Sleepover
The valley was dark now, the campers long since retired, the fire burning down.
‘I think it’s a shame.’
He shrugged. ‘Not as much as staying together. I used to watch my parents and they weren’t … affectionate as such, Dad anyway, but every now and then you’d catch something, a little touch or look, and you’d feel reassured. For me as a kid, it was enough, and I remember thinking, I want that.’
‘I didn’t think that with mine. I looked at my parents and thought, I want something bigger. Passion, something … volcanic. So that worked out.’
‘Maybe that’s what Nat wanted too. Maybe it wasn’t enough, but I liked being a husband, same as being a teacher. Four things I wanted to be: good son, good husband, good teacher, good father. And I’m a good teacher.’
‘I’m sure you’re more than that.’ She hesitated, wondering if it was dark enough to say such a thing out loud, then; ‘D’you think she was the love of your life?’
He thought for a moment. ‘So far. But come and see me on my deathbed.’
‘“Michael, can you hear me? We’ve got a visitor for you.”’
‘“She says she’s got a question, she’s very insistent.”’
‘“Hiya! You won’t remember me but …”’
‘I’m sure I will remember you,’ he said.
‘Ah, that’s nice.’ She placed her hand on his, patted it and then took it away, now needing somewhere to get rid of her silly hand, as if it were an empty crisp packet.
He reached for it and took it and, after a moment, said, ‘The thing that happened last night.’
‘You mean … Curry Club?’
‘Yes, Curry Club, but after too.’
‘Ah. Okay, the snog.’
He laughed. ‘Is that what we’re calling it?’
‘Well, that’s what it was, wasn’t it? Two friends, too much to drink.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. But can we?’
‘What?’
‘Put it on hold, for tonight. I feel a little, I don’t know, a bit blue.’
‘Well, that’ll be all this sexy deathbed chat.’
‘Yes. Maybe tomorrow we should talk less about dying alone.’
‘As a last-day treat. Is it far?’
‘Fifteen miles, a couple of hills, you’ll be on the London train by seven.’
They sat in silence for a while. ‘I’m exhausted,’ she said. ‘What’s the time?’
‘Nine forty-five!’
‘Our usual bedtime.’
The glow inside the tent had been replaced by the stark light of rechargeable LEDs, breath visible in the frigid air. There was a demure and overly chivalrous process whereby Michael spent a long time brushing his teeth so that she could get undressed and under the covers, cocooned in thermals, swaddled under heavy blankets, a nun on a sleepover with a monk.
‘Hey, you didn’t wear your sackcloth shirt.’
‘It’s too cold for revealing clothes,’ he said. ‘Also, I’ve got three more days in that thing. I didn’t want to get it smoky.’
She sniffed at her own shoulder. ‘I smell like a Christmas ham.’
‘I like it,’ he said, ‘it’s a nice smell,’ and she accepted that this, being told she smelt like ham, would be as close as they got to intimacy tonight. If she hadn’t slept through her alarm, if the landlady had been more liberal, if today had turned out differently, if they’d talked of something else, if the tent wasn’t so cold, the precise circumstances required to get together were so specific that it seemed as unlikely as seeing a shooting star. And yet they sometimes appeared, and tomorrow perhaps, or in London or York in the near future …
All the great changes in her life lay in the future except this one, meeting Michael. It seemed like a great and marvellous stroke of luck and enough for now. ‘Shall I turn the light out?’ she asked.
‘Sure.’
But she had not slept so near to someone for years, not heard the sound of their breathing or felt the changes that the presence of another body brings to a room. She ought to acknowledge it somehow so pulled her arm out from under the blanket, and he reached out too and for a moment their hands touched, her fingers moving a little, as if under the chin of a cat.
Then her arm got tired and her hand got cold, and she thought, Fuck’s sake, and pulled it back, turned over and went to sleep.