'We have another drink.' Sophie upended the wine to collect the last few drops before fetching another bottle from the kitchen, and after a few more glasses, I'd stopped caring about whether or not I'd been deliberately misled. I asked if she'd seen anything of Miles, and she told me she was still waiting to hear what he'd thought of the camera she'd bought him for his birthday. Then the conversation turned to work and, out of politeness, I asked how she was getting on with the gardening calendar. Sophie got up and rummaged through her portfolio. I prepared to respond with the usual blandishments, but as soon as I laid eyes on the picture, I knew they wouldn't be necessary.
'That's weird,' I said, squinting in the half-light. 'Really spooky.'
This, from me, was a compliment, but it put Sophie's back up. 'It's a garden,' she retorted. 'It's springtime, bright and leafy, not spooky at all.'
I couldn't agree. Sophie's drawings were usually so inoffensive — all sweetness and light, butterflies and flowers — but this one was verging on the sinister. It was easily the most impressive thing she'd done, but this realization, instead of cheering me up, gave me the gloomy feeling that the best things in life were once again passing me by. Here was privileged, frivolous, superficial Sophie, sticking a pencil into her very soul while I was stuck churning out step-by-step jelly doughnuts.
It was just a garden: neatly trimmed lawn, tidy hedge, stone bird-bath, wooden shed, gnarled apple tree. But it reminded me of something, and for the life of me I couldn't think what, though I had the feeling that something awful had either just happened or was just about to happen there.
'This is the best thing you've done,' I said, trying not to sound too bitter.
'I'd like to think so,' said Sophie, gazing at it tenderly, almost maternally. She tried to take it from me, but I was reluctant to let go. My instinct was telling me there were people hiding in the hedge, or behind the tree, but that if I wanted to catch a glimpse of them I couldn't let the drawing out of my sight for an instant.
'Why are you looking at it like that?' asked Sophie, and in a flash, I realized what the scene reminded me of. The Drunken Boats album cover. Sophie had gone psychedelic on me.
I had to close my eyes then, because all of a sudden I was feeling dizzy.
'I like the faces,' I said, though I don't know why I said that, because I didn't like them at all. I could still see them, even with my eyes closed. They gave me a funny feeling, and it was funny peculiar, funny frightening, not funny ha-ha.
'What faces?' asked Sophie.
I opened my eyes and pointed them out.
'Those are leaves,' she said, quite crossly.
'Of course they're leaves. But if you scrunch your eyes up, they look like people. Except this one's got a bird's head. And that one's got… something weird going on where its eyes should be. Look there.'
I jabbed at the board with my finger. Sophie snatched it away, as though I were about to leave mucky fingerprints all over her precious work.
'Maybe so,' she said, sounding doubtful.
I leant over for another look, but the faces had vanished, and I was no longer sure I'd seen them in the first place. Once again the hedge was an ordinary hedge, and the apple tree was an ordinary apple tree.
The shed, though — I hadn't taken much notice of it before, but now I saw the door was slightly ajar, as though someone had just gone in.
Or as if someone — or something — were about to emerge.
I shook my head, hard enough to make my teeth rattle, trying to jolt myself out of this whimsical thinking. Sophie was looking at me curiously. 'What on earth are you doing?'
'Just trying to shake sense into my brain,' I told her. 'Sometimes my imagination runs away with me.'
'I know exactly what you mean,' said Sophie, and I felt a twinge of irritation. How could she possibly know? Sophie was one of the least imaginative people I'd ever met. She couldn't even imagine what it would be like to go shopping without a walletful of credit cards.
'They're just leaves,' repeated Sophie.
'If you say so,' I said, and then added, a touch maliciously, 'Maybe breaking up with Miles has been good for your artistic development.'
Sophie's reply was instantaneous. 'We haven't broken up.'
'Come off it. He's been going round introducing this Ligia woman as his girlfriend.'
She winced. I was exaggerating, but only slightly, and the news hit her where it hurt. But she pulled herself together in a jiffy; it was impressive to see. 'It's me that doesn't want to see him,' she reminded me. 'There are things we need to sort out before I move back. Miles can go out with other people if he wants. Maybe he should go ahead and get it out of his system.'
At about eleven o'clock I realized I was going to miss the last train, but Sophie assured me I was welcome to stay with her, she'd assumed that had been the plan all along. As the minutes ticked away to midnight, I was surprised she made no effort to get ready for bed. This wasn't like her at alclass="underline" Sophie was one of those irritating early birds who were normally tucked up well before twelve o'clock, which meant they would invariably be up in time to listen to Farming Today.
But tonight she wasn't in a hurry to get tucked up, and she wasn't even yawning. The level of noise from the street outside slipped down a level from evening to night, the occasional stirrings of movement from the man upstairs died away, and, when we switched on the television, the viewing had dwindled to a choice between Open University and an old American cop show starring a has-been British actor.
Eventually we dispensed with the television altogether, and ended up talking more than we'd talked in years. We laughed a lot, and even cried a little. Sophie tried to explain why she was so upset by Miles' behaviour — 'It's not the infidelity I mind, it's the lying' — and we discussed art and sex and gardens and decorating and, before I knew where I was, I found myself defending Dirk and Lemmy yet again.
'Dirk's actually a very responsible person,' I was saying. 'Once, just for fun, he smashed an empty bottle in the street, and then spent the next half-hour picking up every last sliver of glass so that passing dogs and cats wouldn't cut their paws on it.'
Which was when the music started.
Sophie sat up very straight, and said, 'Party time.'
I call it 'music' though from where we were sitting it was more of a tuneless thudding, a booming bass which you felt in your entrails, rather than heard through the normal channels of the ear.
Ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk ker-chunk
I looked up at the ceiling. The noise seemed to be coming from up there, but there was so much echo it was difficult to tell.
On Sophie's face there was a look of exhilaration which put me in mind of Joan of Arc. 'I thought they were playing hard to get,' she said, almost shouting to make herself heard. 'This is why I asked you round. This is what I wanted you to hear.'
'It's loud!' I shouted back.
'Don't you recognize it?'
I tried making sense of the racket, and after a while caught a hint of vocals.
Down there down there down there down there
It was our old friends, the Drunken Boats.
I tried to repress the sneaky little thrill of satisfaction I was feeling. Sophie's new flat was not so marvellous after all. At least my place in Hackney was solid and purpose-built and I didn't have to listen to neighbours' music thudding through the walls.
'Have you complained?' I asked, gesturing towards the ceiling.
Sophie was watching me attentively. 'It isn't Robert,' she said.