A Spot Of Bother

He went to the bathroom, relieved himself, staggered back to the bedroom and collapsed onto the eiderdown. His brain felt emptier than it had done at any time in the past few months. The thought occurred to him that he could become an alcoholic. And at this precise moment it seemed a not unreasonable solution to his problems.

Then he passed into unconsciousness.

In the middle of the night he found himself making a final descent into an airport. Heathrow, possibly. Or Charles de Gaulle. He was in a plane which also happened to be a helicopter and the woman sitting next to him was carrying a lapdog, which didn’t happen on real planes.

He felt oddly serene. Indeed, the plane, or helicopter, felt like the arms of that bigger, stronger person he had previously imagined carrying him to bed.

He looked out of the window into the darkness. The view was breathtakingly beautiful, the traffic far below pulsing like lava in the cracks of a great black stone.

There was music playing, either in his head or on the complimentary headphones, something lush and orchestral and infinitely calming. And the check pattern on the woven cover of the seat in front of him was rippling slightly, like little waves bouncing off a harbor wall and intersecting with themselves to create a shimmering grid of wet sunlight.

Then the plane, or helicopter, hit something.

There was an almighty bang and everything moved several yards sideways. This was followed by a second of stunned silence. Then the plane veered downward to the right and people were screaming and the air was suddenly full of food and hand luggage and the little dog was airborne, like a balloon on the end of its lead.

George tried desperately to unclip his seat belt but his fingers were mitteny and numb and refused to obey his commands and he was looking through the tiny Plexiglas porthole at burning aviation fuel and thick black smoke pouring from the underside of the right-hand wing.

Suddenly the roof of the plane was ripped back like the lid of a sardine tin and a monstrous wind began cartwheeling small children and cabin crew out into the dark.

A drinks trolley danced down the aisle and tore the head off a man sitting to George’s left.

Then he wasn’t in the plane anymore. He was sledging down Lunn Hill with Brian. He was helping Jean extract the heel of her shoe from a grating in Florence. He was standing up in Mrs. Amery’s class trying to spell parallel over and over again with everyone laughing at him.

Then he was back inside the plane, and simultaneously standing in his own back garden in the middle of the night, looking up at the bedroom and wondering what was causing that odd grunting noise coming from inside, when the exterior of the house was lit up by a fierce orange light, and he turned and saw it coming in, like a tidal wave of wreckage, but airborne, lit by the gasoline meteor at its center.

The ground shook. A shopfront was spattered with gallons of hot black plastic. A reclining seat bounced down a residential street on a peacock’s tail of white sparks. A human hand fell onto a roundabout in a children’s playground.

The nose cone plowed into a multistory car park and George woke to find himself in sodden clothing on a large bed in a room he did not recognize with the taste of sick in his mouth, a pain like a metal spike driven into the side of his head and the knowledge that the dream had not ended, that he was still out there, falling through the night, desperate for that final impact which would put the lights out for good.

43

Jean was woken at nine by the phone ringing. She leapt out of bed, ran into the hallway and picked it up.

“Jean. It’s me.” It was David.

“I’m sorry, I thought it was…”

“Are you all right?” asked David.

So she told him about George.

“I shouldn’t worry,” said David. “He’s managed a business. If he needs help he knows how to get it. If he hasn’t got in touch it’s because he doesn’t want to worry you. There’s bound to be some perfectly rational explanation.”

She realized that she should have rung David last night.

“Besides,” he said, “you’re on your own in the house. After Mina and I separated I didn’t sleep properly for a month. Look. Why don’t you stay here on Sunday night? Let me look after you.”

“Thank you. I’d like that very much.”

“You don’t need to thank me,” said David. “For anything.”

44

When Jamie got home from work the following day, his singleness seemed finally like an opportunity rather than a challenge. He put some U2 on, turned up the volume, made a mug of sobering tea and ironed his trousers.

Trousers done, he went into the bathroom and showered, pausing after washing his hair for a quick wank, picturing a tall Canadian guy with veiny biceps and tiny hairs tapering to a blond V in the small of his back who wandered into the ski-lodge bathroom, dropped his fluffy white towel, stepped into the cubicle, bent down, took Jamie’s cock into his mouth and slipped a finger up his arse.

Falling asleep half an hour or so later, after reading an article about epilepsy in The Observer, he felt as if he were embarking on a new life.

45

Katie didn’t know quite what she felt.

Ray hadn’t come back. He was walking the streets, or sleeping on someone’s sofa. He was going to pitch up in the morning with a bunch of flowers or a box of shitty chocolates from a petrol station and she was going to have to give in because he looked all tortured. And she couldn’t find the words to say how much this was going to piss her off.

On the other hand she and Jacob did have the house to themselves.

They watched Ivor the Engine and read Winnie the Witch and found the flip cartoon Jamie had made on the corner of Jacob’s drawing pad, of a dog wagging its tail and doing a poo and the poo getting up and turning into a little man and running away. Jacob insisted they make one of their own and she managed to draw a little flip cartoon of a poorly structured dog in a high wind, three frames of which Jacob then colored in.

At bath time he kept his eyes closed for six whole seconds while she rinsed the shampoo from his hair, and they had a discussion about how big a skyscraper was, and the fact that it could still fit into the world even if the skyscraper was ten times as big because the world was truly massive and it wasn’t just the earth, it was the moon and the sun and the planets and the whole of space.

They had filled pasta and pesto for tea and Jacob said, “Are we still going to Barcelona?”

And Katie said, “Of course,” and it was only later, after Jacob had gone to bed, that she began to wonder. Was it true, what she’d said to Ray? Would she refuse to marry someone who treated her like that?

She’d lose the house. Jacob would lose another father. They’d have to move into some shabby little flat. Beans on white bread. Cutting work every time Jacob was ill. Arguing with Aidan to hang on to a job she hated. No car. No holidays.