He does not remember looking out of this window yesterday, either when he arrived or when he went to bed. He does not recall checking for an escape route. It is just as well, he thinks, because this room is on the third floor and there is nothing to climb out onto and nothing to break a fall. Had he realised this, he would have spent half the night worrying about it and the other half having bad dreams.
He sits down on the bed, next to his suitcase. It was his honeymoon suitcase, a wedding present from his father, who was his best man.
Futh had first asked a man at work, who turned him down. Gloria said, ‘Aren’t you going to ask Kenny?’ So Futh asked Kenny, who just laughed.
Then he asked his father, who, shaking his head, said, ‘Have you got no one else?’ But he did it, and he took Futh out for a drink and said, raising his glass, that the French called this ‘l’enterrement de vie de garçon’. ‘The burial,’ he said, ‘of a boy’s life.’
They held the wedding reception in the function room of a local pub. There was a dance floor on which his father slow-danced with Gloria, and onto which Angela’s mother kept trying to persuade Futh, and which Angela repeatedly refused to leave despite Futh’s preference for an early night. And there was a buffet which was drying out by the time Futh left Angela on the dance floor and went out into the corridor to get away from the disco’s noise and flashing lights.
At the far end of the corridor, a back door was propped open and through it he could see one end of a patio in darkness and rain beginning to fall. He stepped outside and a security light came on, illuminating him on the empty slabs. There was a square of lawn, edged at his end by the patio and the wall to which the security light was attached. Running down one side of the lawn was the outside wall of the corridor, and on the opposite side a hedge screened the garden from the road. At the far end was the wall of the function room which he had just left, and above that the bedroom which he had booked for the night.
He wandered onto the wet grass. Rain always reminded him of meeting Angela at the motorway service station, the smell of his wet coat in her car. He ambled down to the end of the garden. He reckoned that if he stood anywhere else he could be seen from the function room, but standing against its wall he could not. And moreover, the security light sensor apparently did not reach that far. The light went off and Futh stood in darkness outside the function room, in thick grass between patches of nettles, enjoying the rain smell and remembering Angela.
‘What you can smell,’ he had said to her on some rainy woodland walk, inhaling deeply, ‘is bacterial spores. They are stored in dried-out soil and released by rainfall and carried in the damp air to our noses.’
When Futh began to feel really wet, he headed back inside. As he crossed the lawn, the security light snapped on again and he felt like an animal in headlights, about to be mown down.
He did not go back into the function room but slipped past the open door and went straight upstairs to the bedroom. He heard the party continuing without him, and it sounded louder, he thought, than it had done when he was down there. He could hear the voices shrieking through the floorboards, feel the pulse of the disco music under his feet.
He went to the window and peered out, looking for his escape route. The room had a view of the lawn, and the patio on the far side. It was a dormer window — beneath it, the roof sloped away. Although he could not see down to the ground, he knew that if he had to jump he would land on grass, or at worst in the nettles near which he had been standing a few minutes earlier. Satisfied that he was safe, he drew the curtains.
He peeled off his damp clothes and hung them over the cold radiator and the backs of the chairs to dry. He took off his watch and put it down on the dressing table. Opening his new suitcase, he took out his wash bag and went to the bathroom. Angela’s wash bag was already in there and he rummaged through it. He smelt a few of her products, and tested them, scrubbing his skin with her exfoliating cream in the shower. After towel drying himself, he trimmed his fingernails and toenails. He powdered his feet and put some of Angela’s replenishing night cream on his face and neck, and balm on the thin skin around his eyes. He combed his hair and brushed and flossed his teeth.
Back in the bedroom, he looked through his suitcase for the outfit in which he would be going away, laying it out ready for the morning. He reassured himself that he had brought his wallet, the travellers cheques, the booking confirmation for the flight and the hire car and the honeymoon accommodation, lining all these things up next to his watch.
He put on his pyjamas, got into bed and switched off his lamp. He lay there, smelling of Angela, noting the total absence of light in the room — none coming in from outside, no little red dot from a television on stand-by, no digital display of red or green numbers on a radio alarm clock — and he waited for Angela to come up.
Some time later, he was woken by the security light at the back of the pub flashing on, glaring through the curtains. He got out of bed to look outside, reaching the window and drawing aside the curtain just as the light went off again. He stood in darkness, listening to the wedding reception still going strong down below.
He opened the window, appreciating the cool night air. He wondered whether there was anyone out there, in the garden, but he could not see a thing — there was not much light from the moon — and he could not hear anything due to the noise from downstairs. He stood there for a while looking out at the night, his duvet-warmed feet growing cold on the bare floorboards, before he caught the smell of cigarette smoke coming in through the open window. After a minute, the security light snapped on again and he saw Angela in her wedding dress, watched her crossing the patio and disappearing through the back door. Anticipating her now coming to bed with the cigarette smell on her skin and in her hair and in her mouth, he closed the window and drew the curtain again.
He got back into bed, meaning to lie awake and wait for Angela but instead falling asleep. He woke with no idea what time it was or if Angela was with him. It was dark, and it was quiet, the reception finally over. He reached across to Angela’s side of the bed, half-expecting to find it empty, instead feeling the mound of her body beneath the covers, touching her skin which was still cold from having been outside. He whispered, ‘Are you awake?’ but she did not answer. He went back to sleep.
In the morning, they had breakfast in the dining room. Futh took a small continental breakfast from the buffet and went to sit at a table with his father and Gloria. He poured a cup of coffee for himself and one for Angela, but he did not start eating, preferring to wait for Angela who had wandered over to the cooked breakfasts. Turning to look for her, he saw her standing talking to Kenny. Angela, glancing up and seeing Futh watching her, made her way back to the table without a breakfast. Kenny turned back to the buffet, filling his plate.
‘He’ll be hungry,’ said Gloria. ‘He didn’t get here until all the wedding food had been cleared away.’
‘I didn’t know he was coming,’ said Futh.
‘Of course he came,’ said Gloria. ‘He wouldn’t have missed this for the world.’
Kenny came to the table and sat down with his full English breakfast. ‘I don’t get this at home,’ he said, picking up his knife and fork.
‘You would at my house,’ said Gloria, but Kenny ignored her, cutting into his sausage and egg.