The Boat House

THREE

About an hour later, he was saying, "You were telling me the truth, weren't you?"

They hadn't covered much in the way of mileage, mainly due to Pete's mistaken choice of motorway exit that had taken them way out on the wrong side of town before he'd been able to find a place where he could get off the road and turn around. So much for his ability to make it home without a map; even on roads that he was supposed to know, he was no better than a stranger. Motorway lighting was giving the entire night journey a sense of unreality; he wasn't even accustomed to that, any more. He and his passenger had talked about a number of things along the way, but the topic of her background wasn't one of them.

Perhaps that was it; the way that she'd said it and then said nothing more, while everything else about her seemed to indicate the kind of deep streak of honesty that resists analysis, but calls up certainty like a half awake bear from its cave.

I'm a Russian. I came here tonight on a stolen passport.

Could such things happen?

They could, and they did; sometimes in full colour on the six o'clock news, but never in a way that seemed to intersect with Pete's life in any meaningful sense. She wasn't particularly remarkable. Different, but not remarkable. She wasn't bad-looking, but you could lose her in a crowd without too much problem.

I think they caught the boy I was with, but I carried on.

Belief had been simmering in him for some time now, and it seemed that this was the moment that it had chosen to boil over.

They were off the motorway network and it was starting to get late, but Pete had a kind of instinct for seeking out the lowlife places that traded outside normal hours. The cafe was one of a row of old shops, and the parking area behind the row was a half-acre demolition site that had been bulldozed flat and which now served as rough and unlit standing for heavy lorries. The two of them had picked their way carefully over bricks and glass and half buried timbers. Some of the original street layout of the site was still visible, but only just. The extractor fans over the back yard of the cafe were working full-time, pumping out a steam that carried with it the scents of hot fat and bacon.

In the doorway, they stopped. And in response to his question she said, "You think these things don't happen?"

"Not to people I know."

And then she smiled faintly, as if it really didn't matter whether he believed her or not, because his belief or the lack of it could do nothing to alter the facts.

And she said, "Well, here's your first," and then they went on inside.

She was the only woman in the place, but no one seemed to worry. Few of the tables matched each other, and none of the chairs did; the floor was bare and the tablecloths were checkered plastic, and some driver with a deep reverence for Willie Nelson had spent all of his spare change at the jukebox. There were three pinball machines, and as Pete went over to place an order at the service counter she went over to take a look at them. The most garishly lit of the three was a game called Sun Runner, and when Pete joined her she was studying it. He put down some change, and showed her how to play. The pinball table was old, its glass split and some of its bulbs dead, probably edged out of some arcade by newer and flashier video games. He tried to see this ordinary, common place and this brokendown machine through her eyes. But he didn't know how.

He said, "What are you going to do?"

She shrugged, her eyes on the silver ball as it made its rounds of the table and ran up almost a thousand points in a frenzied dalliance with the bonus section. The lights flashed and the bells rang, and the silver ball made a quick exit down the left hand side of the layout where the flippers couldn't reach.

"Do you know anyone?" he persisted. "Have you got anywhere to go?"

Again, she didn't answer. She didn't have to.

"Any money?"

"More than seventy pounds."

"It won't last."

"I know. But I'm feeling lucky."

Her last ball shot around the table and dropped out of sight with a zero score.

Their order came up, and they moved across to a table in the window. A red neon sign hung against the glass, and its backglow was like the rays of a sunset. He hadn't had much of a chance to study her, not in the comparatively short time that they'd been on the road, but he'd started to catch up during the game and he carried on with it now. Even in the soft red light she seemed tired, a mechanism of some elegance and delicacy that was being pushed too far.

For a moment, he wondered what they'd make of her in the valley.

But then he let it go.

"You should go to the police," he told her.

Her reply was quick and emphatic. "No."

"They're the people to handle something like this."

"No police," she said.

She seemed genuinely scared of the very idea, and so he didn't press it. It was the first time that she'd shown even a hint of strong feeling, and it was like a powerful heat that made him back away. Whatever her experiences in that direction might have been, they clearly hadn't been good.

There was an awkward silence for a while, and Pete wondered if there was any way to repair the mood that he'd managed almost to destroy. He'd grown to like her company and, although he knew that he'd be losing it before the night was over, he didn't want to see it go with bad feeling. She rubbed at her eyes, and Pete could see how close to the edge she'd been driven. Something was holding her together, but he couldn't have said what.

Then he had an idea.

"A suggestion," he said.