All the Rage

All the Rage

MARK HAD NEVER thought he’d consider throwing himself under a train. Turned out he was wrong.

Not for the first time.

Cheap shot, I realise, but I always do take the cheap shot. I wouldn’t really be me without it.

But I am me and I have been — with assistance — very badly wrong. Repeatedly.

At least the weather was okay. Hot, in fact: the light bleaching and withering down at everyone while they waited on a platform which wasn’t their platform at a station they shouldn’t have reached. This was not on the way to anywhere anybody had meant to be and apparently no services ever stopped here. It didn’t even seem to be a place for people, rather for goods, repairs in sidings, arcane mechanical processes. Mark could smell ageing oil and traces of coal dust. There was a sense beyond that of gap sites, bomb sites, failed reconstructions after the war.

The last world war, not the current succession of little wash-and-goes.

He found himself reminded of his childhood, the shoddy old home town and his lovingly rehearsed escapes therefrom.

And he had escaped, of course, quite quickly. Clever youngsters still could then and he was clever: full grant to go and play at studying in a mediocre, but blessedly far-removed university. He didn’t look back.

And as for going back, turning up again — nobody would have thanked me for trying that. Best to do all concerned the big, merciful favour and disappear.

He now had a presentable London postcode, loft extension, Polish au pair with a marine-biology degree — or zoology, something like that — and the ability to amplify his griefs at the hands of a rail network in crisis by writing about them — yet more suffering imposed on blameless middle classes — for a national daily paper. But none of his life’s securities meant that he wasn’t still ready to doubt the station signs. His current home and circumstances felt immediately unconvincing when he got stressed. There’d be this creep of ridiculous suspicion: maybe he wasn’t where he thought, maybe over the bridge would be that other, original shithole and his place in it waiting for him, irrevocable. He’d spin on his heel and here would be Mum in the loud-walled sitting room catching a breather before tea, hands worried nonetheless with knitting, or sewing, or Christ knew what — and odd, sweet ham for sandwiches, stuff you got out of a tin — and his dad back from the garage — and smoking on buses and trains, and ciggies being advertised on telly — ciggies everywhere — and cheap pullovers that sparked up blue with static when you peeled them off fast in the dark. You’d never get girls with a pullover like that.

Not with a pullover at all. Not to a satisfactory degree.

He was out, though, truly long gone and free and he hadn’t even once been forced, for professional reasons, to offer deferential and trustworthy smiles to strangers with broken cars and he didn’t need a girl, he had a wife.

I’m just stuck here at the moment, where nothing stops. It really does — nothing stays here and you have to breathe it in. I am inhaling the stink of nothing.

His imagination bridled before it could fully recall the scent of his own skin on Sunday mornings: shifting the covers and catching that mustiness, tiredness. He smelled of nothing. It was on him.

A long lie and a touch of sweat and Pauline already virtuously about in the garden, or the kitchen, or her church.

I always do think of it as her personal church, because she does, and who am I to disagree?

But there he would be, stagnant and upstairs and holding on around an hour, or maybe two, of peace.

Mark was very fond of peace. Increasingly.

Pauline was less inclined towards the tranquil.

Mercurial. Why I married her. I’m sure. At least partly that.

That and she thought she was pregnant. Turned out she was wrong. It’s a trait we share, our fondness for the wrong.

But I did also love the way she could kick off and stay off, generate these heartfelt torrents of fury. She has retained the capacity to be magnificent in that area and I continue to admire it.

I truly do.

It was plain that she wanted a row at the moment, was quietly and almost sexily brooding on the words she might say, were she not surrounded by a mass of other non-travelling travellers. She’d ask him again — rhetorical question — why he couldn’t have driven them over from London and right to the arse-end of Wales for no very good reason, other than to let her see her friends. She got this urge, once a year or so, to wear spotless wellingtons and padded faux-country coats with her friends, to drink red wine until it stained her mouth to an injury, also with her friends, to exert a vague authority over a herd of pye-dog children — long-haired and ill-mannered and airily illiterate — with her continual bloody friends who had produced said children without considering that parenthood would mean being broke and staying in the arse-end of Wales, while acting as if it was Italy and wandering hunch-backed streets in a migraine of drizzle.

He couldn’t have driven. It would have made him tired. Correction, it would have made him exhausted — there and back would have made him dead. This last week had wiped him out. He’d been a wreck by Wednesday, Kempson ranting and condemning them to additional white nights, threatening more redundancies while they sorted out urgent copy to go with urgent tits.

This week’s tits were wronged and glazed with anguish, always a favourite. They were classy tits, married to a Special Adviser tits, the prime minister’s full confidence still placed in their husband tits, late of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and rumours of early spliffs and precocious rapacities tits. They’d probably got an opinion on Gypsies, too. Or tax-avoidance. Austerity. The future of the euro. Frankly tragic that they had no power of speech. Infinitely disappointing that their owner did.

Christ!

So no stamina left for long-haul chauffeuring.

Sorry.

Sorry that you had your precious break, but now its even more precious afterglow has been destroyed by my boorish insistence on not having a heart attack.

So very sorry indeed.

An apology should have been unnecessary in a friendly world, but was offered in any case. The world wasn’t friendly.

Sorrysorrysorrysorry.

The usual rolling hiss. The sound of my head: like a detuned radio, or the drag of an old-time needle over old-time vinyl at the end of the record, once the music’s stopped.

Pauline should have known better than to ask. She was fully aware of Mark’s persistent, historic aversion to motor vehicles.

Grew up with five petrol-head brothers, didn’t I?

What sensible parent has that many kids? That many sons? That many of anything?

Mark had been the late and tender afterthought, putting an end to the line. No more soft-pawed fighting and solemnly blue jokes to share with Dad as if they were presents from an oncoming life.

Don’t tell your mother, and having a laugh and sipping from a fag round the back, leaned against the wall — all the Burroughs boys together.

He’d pretty much ruined things, because from the outset Mark had been a poor fit with his father and the boys. He’d known that he made them uncomfortable: kind, but stilted and uneasy.

I didn’t like what they liked.

While his siblings couldn’t wait to get dirty, he had always hated engines, tinkering, manual tasks of every kind. He would, as an adult, abandon some type of large Renault because it was actually on fire. Not overheating, but wildly ablaze due to unforgivable negligence on his part. He’d left it in a lay-by, run away.

Wasn’t even my car. Borrowed. And not returned.

If she’d known about this — it was before her time — he could imagine how Pauline would react, pronouncing the three syllables of typical as only she could. She needn’t be furious to make the word ring like a curse. Authentically injurious.

For now, she whipped a glance at him, gave it some strength. Mark was aware that the tall bloke in retro corduroy, or just very misguided corduroy, had read their little exchange — Pauline’s threat, Mark’s obeisance — and was smiling in response.

But you’re wrong, chum. My relationship is not the nightmare you assume. You have no reason to feel you are lucky and can be smug. You don’t understand.

There was something about kissing her while she tasted of contempt — there was a depth in that, an intoxication. You had to be careful in these areas and he wouldn’t recommend it for someone who flagged under tension, but if you could stand it. .

Wasted on him, the corduroy man. Moron.

Mark shifted in an intentionally obvious way to eye the moron’s female companion, give her some time. She was unimpressive.

‘Mark.’

Bite the tongue and don’t say ‘Yes, dear.’ It’s such a cliché.

‘Yes, darling.’

‘Go and find something out.’

‘Of course. I’ll go and find something out.’

And Mark did indeed step lively, as if he were seeking more up-to-date information and could be ordered about and relish it. The crowd was hungry for distraction and a theatrically craven husband drew attention. He could feel the pity and amusement lap towards him as he trotted on, a tide of nasty satisfaction.

Stare if you want. Take a picture, I don’t mind. I still know what you don’t — that there are opportunities for a mature and fulfilled enjoyment in my situation.

He switched through to the other platform, the one in shade. It was deserted and his body lifted, was stroked by being out of sight.

I’ll give it ten minutes, have my own precious break.

There was no reason to do more: at mysterious intervals a man came and, in a perversely quiet voice, told the crowd of would-be passengers that their train would arrive in twenty minutes. He had done this several times in the last three hours. Should Mark be able to locate him, the man would doubtless repeat the twenty-minute claim, because this was precise and therefore not frustrating and seemed to promise a not unreasonable wait.

The electronic indicator board sometimes showed their train and sometimes others, none of which appeared. Mark had decided he’d take the rest of the day in soft focus and so wasn’t wearing his glasses. This meant the shiny, tiny letters and fictional times simply flared together into uncommunicative blocks. He preferred them like that.

In his absence, Pauline could consult the board. She had her glasses.

Doesn’t like them, because she’s decided they make her look old.

They make her look like her mother, which isn’t old.

It is much worse than old.

And meanwhile they weren’t without the useless kind of trains, non-stopping anonymous trains: long, high blurs of weight and violence that gashed the air and ravaged past, leaving him breathless and tempted.

Suicide as an alternative to marriage.

Well, I wouldn’t put it that bluntly.

No.

But there is a tug as they roar on by, the illusion of longing.

A voice from who knew where — it was a woman’s — would give them notice through the PA system before the tearing intrusion of each express, but nevertheless he couldn’t quite prepare enough. They made him feel undefended, almost naked.

If you stand too near the edge you’ll be drawn off by sheer velocity and crushed. I read that somewhere.

The trains were so plainly unsurvivable and disinterested. They were attractive. Marvellous.

The impact of another troubled the fabric of everything briefly and he wished he’d been closer for it, over with Pauline. She wouldn’t have stood too near. She was, in fact, probably sitting as he’d left her with knees tight together and ankles tucked into one side as a lady should. Their case was taking her weight.

It has a hard shell.

Inside it, their belongings didn’t mix — his shirts and underpants in a tangle, Pauline’s laundry compressed into subsidiary containments. They had separate sponge bags, too.

Got to keep those toothbrushes apart.

There was no café for him to visit and find her placating treats. The whole trail of those evicted from the previous, ailing train had been ushered along barren walkways, down steps and far from the station proper, which had been mean and small enough in itself. Not even a vending machine. No apparent staff. Mark couldn’t imagine where the twenty-minute man could be keeping himself before he emerged to murmur about fake arrivals and departures.

Mark drifted until he was standing in one of the broad alleys that led back to the crowds, the platform, the wait. He was quite a distance from Pauline and safely unobservable.

Probably.

He glanced through to the phoning and pacing of his fellow castaways. The bustle was thin at this point.

But you’re there, aren’t you? By yourself. That’s you.

He’d noticed the woman earlier, taken note.

And I’m looking at you.

She was in her late forties and her spine had settled into something of a slump, but she had an optimistic wardrobe. There were flowers, lots of flowers: a light skirt, thin blouse, mildly bohemian, hoping to conceal that she was fatter than she’d like. Mark knew it would be a safe bet that she’d have a messy flat and would sneak bits of food in the kitchen before she came out to eat properly with a guest. Flat shoes, but good calves. Goodish curves. Accustomed to being unappreciated.

But you have my undivided attention.

And if he thought it louder.

You have my undivided attention.

Sure enough, she turned, tugged by his awareness, and he did what he wasn’t allowed to do — no longer wanted to do, if he was truthful — and faced the woman and was nothing for her.

That’s you. By yourself. And this is me. By myself. And I’m nothing.

I am very much nothing: not serious, not long-term, neither heartfelt, nor heart-breaking, not intrusive, not a burden, not anyone who’ll ever know you and therefore be irritated or repelled.

I will be good and easy and meaningless.

Mark smiled.

I’m nothing.

He considered himself.

And I have a nice arse.

I have an excellent arse. Frequently complimented.

Early forties — forty-four is early forties — but thirty-nine to look at and with more-than-satisfactory legs. They give me the height, the perspective. One could say they lead the eye. Up. And I’m keeping my hair well, dark and thick.

Plus, I have kind eyes.

And no glasses, which means that I’m currently loosening her edges, Vaselining over my appreciation of someone who would benefit from blurring.

Late forties for a woman is catastrophic. She has my sympathy.

And this me, this nothing — she could have that, too.

He ambled forward to lean in the last shade of the passage, on the blind side from his wife.

You could have it all and it’s a lot, it’s really something.

He smiled again, folded his arms.

My arms around myself, because you have not held me and yet I do need to be held. It’s such a shame for both of us.

And the woman smiled.

That’s right. You’re made for nothing, you are — made for it.

She kept him in view when he moved and then as he halted.

And he knew absolutely that he should be business-like here, should claim her, because she would love it. Because how unlikely and beautiful it would be for anyone — but perhaps particularly for her — that a stranger should be jerked to a stop by who you are and then swiftly driven to helpless and expert improprieties.

Every one of the possible acts was prohibited, but he did rush harmlessly through thoughts of how thin the woman’s bra and blouse were and how they would give her away once he’d talked her horny.

Private tits, quiet tits, tits that will never be shown to a jaded nation.

But she’d show me.

She wouldn’t want it stated. Our conversation would be pleasantly oblique. We’d talk about this journey, other journeys, other passengers, anything really, it wouldn’t matter as long as I kept the music of it rubbing forward and no chance for her to doubt. I needn’t say anything filthy, just keep a hunger in the smiles, the right catch in the eyes, and by the time our train came I’d get her on board and then have her in a toilet.

Done it before.

She wouldn’t realise it had been sordid until tomorrow, maybe the end of the week. Today it would be passion and romance.

And then tidy up and out into the carriage. I’d suggest that we sit apart afterwards, because of what fun that would be: acting like she’d never met me, when I’m still a ghost between her legs.

Those red plush silk and shaky minutes between her legs.

I could tell her if she’s good that we’d do it again past Swindon.

Maybe not a lie.

Maybe give her my genuine number and save hers. Hook up, if we felt like taking longer and she didn’t live ridiculously far away.

Although there is much to be said for women who live ridiculously far away and the trend towards exponential fare increases for public transport. And petrol’s hardly a bargain.

We could improvise.

She would let me.

Sometimes people want nothing. It is a necessity.

But then Mark gave her an altered smile.

And this is to say that I would if I could.

And it is such a pity I can’t.

Have this instead — the sting of possibility. It’s a much neater present, a nice one: the way that your body will rouse and insist where I would have kissed it.

You know the places. You do.

Mark let his hands fall sadly and, because he considered this polite, he whispered his knuckles against the woman’s as he passed her, headed into the glare and walked to offer Pauline interwoven lies.

‘Well, you won’t believe it, but they said another twenty minutes.’

I really did go and speak to someone and serve you as you wished.

‘Sorry, darling. It’s outrageous.’

I am not 40 or 50 per cent turned on.

‘I could go back. If you want, love.’

I wouldn’t like to scream until it hurts me.

‘But I don’t think it would be much use, and the sun’s giving me a headache. I feel a bit out of it, actually. .’

I am not thumbing through random memories of working inside other women until I felt the sweat run, the insect tickle of being entirely waylaid.

‘I am sorry.’ And he kissed her, squeezed her hand in his.

She withdrew from the pressure and pursed her lips. Mark took pains to understand her point of view.

That’s sixteen years of history between us in one motion — and having no kids and her needing her glasses more badly than I need mine. Varifocals.

That’s me having, thus far, decided not to be dead yet and this causing a further difference of opinion.

Their history wasn’t uniformly bleak. Nobody’s ever was, not without significant rewriting. For three years he’d been relatively happy and as faithful to Pauline as a rescued dog. Then he had rather reverted to type and it was hugely regrettable and he did feel bad about it, but equally he’d never let her know. He hadn’t insisted they share an open marriage and hadn’t been prone to regular confessions. He hadn’t confessed at all.

Because I was nothing. So I had nothing to confess.

I washed thoroughly after them, extra soap and water for the hands, the betraying hands, and I used mouthwash and set aside a holdall of specifically adulterous clothing — like a gym bag. Salted money away for the costs. I suppressed my traces.

She didn’t know.

Not a clue about the girl I met in a hotel car park during a late-night fire alarm, the girl on an overnight train to Berlin, a woman who’d slept with Mick Jagger — him or Keith, definitely one of the Stones: being with her was like trying on a vintage coat — and a woman who’d been crying at a party, a conference waitress, multiple attendees of multiple conferences, the wife of a friend — which was stupidly risky — the wives of strangers, the assistant in a chemist’s shop after hours. During hours would have been silly.

The pin from her name badge scratched my cheek.

It was a little bit relentless.

But consistent — all nothing.

Then he’d woken on a Sunday early, been dressed and spruce at breakfast, as if he’d had an appointment. Indeed, he’d taken advantage of the day’s suggested shape and tone — it seemed spruce and forthright, somehow — and had claimed — why not — that he was suddenly needed at the office and would nip out while Pauline set forth to tend the weeds.

Plants — she tends the plants.

She kills the weeds.

As far as I’m aware, she does it that way round.

I told her a chef — controversial, but adored by female readers — had forgotten to tell us that he was dyslexic/thick/on a bender — I wasn’t listening at the time so I’m unsure of my final choice — and would fail to provide 900 pithy words about something or other I couldn’t recall. I didn’t think it related to cooking. Probably he was attempting to reposition his persona. Pauline is fascinated by B-List hubris and so this entertained her.

I said it was best to show my face, go in and deal with the minor disaster, catch up on my expenses — they’re more like begging letters now — and be the chap on hand for any further emergencies. We lived in straitened times, even then, and I needed to seem flexible and willing.

I also did honestly want some fresh air.

No, I didn’t.

I wanted to keep an appointment I hadn’t made.

He’d caught the Tube.

Piccadilly Line: convenient and it’s my favourite shade of blue.

He’d stepped into an empty carriage.

And she followed.

That was you.

That was you, Emily.

That was you.

She’d sat opposite, a tiny clumsiness in her movements that lit him, put him on alert, even though she’d been unremarkable in many ways.

Sweet Jesus, that was you.

An over-large biker jacket had made her seem round-shouldered.

As if she was shy about having breasts.

Emily.

That was sweet and you.

Her costume fought ungracefully to combine revelation with concealment. She’d made a series of unimaginative and self-punishing choices in red and mainly black: holed black tights and layers of equally wounded T-shirts, short denim shorts and high-lacing boots with industrial soles. One hand was curled intently round a can of cider.

Didn’t know your name, but that was sweet and you.

Mark had watched her face, its flickers and hints as it flirted with insecurity, or gave him little signs of pride — the happy and personal victory that was her cider, the wish to be challenging.

Lowered eyes and faking that I wasn’t there for you, but I already was. Immediately.

And then she made a small retreat into hurts, or the threat of hurts, their memory, and into some variety of fear. He’d shivered with a vast and irrational compulsion to disclose and remove every wound for her.

Sweet you.

Now and then she had the expression of someone preserved in an untouched space, of dispassionate observation. Her skin was pale as paper and not especially clean and clearly the cider was there to help her up out of the night before, to remove a disreputable pain, but there was so, so much strange purity there, too. He would come to define this sanctity and distance as her principal characteristics. That morning they simply caught him, along with the rest. She was twenty-two — not genuinely young — but the grace of childhood hadn’t faded on her.

Like all the proper ones — the real alcoholics, before they blow — she had this weird perfection, was flawless because of her flaws and made them a beauty.

She was angelic.

Stupid word.

My angel.

Shining with each of the obvious violations.

She was self-inflicted.

He had known how catastrophic she would be, a coma patient could have realised that Emily was dangerous. He hadn’t been deterred.

Quite the reverse.

The first thing she’d said to him was ‘Perv’. But she’d made it sound affectionate — warm and for him in the empty carriage — and they’d stayed where they were, discarded any prior plans and ridden out to the terminals at Heathrow — not particularly speaking, only being with each other, rocking onwards inside the shudders of the carriage. The seats around them gently silted up with voyagers and their unwieldy bags and then mostly emptied as people Mark felt were entirely unnecessary left for exciting, or happy, or business-related destinations. By Turnham Green she’d come to him, switched places and sat at his side.

On their way back into town — the line had returned them, as if it approved of Mark’s intentions — he’d taken her hand, completely unsure of whether she’d consent. He hadn’t a clue how to play her.

She stole my game.

But by Covent Garden he’d risked standing and leading her out and away through the station and up to the fast-breathing world.

There I was with Emily and the sky not the same as it had been and the structure of myself softly altering and rampaging.

He’d found them a fairly quiet bar where he drank cider with her — he detested cider — so their mouths would taste the same.

I knew wherever she lived would be appalling and indiscreet, so I picked her a hotel.

Without bags, unwieldy or otherwise, I got to enjoy an amount of lying at the check-in desk. They sold me a pair of toothbrushes to replace the ones we hadn’t lost in a spurious suitcase that hadn’t been misdirected to Tenerife. I held both the brushes together in one hand, made sure they touched as we strolled to the lift.

All concerned were under no illusions about what we were going to do.

She didn’t seem to mind and didn’t seem not to.

Three weeks after my fortieth birthday and I got myself a twenty-two-year-old.

Or she got me.

Beyond the fantasy luggage, I didn’t lie about anything else when I was with her. I made it a rule from then on. I told her about Pauline. I told her I’d have to leave way before the morning. I told her about my habits. I told her about me.

It was a first.

Nothing changed.

Nothing was absolutely changed.

Almost immediately, his enthusiasm for the others dissipated. He had a handful of repeat offenders, but he simply didn’t ring them any more and, as a consequence, they drifted. He’d been a man who was mainly attracted to passing trade and he let it pass.

He had Emily.

It was a devotion of sorts.

There were slippery, sick days when she didn’t answer his calls. She never explained why. He decided to assume the problem was related to technical issues and bought her a new phone. It was pink, which made it a joke, but he also meant it very much and didn’t want her to lose it — hence the ghastly colour. Before he handed it over, he’d stood in the shop and nestled the thing beside his cheek.

Hello. You’ll be here and my voice in your hands.

But mainly she was quite reliable and willing to meet him at various hotels near Euston, or King’s Cross — his choice — suitably anonymous and seedy establishments.

Perhaps the only thing that limited how often they could be together was his ability to hide the cost of this or that dog-eared double room.

Perhaps he believed he would be lost if he saw her too frequently.

Because she was wholly willing. She gave him the purgatory of that.

Her acceptance — unrelenting acceptance — put a terror in his blood, a type of recurring vertigo. Whatever he requested, she would do: she would dress as he dictated, with barely a hesitation. She would be naked — he was very predictable — beneath her coat and visit bars with him in Loughborough Junction, Ealing, Hampton, places where he wouldn’t be known.

Hand slipped between her buttons in a cab coming back from Croydon and what I found, what I found, the deep sweet, my best girl’s ache.

Laughing in another hotel lift, on the rise, not being what you’d call subtle.

He explored her with harsh appetites for which he blamed her and also thanked her and also blamed her, helplessly punishing and offering. He possessed each access to her, tired her and she allowed him. He tied her up and took advantage, bought a dedicated camera for recording the indignities and marvels, her splendours.

For several months he stripped and beat her on each of their nights and she made no objection, made no sound. He didn’t intend to hurt her, but spanking was insufficient, so the shameful slap of his belt carried, no doubt, into neighbouring rooms, as did his own cries, his attempts to destroy her silence.

Which was the last straw.

In the end, her acquiescence broke his ingenuity.

Emily made a new nothing. She made it permanent.

He didn’t want to hit her, he simply couldn’t shake his desperation to leave her marked. Anyone else who undressed her afterwards would find the parallel bruises he had made, not extreme, but unmistakable. Because apparently he had the right. And, without him, she’d remain his statement — not of ownership, he promised her, but of love. He would bite her for similar reasons and hate that he had to and hate who he was.

‘Is there anyone? Emily?’

‘No.’

‘Look at me, though. Look at me and tell me there’s no one else.’

‘There’s no one else.’

‘Call me darling.’

‘Darling.’

And that distance in her eyes where she was unreachable and at her loveliest.

I knew there wasn’t anybody else, there wasn’t honestly even me.

‘You could say. . If you would just say, Emily. It would be all right and I wouldn’t be angry. I would just want you to tell me. Because I love you. Emily? You do know that, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I love you more than anything, and you’re my real wife and you have to know that. You’re the one that counts.’

Because she never mentioned love he dropped into harder and harder declarations until he couldn’t bear to hear himself, would nuzzle between her breasts and try to be deafened by her heartbeat as it pounced beneath his ear.

‘Darling Mark.’ The way a child would say it, or someone from another country, testing if they could.

‘Darling Emily. Thank you. Darling Emily.’

And when everything else was exhausted, he had to be alone with her and opened. ‘I would marry you if you asked. I would try and we could do that. We could. If you wanted. It would be complicated, but if you wanted.’

Although their initial excursions to bars delighted him, he learned he should steer her away from too much booze. Uncontrolled drinking made her bleak. Eventually he limited their rendezvous to the hotels, for her benefit. He did his best to care about her in that way and worried if she came to him unsteady or with her skin under that heavy sheen of previous alcohol. On evenings when she was too out of it, he kissed and held her and no more and was glad to feel her dreams shift in his arms. ‘Sweetheart, I have to go now, will you be okay? Are you okay? You should sleep. Keep asleep.’

I wanted to cure her.

I did right by her, almost constantly.

Only that one night when I let myself down. I fell.

I was closing the door, but I wanted to look at her, a parting glance: naked sprawl of my girl across our evidence, the disarray of a cheap fawn coverlet and dull white sheets, her bared feet towards me, plump. She was sleeping it off. She was sleeping me off.

‘Night-night, sweetheart.’ When I’d kissed her forehead and each closed eye, she’d tasted only pure.

This couple had walked along the corridor at my back and I’d been so absorbed that I hadn’t noticed.

And then I did.

And the three of us stood and I knew we were each one of us studying Emily.

I kept the door open — not for terribly long, a breath, a large instant — but I did give that much of her away. And it made me glad. I wanted them to understand that I could touch this angel and she’d got me.

She never knew and it didn’t harm her, and then I locked her up safe and the couple moved on.

She was mine, proved mine.

Emily.

He would drive Pauline about — short trips — dance with her or face her at unamusing parties, nod while she talked in supermarket queues, lean near her at the kitchen sink while she washed the dishes and he dried — he did his best to be compliantly domestic when he could — and he would be tight in a fury of needing Emily.

Mine.

Unlike his previous lovers, Emily made him have increasingly emotional sex with his wife. He would weep against Pauline’s neatly measured breathing and then have to agree to let her comfort him. His wife as a relief from the truth of fidelity — it was absurd.

Like staying in a railway station with no trains that we can catch.

Am I displaying hope or idiocy?

Are we? Or are we pretending this is acceptable, because we’re in company?

In it together.

A problem shared is not a problem, it’s a community.

And so forth.

We can’t claim it wasn’t more than possible to foresee — our likely future.

The fate of our nation.

And so forth.

I saw it. I stared at it, sort of, not for terribly long, a breath, a large instant.

Although I suspect my real focus was elsewhere. That’s likely.

I wasn’t alone in ignoring multiple warnings.

Even about trains.

As a student, he had decided he should seem to take an interest in the wider life. It enriched his social circle.

More girls.

His drive to be committedly well informed meant he’d attended a lecture by some playwright.

Face like a punched scatter cushion and a scholarship boy’s accent.

A laughably earnest audience had squeezed into the studio theatre at the Barbican Centre and been subjected to the usual liberal/left stuff — here we are in 1984 and it’s ever so much worse than the novel. Smug. The playwright cared. No one could match his extravagant caring, that was plain, and no one else had noticed and resisted the loss of their country’s virtue with quite his intellectual elan.

His thesis was okay, though — quite elegant, if repetitive. Probably rehashed it for The Guardian. That’s the way to make money: get paid for saying the same thing, over and over again.

Sorrysorrysorrysorry.

But I’m the one who pays for that.

The playwright had made frequent and self-consciously lyrical returns to the break-up and sale of the nationalised railways. Passengers were no longer passengers, they were being redefined as customers. Customers were happy when they bought something, in this case a ticket. Passengers wanted to travel, have politically and economically significant mobility, but instead would have to settle for pieces of thin card and lots of waiting. Dissatisfaction was being rendered inarticulate by a maliciously transformed vocabulary.

Mark had appropriated the idea and used it in arguments whenever he could.

More girls meant I had to find more ways to impress them. Until I could attempt the obvious.

Probably why the playwright was pimping himself onstage.

Both of us aiming to sound insightful and socially engaged.

Which I also aspired to for real.

I was going to be that kind of journalist.

I can’t dismiss all my ambitions as just screwing and manoeuvres.

I do like to please people, though. And I’m good at screwing and manoeuvres and that pleases lots of people. Readers don’t like insight, engagement, cleverness or any other brands of superiority. They want to feel better and wiser than what they’re reading, but they’re thick and have low self-esteem, so the bottom of the barrel is where I have to scrape to meet their needs. I worked that out early.

I got a job and made the readers happy.

Making readers happy is not a bad thing.

Readers like screwing and manoeuvres.

Pauline’s friends in the ghastly Welsh pub, they were readers. They wanted Westminster gossip — no politics, only the hissy fits and sex. And they were delighted to hear that a minor TV star got guilty with a hooker, racked by the thought of his wife and kids, and please could he limit his one-night stand to a cuddle and then a kip? Innocent. Except the hooker wakes up in the small hours and the star is ejaculating across her back.

I can’t tell you his name.

Well, okay then. But don’t pass it on.

They adored that. It brought the house down. Pauline something close to proud of me.

She has zero interest in politics. Another reason to marry her. No use washing it out of your work when you get it in your face at home.

I have opinions, of course. I’m not a vacuum. And to find what the readers want, I do have to keep informed. I’m not unable to see that citizens have been recast as customers in every sense and must be content with the act of spending and the blessed receipt of nothing.

Pretty nothing.

Passing trains.

The wider life in which it was at one time sexy to take an interest is not going well.

But I can’t be expected to care. And I shouldn’t attempt to make other people care, it just screws them up. It’s too late for whining and discontent.

And noticing the ruin of others is the quickest way to ruin yourself.

‘Please could you?’

It surprised him that Emily didn’t also embrace neutrality.

It was weird that the matter could even arise.

‘Please. You could go with me.’

Because he didn’t talk politics with Emily, either.

I didn’t want to fake things with her, impersonate a guy who’s concerned about refugees, famines. She was smart, had a mind, and I never thought otherwise, but we didn’t bother with everyday conversations. We were special. We were busy and beautiful and it would have been an ugly waste of time to disturb each other with crap from the front pages.

We gave each other peace.

So that evening with her was a shock. ‘You want me to go on a demo?’ A small, nice shock.

‘You could. Mark. With me. You could.’

Demonstrations were fashionable amongst her contemporaries — they had been when he was her age, because they looked good and passed the time — but she had a passion here, too. She’d given matters thought.

Passions and thought in my absence.

Unreasonable to be jealous.

But I was.

But I was in glory as well, bathed in the joys of her having revealed herself in this regard, of her having asked for something, stated opinions.

‘It’s wrong — things are all wrong. Once somebody’s got more than they need, they don’t need more.’ Sincerity thrumming on her skin so noticeably that he wanted to lick her.

In fact, he did lick her. ‘That’s a slogan, though, Sweets. And things are complicated.’

‘People say things are complicated when they don’t want them to change. No one says heart surgery is complicated, so they won’t try it — people want to be alive, so they do it.’

‘I think they do say heart surgery’s complicated.’ Her expression hardened against him when he mentioned this — even though he was smiling. ‘Or maybe not now. Maybe it’s easy now. No, I know what you mean and that’s good. It’s a good metaphor. I’ll use it.’ He leaned himself towards the edge of offending her, bruising her principles, so that he could really feel how wonderful it was that she had them and how wonderful it was that she hadn’t completely thrown away her degree. She’d told him that much.

Five or six weeks after we’d started and she’d wanted to be more to me maybe, to have a little past.

‘In sociology?’

After a deep kind of night.

‘Yeah.’

Her eyes had been very open and very concerned with his own.

‘Wow! Darling.’

‘Like you’re surprised I got one.’

‘Like I’m — no — not surprised. .’ At which point he found himself losing any explanation that possibly her scuffle and drop between service jobs and periods of unemployment had struck him as unsatisfactory, in the sense of being not good enough for her. And it seemed even more a form of self-harm in the light of her having an, albeit laughable, degree. Her mum was a cleaner, her dad was shady and elsewhere, but she had a degree, the usual debt — more than the usual and something else to do with a grandparent’s savings — and a degree. . and a much older boyfriend who didn’t want to sound at all paternal. Mark didn’t want to suggest that her being with him was another indication of a reckless and damaging life.

‘You want me to be different.’

‘No, darling. No. My best girl’s my best girl. Truly. You have to do what you want.’ And he’d kissed her to break the conversation, kept on until they were silence and motion and nothing.

And I held her once we were done for so long that it appalled me.

Her later fixation about the demo had allowed Mark to hear himself repeat, ‘You have to do what you want.’ Which was true for everyone. ‘And I have to do what you want and that’s what I want. If you ask — and I like when you ask and you never have asked before, really — then I have to do what you want.’

She gave me a date and a time — an inconvenient date and time — when she would need me.

A breakthrough.

She was breaking through.

It was mainly gorgeous.

And she’d placed a minute kiss against his ear. ‘I would like it.’ Sober and giggly and energetic. ‘I would.’ This was Emily showing herself as a credible companion away from the bedrooms. She’d made a promise of ways they might be and he’d accepted it.

I think we both knew that.

‘But a demo, baby. . Not a concert, or an opera, or the movies, or the zoo.’ It occurred to him that he could only guess at the majority of her pastimes. She remained largely closed to him. ‘Or a club with naked ladies dancing that I would enjoy, but not as much as I enjoy you. .’ Kissing her in return across her stomach. ‘I haven’t been on a demo since I was a student and that, as we’re allowed to mention, is a long, long time ago.’

Emily had shaken her head like a woman who loved him and only couldn’t say so because it was too much. ‘Not that long. And if you’ve done it once, then you’ll know how.’

It made sense — drunks run their lives backwards: from unintimate intimacy to revealing commonplaces.

He’d had no intention of denying her, but he knew she would like if he teased her. ‘Say “Go with me, darling Mark, and make love to me first for at least an hour.” Go on.’

‘Then you’d have to stay the night.’ She offered this as if it were an ordinary sentence and didn’t scald his breath and then remove it. ‘Because we’d have to set out early. Please, darling Mark.’

Staying the Friday night with her and waking and getting the Saturday morning, too.

If I allowed it, then I’d want it again.

She would start to show on me and I’d like that and let it happen.

Sweet Emily.

I belong to sweet Emily. She’s the girl who has broken me. Wide open. You could park your car inside my chest.

Watching her light while she rolls out this story about being kettled and the cops pressing in and it’s turning a bit lairy before these kids — she called them kids — start up singing some daft protest song — I can’t recall any protest song that wasn’t a dirge — and the crowd laughs and the cordon pauses and it’s clearly this golden moment for her, proof of something. Hope.

And I wanted her to hope.

My generation is at fault — not active like the one before it, not active like the one behind — and she tasks me with this slightly.

I don’t believe that direct action makes any difference, but she did and it was lovely that she did.

Her expectations of happy change were as sexy as fuck.

Emily had kept on, more enthused than he’d known her, while he bled joy and horror invisibly into the sheets. ‘Please, darling Mark, and make love to me first. Yeah? Have I asked like you’d like?’ She was becoming a woman he’d want in her entirety.

He could have taken out a full-page ad. A Sunday feature. ‘Yes, well, okay. Okay.’ Her lips parted for him, still sticky with the darling that was him translated. His tongue tried to taste the word and failed, because it was given and gone. ‘You’re a funny girl, bad girl. I’ll have to plot like anything, so we can get away with that. Maybe Kempson will let me do colour on the anarchists, or the school kids, or something — the reality of modern unrest. He’ll tell me what reality he wants: brave and sexy sixth-formers with compassion for the urban poor, or home-grown barbarians who want to piss on war graves and buy anthrax. . Both. .’

And this rushing, magnificent lurch in his thinking when he saw her frown, fully display her disapproval. At last.

Because opposition is a proper part of love.

Or maybe I was a pervert: finding a new source of desire because there was finally something I’d done that offended her. And, in recompense, I could utterly apologise, abase myself.

He’d made a point of kneeling, pressing his mouth to her ankles, her feet. Kissing for forgiveness, all bared skin and making himself plain. ‘I don’t write what I believe, Emily. I should. Probably. But I’m not sure about that.’ His words and good intentions at the soles of her feet, plump, grubby. He was being devoted. ‘Newspapers aren’t something that people take seriously, not now. They’re dying.’ And hauling this, mining it from his bones, ‘I think you could teach me to branch out, though.’ Nothing but sincere. ‘Maybe I could write a book.’

Nothing, but sincere.

A tingle racing the length of me when she accepted this and grinned.

Funny girl, bad girl, best girl.

‘And I’ll have to be briefed by the Met — midnight updates, I’d imagine — midnight updates, I’ll tell Pauline — so I wouldn’t want to head home and trouble her when I’d only clatter off again at dawn. . That would do me in, so I’d want to avoid it. I would have to stay in town. On site. What if something happened in advance of the main event and I wasn’t there?’

‘You’re good at lying.’

‘Ssssh. Not with you. Not ever with you.’ This overtaking him for a while, driving him back into bed. Into Emily. Into his love.

Then he let her be and managed, ‘I’ll get us a nice hotel for it. In Mayfair. Would you like that?’

She had changed and so could I.

‘I don’t mind.’

‘A big bath. We’ve never been in a bath together.’

‘I don’t mind.’ But her eyes on him and apparently glad about it.

‘And, baby. . If neither of us. . We could meet early and have a room-service dinner and we could be just us and we’d make lots of love and I’d be as nice as nice to you and you’d be as nice as nice to me and, if you could, would you be able to not drink? Baby? Could you? For me? I’d like if you could be there for me. If I was very nice? I don’t insist and it’s not a problem. . Emily? Could you be my sober girl? And we’ll talk about what you could wear and. . Could you not drink?’

As he finished, her eyes were cooler. ‘I could do that.’

She did sometimes lie to me.

Not that it wasn’t his failure as much as hers.

We had to have wine with our dinner, we are grown-ups, that’s what grown-ups do.

And we were grown-ups being as nice as nice, if not nicer.

While he took calls and checked his email she’d hold him. Occasionally she’d sip her wine.

One bottle between us and that was it. Extremely moderate.

Our perfect night.

We didn’t sleep.

Any rush about joining the protesters evaporated in a long breakfast with crumbs on the pillows and their skin. They didn’t get outside until noon and Mark’s concentration was shredded with his body’s protest, its missing her, yowling because he wasn’t naked and clasping her wants.

‘Shit, I’m not. . Do you mind if we back out a bit and get a long bead on it? We will join the parade in a while, but I’ve got to get my head straight. Okay, Sweet?’

Piccadilly was thick with marchers when Mark gazed beyond the hotel doors. He was slightly puzzled and slightly moved by the old-school brass bands passing, the embroidered union banners that kicked things back into the 1930s, or the 1970s — those little brackets between which self-respect had probably become a more widespread delusion. It was all making the hotel doormen nervous.

It wasn’t a great day to be wearing a top hat.

And ‘Not a Good Day to Wear a Top Hat’ did indeed appear as my catchline. Set the style — observant, amused, keen not to overestimate the significance of events.

Mark coaxed Emily along to Shaftesbury Avenue and scolded his mind into focus. He was fine by the time a dark knot of angsty figures ran and yelled down the pre-emptively cleared road.

If I was a serious anarchist bent on mayhem I wouldn’t dress in black and — oh, grow up — wave a fucking flag.

Police, also dressed in black, moved in sharply around the outskirts of the group and then closed. Emily seemed fascinated by the flag-waver, a skinny twenty-something with a Jesus face.

He wanted somebody to beat him up. Is that what she wanted in a man, that he should suffer? Would she have wanted to beat me?

I would have let her.

I would have begged.

The Met tested their day’s waters, locking into solid ranks. Mark found the whole situation both weirdly childish and horribly serious. It worried him.

I knew the day was going to turn at some point and eat us up. It was going to be bad.

He clasped Emily’s arm like an indulgent father squiring his activist daughter.

The solitary time I did that, played that card.

And the police cordon parted, let them through, then dissolved altogether with a carefully presented unconcern. The anarchists bolted off wildly as they might have been expected to. Mark thought their triumph unwise. He kissed the top of Emily’s head to cheer himself. Her hair smelled of hotel shampoo.

And of nothing.

‘Can we now?’ Emily pliant — even daughterly — letting him take charge in a whole new way. ‘Can we march?’

My hand around hers, around what was given completely.

She looked at me.

Someone shouting through a loudhailer, and mild chaos waiting for us to join it, but we were a couple. We were really there.

‘Yes, babe.’ And Mark anxious that he shouldn’t cry and also uneasy and too ragged to identify exactly why. ‘We’ll do it now and we’ll get all afternoon together.’ He slipped his hold to her waist and squeezed. ‘But I’ll have to make notes and be. . and then I’ll need to work, flat-out work. I should have sketched some bits down yesterday. It’s okay, though. And I’m glad I’m here, and I’m glad I’m with you and it’s a good idea.’

Stepping out from the pavement and into the road — that moment — I’d forgotten what it was like.

Hello.

This is me in the world that’s different.

This is everyone else.

And this is us.

We are us.

Real.

It wasn’t hard to lean against her and be carried, to be shaken loose into enjoying it. She’d point out good bits: a kid in a pushchair with his own hand-made sign, a bunch of blokes in amazing hats playing concertinas. He did the same: the Writers’ Guild placards — typographical humour — an old lady near the entrance to Hyde Park who was holding this kind of essay up under her chin; it was unfurled to the ground, as long as herself. It said what her name was and that she was from Tower Hamlets and not happy with the government — who was happy with government? — and Mark didn’t read the rest.

Mark had liked the energy: the cardboard tank that pumped out reggae, and he and Emily heading on while all the rage burned by them and insisted on producing a variety of elation and music and

Muzzy fellow-feeling. A consoling fantasy of change.

They all wanted an afternoon stroll to have built Utopia by Monday.

Emily pulled him into the park and there it was as he’d expected — the forward momentum pooled and sank, there was litter and dirty clothes and Quakers eating shredded vegetables out of Tupperware containers. He was no longer uplifted and it was chilly and he’d have been wiser to keep their room on for another day and look out of the fucking window — cosy and with Emily — take a nap and then knock out the story as required.

And he was exhausted suddenly, overwhelmed and achy, and then he went wrong.

I made her unhappy.

She wanted me to sit on the grubby turf with her, take in the scene, listen while the converted doggedly tried to convert the converted.

But I’d done that before.

When I was her age.

I’d already disappointed myself back then and didn’t intend to again.

So I disappointed her.

Worse.

He’d been — to a minor degree — short with her. She was laughing and lying on the grass, wriggling like a puppy, playing a game that he didn’t have time for.

‘Emily! I have to work. For God’s sake!’

I’d never shouted at her.

Older man in a bourgeois overcoat, screaming at a sweet, sweet girl, killing her smile.

I couldn’t seem to bring it back right after that and I tried.

I did.

‘No, Emily, sweetheart. I’m all messed up. I messed up. I promise. Forget what I said. I’ll stay here. If you want me to. I’ll do whatever you want.’ His clumsy, pathetic gestures wagging and losing themselves in the air ahead of him. ‘Baby. I’m sorry. I really am. .’ He wanted to cry for her, but couldn’t and knew his face was somehow outwith his control and frightening to her. She fluttered to her feet, harm apparent everywhere, and started out for the road without him. He didn’t try to touch her in case he did more harm.

And the brothers and sisters might have pitched in and stopped me if I laid hands on her — nothing more judgemental than a revolutionary. They despised me.

But I beat them to it.

‘Let me, please let me be with you.’ Remembering he’d said this as he slipped the key card into the lock of their first hotel room. It was a revelation — how abject he had sounded. ‘Emily.’ Not as abject as today. ‘Christ, please.’ The fracture in his voice presumably what slowed her and let him reach and hold and find and kiss her better, surely better.

The comrades approved. Solidarity giving rise to love.

Love.

Which was what you would battle to save, and Mark didn’t love the unfriendly world, or impractical ideas, or people, he loved Emily. He had marched for Emily and she had made it beautiful for him and he should let go and appreciate that.

And I did. I partly marched again and partly strolled with her back west until the demonstrators coalesced into a stolid mass: rumours and shifting and then cheers.

I stood with everybody else, I stood with Emily — got to keep Emily — got to keep Emily safe — and I watched a bunch of arseholes climbing the front of Fortnum’s and I cheered.

They were up there with coloured chalk for scrawling and a painted bed sheet for unfurling — more cheers — and I wouldn’t have put it past them to stage some agitprop on the shop’s canopy instead of simply swanning about while the staff peered out through the windows, amused and curious.

There were rumours — correct — of others storming the entrance.

Storming a tea room.

A — rumours again — non-tax-paying tea room.

Barging inside a posh tea room while badly dressed and singing some songs. Anarchists in the queen’s grocer’s.

A redefinition of storming.

Emily had cheered, too, and made Mark call out louder until he could feel her voice in his chest. He raised his hands above the press of bodies as apparently most people had — taking pictures full of raised hands holding cameras to take pictures — and a kid was writing TORY SCUM on Fortnum’s wall in what was pretty close to the store’s famous shade of green.

I did wonder if that was intentional.

Eventually Mark slipped round to Emily’s back, embraced her until she was snug and they fitted and were in triumph.

More cheers.

Mark preferred not to wonder why the Met hadn’t closed and confined the whole pack of them. The marchers were effectively kettling themselves. The police he’d seen along the route had been chatting in gaggles, lounging, steadily denying they could exert any kind of control. A paint-cannon had fired in the distance throughout the morning — a low threat of sound — windows had been broken, landmarks were defaced with no reaction.

Mark tried not to guess that night would fall on indulged transgression with no good marching comrades left between it and a hard reassertion of the law.

It would be dreadful.

He wanted to bring Emily into the office and write with her there — she’d be out of harm’s way and close and fine — but he wouldn’t have got down a word with her about, he had to be realistic. And every passing bastard would have wanted to hear who she was.

I wasn’t ashamed of her.

She’d checked in the day before looking like an upmarket secretary — I’d thought that would play well — but when she left the hotel in the morning she was dressed for the demo: fatigues and boots and an ethnic hat — crazy tweed jacket. But it only seemed crazy because it was so big — because it was mine.

Beautiful baby.

On both days.

Sexy.

She’d have knocked the office over and I’d have adored it.

In theory.

‘Baby, sweet baby, though. I’ve gotta go.’ His syllables against her neck, being sweet as he could to match her sweet. ‘Come with me as far as the Underground. Would you?’

‘Don’t we have some more time?’

‘I can’t. Work.’

‘I could sit in your office while you work.’ She was able to say this, because she’d been close enough to hear his thinking. Naturally.

He’d kept his plans vague and persuaded her to edge herself free with him and to pick their way, slower and slower, until they found an operational and fairly uncrowded Tube station. Covent Garden again. ‘I don’t want to leave you, sweetheart. Emily. I don’t want to. You’re my wife. It’s killing me.’ At the top of the stairs, he’d ricocheted through his goodbye. ‘I’ll make it better. Soon. I’ll make us all better, just fine.’ He’d spoken unwisely.

Holding her head — everything she thought of me — between my hands.

The touch spoke in my palms for hours afterwards. She was there, she was sheathed between the tendons. It made me clumsy. For five- and ten-minute spaces I couldn’t type.

By the time he’d hit his deadline, the predictable spasms of violence were breaking out on the streets — resistance against resistance — and he could end the article with a riff on youthful altruism versus betrayal, anger and nihilism and the British tradition of blahblahblah. He’d let the newsier pieces do the rest.

The risk of Emily reading it was low, but I could still feel her being somewhere and frowning at me.

It was a grim trip home — cab driver full of aggressive certainties. Then he’d slipped in beside Pauline after an arduous shower. She mumbled and turned, became still.

He’d wanted to sleep for a decade.

Or just until Monday and then call Emily and work out how to do this again.

He’d left his clothes in a heap by the bedside cabinet.

In my dreams, I unreeled the day, had it again. I sat folded behind Emily in the bath and washing her hair. I made sure the soap didn’t get in her eyes.

When Pauline rattled him awake, he struggled to surface.

And I was angry.

I’d been awake for thirty-six hours, high-profile piece to finish under the gun, on my feet, on my back, on my mind — too much for a Burroughs boy.

I was very angry.

And having this knowledge that sometimes a sweet thing can be exhausting.

I was outraged.

Pauline had waited until Mark had opened his eyes.

Then she’d hit him.

A slap.

Just one.

Passed me my phone, which I hadn’t turned off to preserve my privacy and hadn’t tucked away.

I’d been too tired to be sensible.

Only that once.

Which was enough.

More than enough.

As he took the phone from Pauline, he’d understood who would be calling.

Emily.

Very drunk.

Emily.

Very explicit and drunk.

Emily.

In hospital for reasons she couldn’t make plain.

Emily.

She couldn’t make much plain.

Emily.

She told me she loved me.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

She told me she wanted to be my wife now.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

I couldn’t go and get her.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

I couldn’t do what she wanted.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

I couldn’t explain.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

She ought to have understood.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

I’d asked her to be my sober girl and she’d let me down.

Emily.

She’d let me down very badly.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

It was funny the way he could hear it all more clearly now — remembering on a hopeless railway platform and too late.

It was not funny that Pauline could always tell when he remembered. Endlessly well attuned to his impulses and reflections and perpetually suspicious, Pauline was his daily penalty to pay. If he thought of Emily, just the dab and graze of Emily’s name, then Pauline could tell.

And I want her to tell. I show her.

Scars of ownership.

They make you.

His wife was currently facing him, her expression suggesting that he was an unhealthy animal and ought to be destroyed.

A view with which I must concur.

Mark felt the drum of an oncoming locomotive, before he could hear it. The sensation was not unlike excitement.

Excitement being something without which I have to do.

There were conditions he had to meet if he wanted to stay with Pauline.

Which I’d rather not, but I seem to have no choice.

I can’t think of a choice.

On the night of Emily’s call — the early morning of Emily’s call — he’d fled to a hotel — King’s Cross, but nowhere familiar. Pauline had kept his phone.

But he could still have rung Emily back, he could have.

He didn’t, though.

It was impossible.

Each time he tried to, he couldn’t ring her, and each time it became harder to try.

And if Emily had called his phone again, Pauline never said so.

Well, she wouldn’t.

There was nothing left.

And he hadn’t wanted one wife and he’d never wanted two. Only love — he’d wanted love, needed love, would have died for love. But Emily hadn’t wanted that.

She wanted me, but not my love — that was the wisest opinion to cultivate.

So I went back to my presentable London postcode, loft extension, male Polish au pair with a marine-biology degree. And Pauline bought me a new phone — not pink — and she checks the numbers on it now and then, the way she checks my diary, and she calls the office and checks me. Her new career is keeping tabs on me and I can have no women and no girls and I can’t flirt at social gatherings and everyone knows I was caught and maybe most of the details, I don’t enquire, and everyone knows I am finished and done with, because they can see it, and I ought to be okay with this because I deserve it, but I am not and I ought to find satisfaction in the fact that I’m so blatantly chained and watched, because it marks me as a man who was prodigious and is a public demonstration of my prior capacities, but I’m not okay.

I’m not happy.

Mark smiled at Pauline, kept it insincere, because she suspects him when he seems to have a meaning.

But I do sometimes, not for terribly long, a breath, a large instant, believe that I am being hurt for Emily, suffering and being punished for Emily and that she would want it.

It makes us close.

Pauline had cleansed his address book, wiped dozens of numbers.

But I know Emily’s number by heart. I gave it to her.

The air sealed itself as the train receded, burned by and left them like a spasm of rage.

One day I will call her.

I will.

Hello.

This is me, this nothing.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.