someone were chasing her; and in fact someone was - the body in her trunk. Careful now, she told herself.

When she finally reached the parking lot, Kuniko's Golf was already in its usual spot. She was probably worried about being late and had gone on ahead. Masako climbed out of the car, lit a cigarette, and glanced around the lot. Tonight, for the first time, there was no trace of the usual stench of fried food and exhaust fumes, though maybe she was just too nervous to smell it. Walking around behind the car, she stared at the trunk. There was a body in there, and tomorrow she would be figuring out how to get rid of it; and here she was, doing things she wouldn't have even been able to imagine a few hours ago. The thought made her realise that she could perhaps understand Yayoi's sense of liberation.

After checking once more to make sure that the trunk was locked, she set out along the dark road, cigarette still in hand. She didn't have much time left, and tonight of all nights she wanted to avoid doing anything out of the ordinary that would attract attention. But just as she was coming to the abandoned factory that lined one side of her route, a man in a cap jumped out of the shadows on the left and grabbed her arm. Shocked, but trying not to lose control, she realised that she'd completely forgotten about the reports of a pervert of some kind lurking in the area. Before she could even cry out, the man began dragging her toward the empty building.

'Stop!' she screamed at last, her voice piercing the darkness. At the sudden sound, the man panicked. He cupped his hand over her mouth and tried to pull her down into the tall, thick grass that grew at the edge of the road. Fortunately, though, Masako's height allowed her to turn her shoulder and catch his arm, dislodging his hand slightly from her mouth. While he was struggling to regain his grip, she swung her bag and managed to get her mouth free. Still, the other hand held her arm and was dragging her to the ground. Just as Kuniko had said, the man wasn't big, but he was solidly built, with a distinct smell of cologne coming from him.

'What do you want with me?' she yelled. 'There are plenty of younger women around.' This time she could feel his grip loosen slightly at the sound of her voice. Now she was all but certain that it must be one of the men from the factory who would have known her at least by sight, and she made a desperate effort to shake free and get back to the road. The man was quicker, however, and he slipped around her and tried to push her back toward the ruined factory. She remembered that there was a drainage ditch that ran along the road here, and there were holes in the cement slabs that covered it. Stepping gingerly to avoid them, she backed away from the man, keeping her eyes on his face. She couldn't see him clearly, but in the reddish light of the moon she caught a sudden glimpse of the black eyes staring out from beneath the cap.

'You're Miyamori, aren't you?' she said, throwing out the first name that came into her head. From his reaction she could see that she'd been right. 'Kazuo Miyamori, that's who you are,' she said, pressing, her advantage. 'If you let me go, I won't tell anyone. I don't want to be late tonight, but I'll meet you some other time, I promise.' The man gulped but said nothing to her unexpected proposal. 'Let me go now, and we can meet again another time, just the two of us.' This time the man answered, and from the sound of his heavily accented voice, she was sure that it was Miyamori.

'Really?' he said. 'When?'

'Tomorrow night. Right here.'

'What time?'

'Nine.' Instead of answering, he suddenly embraced her and pressed his lips to hers. Held tight against his hard chest, she felt the breath being crushed out of her. As she struggled, her legs became tangled in his and they fell with a loud clatter against the rusty metal shutter of the delivery bay in the old factory. Startled, the man froze and looked around nervously; and while he was doing this, Masako pushed him away, grabbed her bag, and got to her feet. In her haste, however, she tripped over a stack of empty cans.

'Find someone younger for your fun!' she screamed at him, suddenly furious. The man's arms fell limp at his side and he looked at her in a daze. Rubbing his spit from her lips with the back of her hand, she pushed through the thick grass.

'I'll be waiting for you tomorrow,' he called, his voice low and pleading. Without looking back, Masako picked her way over the concrete culvert and sprinted down the road. How could this have happened today, when she thought she was being so careful? For the first time in quite a while, she felt a surge of dark rage, tinged with irritation at her own blundering. But who'd have thought that the pervert could be someone like Kazuo Miyamori? She even remembered saying hello to him before the last shift. The thought made her blood boil.

***

As she ran up the stairs to the factory door, combing her fingers through her dishevelled hair, she found Komada, the health inspector, just getting up to go.

'Good morning,' Masako called. At the sound of her breathless voice, Komada turned.

'Hurry up,' she said. 'You're the last.' While the sticky tape was being rolled across her back, Masako heard her laugh for the first time in ages. 'What have you been up to?' she asked. 'You've got dirt and grass all over you.'

'I was in a hurry and I fell down.'

'On your back? You didn't hurt your hands, did you?' If there was the tiniest scratch, you weren't allowed to touch the food. Masako hurriedly inspected her fingers: dirt under the fingernails but otherwise no damage. Relieved, she shook her head.

Pleased that she had managed to avoid any suspicion about the attack, she gave a non-committal laugh and headed for the changing room. It was already empty, so she threw on her work clothes, grabbed her plastic apron and cap, and ran to the bathroom. Checking her face in the mirror, she found a small smear of blood oozing from her lip. 'Shit,' she muttered, rinsing it off. There was also a bruise on her left forearm, probably from being dragged through the grass. She wanted no trace of that man anywhere on her body. She wanted to strip down on the spot and examine herself; but that would make her late, and the evidence would be recorded on her time card. She held her anger in check as best she could, but when she remembered Miyamori telling her that he would 'wait for her tomorrow', the thought that she couldn't have him arrested, that she couldn't even file a complaint, nearly made her lose control.

She carefully washed her hands before running downstairs to the factory floor. The time clock read 11.59. She'd made it just in time, but it was later than she usually punched in - and she'd had better evenings.

The women were just filing into the plant and beginning the sterilisation procedure. She noticed Yoshie and Kuniko waving to her from the front of the line and then realised that Yayoi was standing right next to her, her face covered by her mask and cap.

'You're late,' Yayoi said, her voice barely audible. 'I was worried.'

'Sorry,' Masako muttered.

She peered at her. 'Did something happen?'

'No, nothing. How about you - you didn't have cuts on your hand, did you? They write it down if you do.'

'No problem,' said Yayoi, staring off into the gaping, frigid factory. 'I somehow feel as though I've gotten stronger,' she added, but the slight tremor in her voice didn't escape Masako.

'You're going to need that strength,' she said. 'But at least it's a choice you've made yourself.'

'That's right,' said Yayoi. They lined up behind the last of the workers waiting for the disinfectant wash. Yoshie, who had already taken her place at the head of the conveyor belt, glanced around again, urging them to hurry.

'So how do you plan to do it?' Masako whispered, as she scrubbed her hands and arms under the powerful jets.

'I don't know,' Yayoi muttered, her weariness suddenly visible in her sunken eyes.

'It's your problem, so you'll have to figure it out/ Masako told her before heading off toward the head of the line where Yoshie was waiting. As she made her way through the room, she looked for Kazuo Miyamori among the Brazilian employees in their blue caps, but there was no sign of him. She was certain now that it had been him.

'Thanks again,' Yoshie said to her as she approached. Masako was confused for a moment.

'For what?' she said.

'You've got to be kidding. For the money, of course, and for delivering it. You really saved my skin. I'll pay you back as soon as we get paid.' Yoshie gave her a nudge with her elbow as she passed along the work order for eight hundred and fifty grilled beef lunches. Masako grimaced, amazed that something that happened only this evening already seemed like the distant past. It had been a long day.

'You didn't show,' said Kuniko, who had brazenly taken over the job of passing Yoshie the containers since Masako was late.

'Sorry. Something came up and I got a late start.'

'Really?' Kuniko said. 'I called you just before I left to be sure you'd be there.'

'And no one answered? I guess it must have been after I left.'

'I guess so. But if you left that early, why were you so late getting here?'

'I had some shopping to do and got delayed,' Masako said, her tone discouraging any further questions. Kuniko fell silent, but Masako could tell that she wasn't satisfied. She'd been right: they would have to be careful of Kuniko and her intuition.

Masako noticed that as Yoshie was preparing to start the rice machine, she kept glancing down the line. Following her gaze, she spotted Yayoi standing off to the side, as if lost in a fog. She looked rather conspicuous, with her back covered by the large brown stain of dried sauce from last night.

'Did something happen to you two?' Yoshie said.

'Why do you ask?' said Masako.

'Well, she's looking dazed and you were late.'

'She looked dazed last night, too,' Masako reminded her. 'Forget about us, Skipper, and start worrying about Nakayama. He'll be around any second; better get the line rolling.' The only stations left were for the difficult job of laying out the meat. Masako took one of them, and Yoshie, giving up her probing with a slight nod, threw the switch. The work order itself was sent down the line first for the workers to read. Then the automated rice-delivery system started with a thud, and the first square lump of rice dropped into the container that Kuniko had handed to Yoshie. Another long, hard night had begun.

While she was separating the curled, cold pieces of meat, Masako felt someone watching her and looked up. Yayoi had taken the spot directly opposite her.

'What?' Masako whispered.

'If he ended up like this,' Yayoi whispered back, her franticlooking eyes wandering to the chopped meat on the line, 'they'd never figure out who it was.'

'Shut up,' Masako hissed, glancing at the women on either side. Fortunately, they didn't seem to be paying any attention. She shot a reproachful look across the line, and Yayoi lowered her eyes. First she seems too cheerful and then she melts into tears. Masako suddenly had serious doubts about whether Yayoi would be able to cope with what lay ahead. But now that she was an accomplice, Yayoi's problem was hers as well.