Pongo #48

Insa

"No, a girl. No, I don't want to buy clothes for a girl. I want to know if you've seen one. I am not getting very far with the snooty assistant. I think he's only programmed to sell and coo. Oh wait, I think the penny may just have dropped.

"No, I don't think I have theen a girl like the one you're dethcribing.

He shuffles a stack of gold leaf gift vouchers, rolling his eyes up like a dying heroine as he does so. I sigh and have turned the door handle when a light bulb zings above his head.

"Oh wait. Actually there wath thith one cuthtomer. I thought it wath ' you know, HER. Jutht for a thecond, mind and jutht in the face, nowhere elthe. Her clotheth looked atrociouth, ath if thee'd been beaten up on the threet. Thee wanted a replica of the exQUITHITE dreth Maren Gilligan wore to the Thoobath. I thaid it wath a one-off and thee got quite irate, athking me why I'd thold her bethpoke gown. Thtarted thouting "Bith! Bith! Liar! You ask me, thee wath probably off her tiths on thomething. Looked pretty wired all right. Bit thcruffy, like I thay. Kept clutching her thtomach.

"Sounds like her. Did she say where she was going, or did you at least see in which direction she headed?

"Couldn't thay for thure. He worries at a cuff corner, adjusting the jeweled links. "Jutht gave her a magathine to make her go away.

"Well have you heard anything? I mean, how many little Maren clones can there be out there?

"Oh thweetie, the assistant shakes his head sadly. "Boy, did you chooth the wrong time.

"What do you mean?

"Oh thweetie. Ith the first annual Marenettes Convention today.

"Marenettes? You mean¦?

"Well look outthide.

All at once, they materialise. One, two, twenty, five hundred, countless miniature bombshells, running around the sidestreets, popping up on rooftops, pressing their noses against the glass of the shop window. I wonder how I failed to spot them before, these dominos, these playing cards, dressed in the different guises of her different films, in replicas of her premiere gowns. Ages: anywhere between twelve and eighty at a guess, although it's hard to tell. That same cupid's bow mouth stamped over and over onto the lips of the Marenette army, as if she has kissed each and every one of them.

As I stagger outside, surrounded by the chattering of the sheep children, I notice many are running towards Grand Central Square. There the colour densens as the bodies crush together into wine. Though Gilligan's back catalogue of film is a long and varied one, it was inevitable that two girls should wear the same costume. All around me I see pairs of clones scratching and fighting in very fleshy duels over who should go home and change, never once breaking character.

I make my way over to the square, my heart sinking as every face looks at me, blank and identikit. A stage has been erected, and a microphone stands cocked like a gun in the centre. The theme from "Fatal Zed, one of her biggest blockbusters, is playing, and the girls dance. Some are not girls at all. Some have scars at the sides of their lips in tribute to Gilligan's rumoured smile widening procedure, twenty years ago. They swarm by me, smelling out my otherness and swimming on. The middle eight: the slide guitar solo kicks in.

He's right. It's hopeless. All of this is hopeless. She probably left that shop, if indeed it even was her, fell into an alleyway and died. Or else, oh I don't know what else. With a hole in my heart, I begin to wade through the crowd once again, their broad smiles like crossed swords in my path.

Then I hear the scream.

It's like a baby and a dying woman all in one, and I recognise it from years ago when, as children, I broke her arm when I fell from the climbing frame's top rung. It cracked like an old branch and the look in her eyes was pained and painful.

The crowd, still grinning, turn inwards, forming a circle around the scream. I try and nose my way through, but end up hacking like Sleeping Beauty's rescuer through creepers. Suddenly, they become cardboard targets, and I fling them aside. Maren falls on Maren falls on Maren as I gloop my way through, and the scream continues, and I add my own to it, calling out a name nobody will recognise, least of all the one I want. At last, the circle breaks.

She stands there, eyes huge with horror, looking at the Marenettes that surround her like python coils. Her arms flail, reaching one way, then another. She turns this way and that, every direction holding a slightly warped mirror to her sightline. Here is Maren in Rio; here is Gane Rogers - space cadet; here is Maren in New Pellener in THAT slit ballgown; here is Rogene Gann ' tough but fair beautician; here's the Nino advert; the Nino advert fighting with the Nino advert fighting with the Panno advert fighting with Rane Gogers ' superelf. Oh, and it is terrible, make no mistake. Wake up in bed with yourself and you'll know what this means. There was no way Cadderine knew about this event. She must have stumbled into shot, into her own bespoke Hell, and screamed from the get-go. We're only hearing her now, is all.

I run to her and she collapses tearlessly into me. Cadderine, I say, Cadderine. For an age, just Cadderine, Cadderine. And as I hold her, the stage lights up, and the choicest shard of the mirror herself walks on. As I am standing there, transfixed, I look at Cadderine's face, and she at Gilligan's. Saliva drips.

Then she looks at me with total love and punches me hard. When I wake up, she is gone and suddenly everyone else is the one screaming.