slough of darkness so black and cold it clung to them like viscous liquid.
After a few minutes, Bob pulled up. He was at the wheel of an old white Volvo estate.
Nathan and Elise clambered on to the back seat, keeping low, and Bob pulled away with too much wheelspin. They passed through the gates, all three laughing.
'Now,' said Bob, at the wheel. 'We need somewhere dark'
Elise said, 'I know the place,' and put her hand on Nathan's thigh.
He kissed her.
Out of nowhere, he felt like he was having the best night of his life.
Elise directed Bob through the small town of Socombe, past some farmland, through a village called Sutton Down, then along a road that ran parallel with a managed forest - an oak woodland. She tapped Bob's shoulder.
'Turn left back there.'
'Back where?'
All he could see was trees. But he reversed until Elise told him to stop. Before them, the headlights showed a place where the entrance to a narrow lane had been occulted by the overgrowth. Bob executed a five-point turn to get the car down there - a tunnel of darkness with a hummocked asphalt surface, just wide enough for a single vehicle.
Soon they were swallowed by it, following the headlamps.
Nathan said, 'How do you know this place?'
'All the local kids know it. You know about it way before you get to come down here. It's like lovers' lane or something. In the summer, anyway.'
'Cool,' said Bob. 'So, you've been here before?'
'Once or twice.' She glanced at Nathan. 'Except the big kids, they tell the younger ones that, you know, it's haunted. By a lady in white.'
Bob grinned in the rear-view mirror. 'Is there a river close by?'
'There's kind of a stream. A brook or something.'
'There's always running water. Near haunted lanes. Supposedly haunted.'
'Why's that?'
'Who knows? Geothermic forces or whatever.'
Nathan said, 'Don't get him started.'
Bob pulled the car to the side of the road. Its nearside tyres were caked in leaf mould and humus. He turned on the CD player. Charlie Parker.
Nathan fished out the remaining cocaine. Bob turned on the interior light. They were bathed in its sickly, intimate glow. Nathan cut out some squat, fat lines on the CD case. He snorted first and passed the CD case to Elise. As she brought it to her nose, Bob and Nathan looked at her, then at each other. She passed the CD case to Bob, who propped it on the steering wheel.
Elise wiped at her nose. The action caused her T-shirt to lift above her navel. She'd left the overcoat back at the party.
Bob pressed himself deep into the driver's seat.
'Christ.'
He turned off the interior light. For a few seconds the darkness was absolute. A voice in the blackness, Elise said, 'I like nights like this. When you don't plan anything, but it all seems to happen.'
Bob swivelled in the driving seat, to face them. He said, 'Look. You two. I feel bad. I feel like I'm ruining the night for you - walking in on you. Y'know. The way I did.'
Elise made a slapping motion at him and said, 'No, your timing wasn't great.' Then she drawled his name in a bad American accent: Bahb.
Nathan tried to laugh, and Bob grinned, resting his big jaw on the headrest.
'So why don't you go ahead and finish what you started ?'
Elise slapped at him again. 'What are you like'
Bob met her eyes and held them.
'If it was possible, I'd go for a walk. But the lane is dark and cold and, I have to say, a bit creepy. And even if I were to go out there, you'd be so tense about me coming back at the wrong time, you wouldn't relax. But you might never see each other again. It seems such a shame. So listen. I'll sit back and close my eyes and I'll turn up the music. And you two can . . . you know.'
She laughed again, loud in the darkness, and said, 'You're sick.'
Elise looked at Nathan. Then she looked at Bob.
'You'd watch!
'I'll try not to.'
'You'll listen!
'Then keep the noise down.'
'I can't.
'Can't? Or won't? Are you having bourgeois reservations?'
She went to speak, but then she guffawed and slapped Bob's shoulder again. She turned to Nathan. 'Do you want to?'
'Do you ?'
'Doyou? Do you have a problem with it?'
'With what?'
'With Bob. Being here.'
'No.'
Suddenly nobody was smiling.
Elise took off her T-shirt.
'Bob, you're looking.'
'I'll stop in a moment.'
'You'd better.'
Nathan leaned forward. Her tongue was slower this time. She seemed very aroused. He knew it was the booze and cocaine and the evening's sense of adventure. She tasted of wine and cigarettes. Her hand tugged at his shirt, found flesh. He kissed her long neck. He struggled from his jacket. She kissed his throat, his chest, helped him from his shirt. In his rush, he lost a couple of buttons. She fumbled at his fly. His cock, when she freed it, was springy as a cosh but cold to the core. She popped it into her mouth. The warmth was so abrupt that he jerked back, as if about to fall. Then he forced himself away from her and fumbled with her skirt. She lifted her arse to help him, wriggling at the waist, and when she muttered 'Bob, you're still watching' there was no real protest left in it.
Nathan was transfixed by the imprint of elastic in her bare flesh, and the shadow cast by her sharp hips, by the movement of her small, white breasts as she prepared herself for him. She bit his shoulder when he entered, and gasped. She pressed her feet, still in Adidas trainers, against the back of the front passenger seat. She was so warm. She wrapped her ankles around him and murmured something in his ear, he didn't know what. Her eyes were open.
It didn't last long. When Nathan tensed in orgasm, teeth gritted and neck corded, she hissed a single word through her teeth.
Bob's gaze, solemn and amused, was heavy on Nathan's back as Elise eased him from inside her. Nathan flopped, gasping, on the seat next to her. He was naked from the waist up and his trousers were gathered round his ankles. He was beginning to detumesce. Naked except for her Adidas, Elise sat laughing and gasping. Beads of Nathan's jism glinted on her pubic hair.
She said 'Oh, God' and brushed at her naked thighs as if they itched.
She and Nathan made eye contact. She squeezed his softening dick with affectionate good humour.
He said, 'I know. I'm sorry. Give me a minute.'
'But first -- more drugs, I think.'
'But what about Bob?' said Bob.
Elise leaned forward and slapped his shoulder again.
