Every Step You Take

the long version

George Fletcher’s early marriage was a disaster. His career, in contrast, is a success. Fifteen years after his divorce, light years away from his dull suburban beginnings, he works all week as a partner in a City firm. Weekends see him back in suburbia, helping his tight-lipped mother look after his mentally handicapped brother Kevin. It’s not an exciting life, but George doesn’t crave excitement. At least not in public. And then he encounters Alison. For thirty-eight years, he has had no use for his imagination. Now it’s running riot. He becomes obsessed with her. But Alison doesn’t know he exists. She does know Kevin, which isn’t really very helpful to George. He can’t really express what he feels or thinks. Or sees. In a neighbouring street, another girl, Polly, is more than capable of expressing herself. But she finds home life with her mother and stepfather intolerable. The former is only happy in her dope-induced oblivion. And the latter…well, he isn’t happy at all. So Polly moves out. She moves into a room for rent. In George’s mother’s house. There are diminishing degrees of separation in these anonymous streets. Alison becomes even more friendly with Kevin. And Kevin, young, strong, beautiful and bursting with love he doesn’t know what to do with, is increasingly agitated, while George is looking more and more ill. John Bright, a Detective Inspector and George’s childhood friend, is worried about him. A worry that turns to alarm when the body of a young girl is found in a nearby park…