He finished his second coffee and then returned to the apartment, opening the door slowly as if not to disturb someone who was sleeping. It was exactly as he had left it but it was changed, utterly, from how it had been the morning before, from any morning except this one. The curtains were open. Sun streamed through the dust-patterned window. One of the two towels was hung over the bathroom door, the other was in a lump on the back of a chair. The coffee cups were on the floor. Nearby were his socks. Wax from the candles had solidified in a saucer. There was no sign of her clothes. She had taken them all with her. The quilt was piled up at the end of the bed. The sheets were wrinkled, the pillows still bore the dent of their heads. Luke went into the bathroom and saw, in the basin, two hair grips: hers.
The door-bell jolted him out of his sleep. He opened the door. Her hair was tied up. She held a bike light in each hand. She was wearing a suede jacket, a loose skirt.
‘Did you dream there was someone at the door?’
‘As it happens, yes.’
He stood aside to let her in, closed the door behind them. She put her arms round him, kissed him, pressed the rear light to his left ear and the front to his right. Then she turned them on, like electrodes.
‘Bzzzzzzz!’
‘You cycled.’
‘It was a little chilly. I should have worn trousers.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t. Would you like the heating on?’
‘No, I’m OK.’
‘How are you?’
‘Tired.’
‘Me too. I was asleep when you rang the door. I fell asleep, I mean. I’m still waking up.’
‘I brought some nice wine.’
‘How kind. Would you like a glass?’
‘Yes.’ She kissed him on the mouth. ‘Your mouth tastes sleepy,’ she said.
‘Not nice?’
‘Yes, is nice. Nice and sleepy.’ He had his hands on her hips. She kissed him again and he kissed her back. He undid the buttons of her blouse. She was wearing a bra. He unclipped it and pushed her against the wall. She tossed the bike lights on to the bed. They were turned on still. She reached between her legs, moved her knickers aside and guided his fingers into her, kissing him hard.
They felt bewildered afterwards, by this fundamental breach of etiquette: screwing before they’d even unwrapped the wine — let alone opened it — while the lasagna was still baking. Nicole took off her wet knickers and they lay on the bed, not speaking until Luke said:
‘Would you like some wine now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stay there. I’ll get it.’ His jeans were around his ankles. He took off his socks as well, turned down the oven and came back with wine, glasses, a corkscrew, olives and a bowl to put the pits of the olives in. She was still wearing her suede jacket.
‘What about the heating? Would you like the heating on?’
‘Is OK.’ Luke opened the wine. They clinked glasses and sat with their legs entwined. The light was fading. Occasionally there were shouts from the street. There was a silence in the room. She was at the centre of the silence, he was at its edge, constantly on the brink of saying things: It’s lovely wine. It’s a lovely evening. You look lovely. If he could have thought of a sentence which did not have the word ‘lovely’ in it he would have said something. Instead, he waited for her, watched her chew away the olive and then, discreetly, put the stone in a bowl. After a while, she said:
‘It’s lovely wine.’
When it had grown dark he put on a light and took the lasagna from the oven. He served it and brought it to the bed where they ate off their knees. Nicole had half a plate left when Luke served himself a second portion.
‘What do your parents do?’ he asked.
‘My mother was a professor. Now she is retired. My father was a doctor. He’s dead.’ Immediately, instinctively, Luke thought, she is the first woman I’ve been to bed with whose father is dead. This seemed to explain everything even though he was unsure what it explained. ‘He died when I was eleven.’
‘What happened?’ said Luke, unsure, even as he asked, if this was a question he should have avoided.
‘He had a heart attack.’ Matter-of-factly. ‘What about your parents?’
‘They split up when I was sixteen. My mother remarried but it was my father who left.’
‘He met someone else?’
‘No. That’s the strange thing. He went to live on his own. He died when I was twenty-two.’
‘Were you close to him?’
‘Not really. I hardly saw him after he left. He was nice when I was young but, well, he made my mother incredibly unhappy. She met someone else but I think she never really recovered from my father’s leaving like that. He ended up very twisted, bitter. An alcoholic. He was a disappointed man.’
‘Disappointed by what?’
‘By everything, I think, but himself mainly. I have a friend here, Alex. You’ll meet him. His parents are still alive but they’re old. He doesn’t see them much and he’s worried about their dying. He asked me if I wished I’d told my dad I loved him before he died.’
‘Did you?’
‘No. But I wished I’d told him I hated him.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘I know, I really missed my chance.’ She hit him on the arm, not sure if he was joking. Luke had already polished off his second plate of food; Nicole had not yet finished her first.
‘You know that picture,’ she said, ‘of me in Belgrade?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have a picture of me before we met. I’d like one of you.’
‘I don’t know if I have one.’
‘You must have.’
‘Actually, maybe I do. Does it matter when it was taken?’
‘No. As long as it’s you.’
He took the plates away and began trawling through the box file in which he kept his papers.
‘Here you are.’ He handed her the photograph. It showed a little boy wearing a cowboy hat, standing in front of a car, pointing a toy gun at the camera.
‘Is it really you?’
‘Of course.’ The picture was of Luke but it was no different from any number of pictures of little boys. There are hundreds, thousands, of pictures like this and they are all the same. From a selection of such photos there is no telling which little boy might become a famous footballer or painter, which ones will grow up to have families and take pictures like this of their own children. Then someone tells you that this photo is of a boy who died, aged twenty, in a car crash, or killed himself before he was thirty, or became a down-and-out, or a painter or a well-known footballer. And nothing changes. It remains indistinguishable from the hundreds of other pictures of little boys in shorts, hair cut straight across their foreheads, pointing toy guns at cameras.
While Nicole looked at the photo Luke lay on the bed again, his head in her lap. She stroked his head. He turned over so that he was looking up at her face. A police car wailed past. Music began in the apartment next door: five minutes of Techno, intense, pounding, then it stopped and the door slammed and there was silence. It was Friday night, the neighbours were going out.
‘What would you like to do?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Do you want to go out?’
‘I don’t mind.’
She held up his head slightly and tilted wine into his mouth, as if it were water from a canteen and he was an actor who had been shot. He moved around on to his side, facing away from her and again he caught the smell of sex which he wanted to smell more closely, more deeply. He raised his head from her lap and crawled back under her knees, his face towards her cunt.