43

Jean was woken at nine by the phone ringing. She leapt out of bed, ran into the hallway and picked it up.

“Jean. It’s me.” It was David.

“I’m sorry, I thought it was…”

“Are you all right?” asked David.

So she told him about George.

“I shouldn’t worry,” said David. “He’s managed a business. If he needs help he knows how to get it. If he hasn’t got in touch it’s because he doesn’t want to worry you. There’s bound to be some perfectly rational explanation.”

She realized that she should have rung David last night.

“Besides,” he said, “you’re on your own in the house. After Mina and I separated I didn’t sleep properly for a month. Look. Why don’t you stay here on Sunday night? Let me look after you.”

“Thank you. I’d like that very much.”

“You don’t need to thank me,” said David. “For anything.”

44

When Jamie got home from work the following day, his singleness seemed finally like an opportunity rather than a challenge. He put some U2 on, turned up the volume, made a mug of sobering tea and ironed his trousers.

Trousers done, he went into the bathroom and showered, pausing after washing his hair for a quick wank, picturing a tall Canadian guy with veiny biceps and tiny hairs tapering to a blond V in the small of his back who wandered into the ski-lodge bathroom, dropped his fluffy white towel, stepped into the cubicle, bent down, took Jamie’s cock into his mouth and slipped a finger up his arse.

Falling asleep half an hour or so later, after reading an article about epilepsy in The Observer, he felt as if he were embarking on a new life.

45

Katie didn’t know quite what she felt.

Ray hadn’t come back. He was walking the streets, or sleeping on someone’s sofa. He was going to pitch up in the morning with a bunch of flowers or a box of shitty chocolates from a petrol station and she was going to have to give in because he looked all tortured. And she couldn’t find the words to say how much this was going to piss her off.

On the other hand she and Jacob did have the house to themselves.

They watched Ivor the Engine and read Winnie the Witch and found the flip cartoon Jamie had made on the corner of Jacob’s drawing pad, of a dog wagging its tail and doing a poo and the poo getting up and turning into a little man and running away. Jacob insisted they make one of their own and she managed to draw a little flip cartoon of a poorly structured dog in a high wind, three frames of which Jacob then colored in.

At bath time he kept his eyes closed for six whole seconds while she rinsed the shampoo from his hair, and they had a discussion about how big a skyscraper was, and the fact that it could still fit into the world even if the skyscraper was ten times as big because the world was truly massive and it wasn’t just the earth, it was the moon and the sun and the planets and the whole of space.

They had filled pasta and pesto for tea and Jacob said, “Are we still going to Barcelona?”

And Katie said, “Of course,” and it was only later, after Jacob had gone to bed, that she began to wonder. Was it true, what she’d said to Ray? Would she refuse to marry someone who treated her like that?

She’d lose the house. Jacob would lose another father. They’d have to move into some shabby little flat. Beans on white bread. Cutting work every time Jacob was ill. Arguing with Aidan to hang on to a job she hated. No car. No holidays.

But if she went ahead? Would they bicker like her parents and drift apart? Would she end up having some halfhearted little affair with the first bloke who made an offer?

And it wasn’t so much the thought of living like that which depressed her. A few years of single-parenting in London and you could put up with pretty much anything. It was the compromise which hurt, the prospect of chucking away all the principles she once had. Still had. The thought of listening to Mum’s smug lecturettes about young women wanting it all, and no longer being able to answer back.

It was going to have to be a bloody big box of chocolates.

46

The hangover put George’s other problems out of his mind almost as effectively as the alcohol itself had done.

He had occasionally drunk to excess in his early twenties, but he could remember nothing quite like this. There seemed to be grains of genuine sand between his eyeballs and the surrounding socket. He took two ibuprofen, threw up and realized that he would have to wait for the pain to recede of its own accord.

He would have preferred not to shower, but he had wet himself while sleeping. He had also cut his head on the door frame and when he caught sight of his face in the mirror he looked not unlike the tramp he had seen on the station platform the day before.

He closed the curtains, turned the knob to hot, shut his eyes, removed his clothing, maneuvered himself into the jet of water, massaged some shampoo gingerly into his scalp then turned slowly like a kebab to rinse himself.

Only when he got out of the shower did he remember the sodden state of the towels. He fumbled his way blindly to the bedroom, extracted his own from the rucksack, dried himself gently then carefully inserted his body into a clean set of clothes.

A part of him wanted to sit on the edge of the bed for a couple of hours without moving. But he needed fresh air, and he needed to get away from this mess.

He put the wet towels into the bath and swilled his mouth with a pea of toothpaste and a little cold water.

He packed the rucksack, then discovered that bending over was beyond him and was forced to lie on the carpet to tie his laces.

He considered remaking the bed, but hiding the stains seemed worse than leaving them visible. He did, however, take a moist lump of toilet paper to the blood on the wall outside the bathroom.

He would never be able to come to this hotel again.

He put on his jacket, checked that he hadn’t lost his wallet, then sat for a few minutes gathering his strength before hoisting his rucksack onto his back. It seemed to contain actual bricks and halfway to the lift he had to lean against the wall of the corridor and wait for the blood to return to his head.

In the foyer he was hailed by the man behind the desk with a cheery “Morning, Mr. Hall.” He kept walking. They had his credit card details. He did not want to tell them what he had done to the room, or avoid telling them what he had done to the room. He did not want to stand in front of the desk swaying a little with a mysterious head wound.

A porter opened the door, he stepped into the noise and glare of the morning and began walking.

The air seemed to be filled with smells designed specifically to test his stomach to its very limit: car fumes, cooked breakfasts, cigarette smoke, bleach…He breathed through his mouth.

He was going home. He needed to talk to someone. And Jean was the only person he could talk to. As for the scene in the bedroom, they could deal with that later.

Indeed, at this point in time, dealing with the scene in the bedroom seemed less of a problem than taking a bus. The five-minute walk to the station felt like crossing the Alps and when his bus arrived he was packed into a confined space with thirty unwashed people and shaken vigorously for twenty-five minutes.

Having disembarked in the village he sat for a few minutes on the bench by the bus stop to gather his wits and let the grinding throb in his head die down a little.

What was he going to say? Under normal circumstances he would never have confessed to Jean that he was going insane. But under normal circumstances he would not be going insane. Hopefully his bedraggled state would engender sympathy without his having to explain too much.