Back in Amsterdam again, they decided to go to the cinema. They would be safer in the dark, they thought, where nobody could see them. They bought tickets to In the Name of the Father and sat in the front row.
After a while, Billy leaned over and whispered in her ear. “I don’t understand this film at all.”
“It hasn’t started yet,” she whispered back. “This is the adverts.”
When the pub blew up, Billy laughed. He couldn’t help it. The whole thing seemed so artificial, so exaggerated. Ludicrous, really.
“People died,” Susie told him earnestly. “In real life.”
Billy’s laughter became uncontrollable, and they were asked to leave.
They returned to their hotel and had showers, then Susie painted her toenails, which seemed to take hours. Later, they lay on the bed, watching TV. Once, as Susie leaned forwards, her bathrobe loosened and Billy saw the curve of a breast, the underside, heavy and soft.
Then, inexplicably, he fell asleep.
In the middle of the night he woke up with an erection. Susie was sleeping deeply, one arm abandoned on the outside of the covers. His penis felt harder than it had ever felt before, and it wouldn’t go down, no matter how long he waited. In the end, he decided to put it inside her. He didn’t know what else to do. She was facing away from him, which made it easy, and she was already wet, which made it easier still. It was almost as though she had been expecting him. He pushed into her gently, stealthily, and then stayed there, without moving. He could feel the muscles inside her contract around him, gripping him. Was she awake after all? If she was, she gave no other sign of it. He came without touching her, except in that one place. Just by thinking about her, imagining her — even though she was right next to him. He could feel the pulsing in his penis as the sperm pumped out, but his penis didn’t move at all. Still inside her, he fell asleep again.
The next morning she sat up in bed and looked at him. “Did you do it to me in the night?”
He nodded.
“Did I wake up?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
She lay back, her head resting on the pillow. “I don’t mind, you know. I don’t mind it if you do that.” She was staring at the ceiling. “What was it like?”
“It was amazing,” he said. “It was like our bodies weren’t there at all, only the parts of us that were touching. They were there all by themselves, and they were much bigger than normal, and it was dark all around them, as if they were in a cave…”
Susie’s head turned on the pillow, and she looked at him again. “I think you’re still stoned,” she said.
A brittle rattling began, and Billy glanced over his shoulder. On the back seat of the car were all the newspapers that he had bought at the weekend, their pages vibrating in the draught. He wound the window up a fraction, enough to stop the noise.
Amsterdam, though.
That was the first and last time he ever smoked dope, and he didn’t regret it either, not for a moment, but if they were to go back to Amsterdam in the near future, with Emma, it wouldn’t be like that. It would just be an extension of the life they were already living. What Sue had really been trying to say, he thought, wasn’t so much that she needed a holiday, or that she would like to return to a place where they had once been happy, but that she wanted to recover some spirit or quality that they appeared to have lost. Well, he wanted the same thing. It wouldn’t be easy, though. In fact, he wondered whether it could actually be done.
On a footbridge up ahead someone had written rural revolt in giant capitals. Labour had been in power for five years now, and all the excitement and the optimism had gone. All the shine too. They were always interfering, trying to tell people how to live their lives. Why couldn’t they deal with the things a government was supposed to deal with — health, education, transport — and leave the rest of it alone? Whoever was responsible for the graffiti had damaged public property, but Billy found himself approving.
He checked his rear-view mirror, then concentrated on the road in front of him. It was empty.
Then a lorry piled high with timber, which he overtook.
Then nothing.
39
As he came over a rise, not far from Stowmarket, Billy saw the lights of a petrol station below him and veered off the dual carriageway, braking hard. The cold air wasn’t enough: he needed a soft drink, something sugary to help him stay awake.
Parking outside the shop, he went in and picked up a bottle of Lucozade and a newspaper. He’d been hoping Keith would be behind the till — when Billy worked the late shift, he often dropped in and Keith would let him have a sandwich and a cup of coffee for nothing — but it was a man he’d never seen before, young and overweight, with floppy brown hair and a twist of gold wire dangling from his right ear.
“Traffic’s bad,” Billy said. “Going west, I mean.”
Not bothering to look up, the young man nodded. “There was an accident, apparently. Lorry shed its load…”
“When was this?”
“About an hour ago.” He rang up the soft drink and the paper, then glanced through the window, towards the pumps. “Any petrol?”
Billy shook his head. “No.”
Behind him, a slot machine gave off a series of muffled and incongruous sounds. The whinnying of horses, pistol shots — an Irish jig.
He reached into his pocket, bringing out a five-pound note and Mr. Prabhu’s business card at the same time. He placed the money on the counter. “I’ve been working all night,” he said. “I’m hoping the Lucozade will give me a bit of energy.”
The man handed Billy his change and turned away.
It was usually tiredness that caused accidents, Billy thought as he left the shop — that, or a momentary lapse of concentration. Some time after Sue’s crash, when she was no longer having the nightmares, he had asked her whether she had an explanation for what had happened, imagining she would blame treacherous road conditions, or the car’s light steering, but she had told him it was all her fault. She’d simply lost control. “But outside Emma’s school?” he said. Even months later, he still found this aspect of the crash astonishing. “That’s the whole point,” Sue said. “I was thinking about the time I took her to Whitby, and how I nearly—” She broke off, unwilling — or unable — to complete the sentence.
As he walked to his car, Billy saw that it was getting light. Mist cloaked the wispy trees that divided one side of the A14 from the other. On a whim, he took out his mobile and dialled the number on the hi-fi dealer’s card.
He answered almost immediately.
“Mr. Prabhu?” Billy said. “This is Billy Tyler. We met in the hospital cafeteria.”
“PC Tyler,” Mr. Prabhu said. “Of course. So you’ve decided to take me up on my offer?”
Billy laughed. “No. Actually, I was just wondering about your wife. Is she all right?”
“She’s out of danger, I’m happy to say. It seems the operation was a success.”
“That’s wonderful. You know, I looked for you earlier, at about four, and then again when I left the hospital at seven, but there was no sign of you. I thought you must have gone home.”
“No, they let me sleep in the ward — on a chair. My neck’s killing me.”
“Well, anyway,” Billy said with a smile, “I’m glad your wife has come through it all OK.”
“It was very thoughtful of you to ring, PC Tyler. Thank you so much.”
“Well, goodbye, Mr. Prabhu.”
“Goodbye — and have a safe journey home.”
Ending the call, Billy felt something slacken inside him, something that had been stretched to breaking-point. He had wanted to talk to someone who would be glad to hear his voice. He had needed good news.