The third bedroom lay at the end of the passage. One look was enough to convince him. Marie’s suitcase against the wall. Her make-up case on the chest of drawers. The slippers she took everywhere beside the bed, on which lay her nightdress. Her jeans, her blouse, her jewellery, her bra, her scent. Her mobile. Which he’d called so often. And on whose voicemail he’d left messages. The battery was flat. He didn’t know her PIN number.
Having dumped the suitcase on the bed, he opened the wardrobe and drawers and packed anything that came to hand. He didn’t bother to fold things any more than he worried about soiling her blouses with the soles of her shoes.
A last look around. Nothing else. He knelt on the suitcase and zipped it up.
*
He lay on her bed, his head on her pillow, her duvet over him for warmth. Her smell enveloped him. He found it odd that she seemed far more alive to him here than in the flat they’d shared. Perhaps it was because this was where she’d been last.
He heard a noise. He didn’t know where it was coming from, but it didn’t scare him.
*
He hadn’t checked the time, so he couldn’t have said how long he’d been lying there. It was after midday. He carried the suitcase out to the car and went back to see if he’d missed anything. In the wastepaper basket he found a shopping list in Marie’s handwriting. He smoothed it out and put it in his pocket.
*
He drove steadily, nonchalantly. Now and then he turned his head, but not for fear that someone might be sitting behind him, just to make sure the suitcase was really there. He stopped to eat and drink and stacked some bottles of mineral water on the passenger seat. He’d been tormented since that morning by an almost unquenchable thirst, probably another side effect of the tablets. His urine, when he relieved himself, had a pinkish tinge. Shaking his head, he squeezed another tablet out of its blister pack. His shoulders were going numb.
He soon lost all conception of how long he’d been driving. Distances seemed to be relative. The motorway signs meant nothing. Having only just passed Lancaster, he came to the Coventry turn-off shortly afterwards. On the other hand, the stretch between Northampton and Luton seemed to take hours. He looked at his feet operating the pedals.
As a youngster he’d been mystified when pop and film stars committed suicide. Why kill yourself when you had everything? Why did people snuff themselves out when they had millions in the bank, consorted with other celebrities and went to bed with the most famous and desirable individuals on the planet? Because they were lonely, was the answer. Lonely and unhappy. How stupid, he’d thought. You didn’t kill yourself because of that. That singer shouldn’t have slit her wrists, she should have called him instead. He would have been a good friend to her. He would have listened to her, comforted her, taken her away on holiday. She would have had a better friend in him than any she could ever have found among her fellow stars. He would have taken a detached view of her problems and straightened her out. In his company she would have felt secure.
Or so he had thought. It wasn’t until later that he grasped why those people had killed themselves: for the same reason as the poor and unknown. They couldn’t hold on to themselves. They couldn’t endure being alone with themselves and had realised that other people’s company was only a palliative. That it thrust the problem into the background without solving it. Being yourself twenty-four hours a day, never anyone else, was a blessing in many cases but a curse in others.
*
At Sevenoaks, south of London, he exchanged the car for a moped big enough for him to wedge the suitcase between his legs and the handlebars. Whether he would last fifty kilometres like that was another matter, but he needed a two-wheeler. He had no wish to go through the Tunnel on foot. The light of the setting sun helped him in his quest. He hadn’t wanted to make his way through Dover in the dark.
Jonas rode down the motorway at eighty to ninety k.p.h., trying every few minutes to find a more comfortable position for his legs. He drew up his knees and cautiously rested his feet on the suitcase, hung his legs over it and let his feet dangle. He even doubled up one leg and sat on it, but a relaxed position eluded him. When it got dark he wedged his legs between the suitcase and the seat and left it at that.
The headwind seemed to refresh his brain. He soon felt more clear-headed and less as if he were propelling himself along under water. He was able to reflect on what lay ahead. First through the Tunnel, then across France and Germany, collecting up the cameras. And all this on tablets, with a smouldering fuse.
He would never sleep again.
Shortly before his destination he recognised a grain silo despite the darkness. From here it was barely two kilometres to the mouth of the Tunnel. If he turned off right, however, he would get to the field where he’d spent the night.
He didn’t know why, but something inside him made him turn off. His muscles automatically tensed as the beam of the moped’s headlight illuminated the field ahead of him. The wind was strengthening. The silence seemed to be more natural, and that was just what Jonas found so unpleasant. But he didn’t turn back. Something lured him on. At the same time, he knew that he was being irrational, that there was no good reason for this escapade.
Outside the tent he killed the engine but left the headlight on. He got off.
The motorbike with the slashed tyres. The awning. Sleeping mats lying around. An uninflated air-bed. A torn road map. Two sacks of rubbish. And the clothes he’d left here. He felt them. They were almost dry. He took off his borrowed things and put on his trousers and T-shirt. Only his shoes were past wearing. The damp had warped and shrunk the leather. He couldn’t get his feet into them.
He switched off the moped’s headlight, not wanting to be stranded here with a flat battery.
Although everything inside him balked at the prospect, he went inside the tent and sat down. He groped for the torch and turned it on. Two rucksacks. The tins of food. The camping stove. The Discman and CDs. The newspaper. The sex magazine.
Five days ago he’d spent the night here.
This sleeping bag had been lying here on its own for five days. And for over a month before his first visit. It would lie here on its own from now on.
Something brushed against the outside of the tent.
‘Hey!’
It sounded as if someone were searching for the entrance on the wrong side. Jonas strained his eyes but could see nothing, no figure, no moving shape. He knew it was the wind, could only be the wind, but he gulped involuntarily. And coughed.
No need to be scared of anything that has a voice, he told himself.
Taking care to move steadily and smoothly, he crawled out of the tent. It was a clear night. He drew several deep breaths. Without looking round, he started the moped and rode off with one arm raised in farewell.
Never again. He would never come back here again.
This thought preoccupied him on the way to the Tunnel. The same thought continued to preoccupy him as he plunged into its dark mouth and the space around him was suddenly filled with the throaty hum of the engine. That tent, those sleeping bags, those CDs — he’d seen them for the last time, would never see them again. They were over and done with. He realised that they were arbitrarily selected, unimportant objects. To him, however, they possessed importance, if only the importance conferred on them by the fact that he remembered them better than other things. They were objects he’d touched and whose touch he could still feel. Objects he could recall as vividly as if they were right in front of him. End of story.
*
He squeezed between the train and the side of the tunnel. Once past the rearmost carriage, he felt around in the darkness until he grasped the handlebars of the DS. The saddle emitted its usual pneumatic hiss as he sat down on it. A well-remembered sound. He smiled.