Just Rape: A Novel

By Terence Doyle

Judging from his spanking new CV, M. is one of the blessed of 80s Britain, a good looking working class lad who is set fair to achieve great things.
He's starting a splendid new job as an estate agent in central London, at the very time that property is booming, and he has an appropriately splendid up market girlfriend to accompany his rise.
But

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trentishoe
• Release date: Sep 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9780993046216

Book preview

LONDON: SPRING, 1986

ONE

‘Purveyor,’ said M, thinking: Maybe this will do it. Squeeze a little zip into the evening.

But all Stephen said was, ‘What?’

‘Why did they have to use a word like that?’

‘Who?’

‘The designers, for Christ’s sake. It’s on the sign. In the front window.’

Jesus! Sometimes Stephen could be so … what was Wendy’s word for him? Obtuse. That was it. Everything had to be mapped out for him. Diagrammed, said Wendy. She was right about that. At least.

How could anyone miss that word? It was written in gold letters about fifty bloody feet high in the midst of all that other rubbish about the pub. The New Eagle. One of London’s Foremost Purveyors of Fine Ales.

For M, that damned sign was a symbol of everything that was wrong with The New Eagle. ‘They make the place sound like a Turkish Bath,’ he said. ‘The stupid bastards.’

‘Who cares?’ said Stephen flatly, and silence descended between them again. Which was the way it had been for them all evening, no matter what they tried to talk about.

And it seemed to M that they had tried to talk about everything under the goddamn sun. TV, football, music, women.

He could feel the frustration building hotter inside him, feeding a desire to hit out at someone, anyone.

Starting with the people who had driven him into this predicament. His mother, for one. And his father too, in his own way. And Wendy, certainly. Jesus.

In the old days, when all his friends had been with him, not just Stephen, he would have had an extra beer or two, got a little crazy. Maybe picked up a girl.

But, of course, he couldn’t do that now. Of course not. That wouldn’t be right for him. Not now. Not any more. He was too old for that kind of behaviour now.

He looked at this watch, saw that it was nearly ten o’clock and again thought about saying, Listen, Stephen, we’re not having any fun. You’re bored. I’m bored. What the fuck is going on?

That’s what Wendy would want him to do. She wouldn’t approve of those words exactly, but she would expect him "to confront the issue, no matter how awkward he found it. Identify the problem and deal with it."

Jesus! Wendy! Some of the ideas she had.

But even with her voice echoing about in his head, M could not follow her advice. Couldn’t bring himself to speak to Stephen so directly. Out of the blue.

Talking about the silence between them would be even more embarrassing than the silence itself.

And what would it achieve? He could see that such frankness might be a useful tactic sometimes. With strangers, for instance. But he shouldn’t have to talk to Stephen like that for Christ’s sake. Stephen and he were friends.

‘I even miss the smell of the old place,’ he said. ‘At least it used to smell like a pub before. Not like a bloody hairdresser’s. Or a "purveyors!" Whatever the fuck that is.’

‘Hey, don’t start bitching about that again, okay?’ said Stephen. ‘We’ve already been through all that.’

‘I know we have but …’ M’s voice trailed off. It was true. They had been through all that before. Many times.

In fact, as soon as the wankers began their renovations, he and his friends had rebelled. Said "Fuck it. Fuck these improvements. We’ll take our business elsewhere."

But no matter where they went, they didn’t find anything to make up for what they had lost.

Everywhere they felt like late guests at a party. Shut out. Trespassers. So they said "Fuck it again. We’ll go back to The Eagle." The New Eagle. It was their pub. They would make it suit them.

But it hadn’t worked out that way. Stephen had adjusted almost immediately, and Andy and Charlie didn’t seem to mind much. They continued to mention the changes, but only to joke about them. Bill didn’t count. He had moved up north, to sell insurance, a few weeks later.

Only M remained genuinely angry. Felt that it was more than a matter of having lost a few old tables and chairs. For him, the spirit of the place was gone. The familiar comforting atmosphere, the refuge that he had grown to trust, had been destroyed.

So why am I sitting here now? he wondered, and he felt foolish for having gone to so much trouble to come out. For having argued with Wendy. And with his mother.

For having had to promise both of them that he would behave. That he wouldn’t drink too much. That he would be home early. Jesus Christ, his whole life seemed to be made up of promises now.

But he had promised this time because he had wanted to spend a last night out with his friends … before everything changed.

Thinking that some time with them might provide the respite he needed. Only the evening hadn’t worked out like that, as only Stephen was there.

And M finally realised he had been foolish to hope for a good time, that the last chance to enjoy the comfort that he used to feel with his friends had passed mysteriously long before, unnoticed.

I must get out of here, he thought again, clearing his throat once more, unnecessarily and, picking up his glass, swallowing eagerly. But before he could speak, Stephen gestured over his head and said, ‘What do you think of the blonde?’ Asking almost nonchalantly, as if the two of them were getting along just fine. Maybe he wasn’t even aware of the silence between them.

‘I saw her before,’ said M, feeling no need to look around. He could still clearly remember her. A strikingly tall thin girl, probably in her early twenties, like himself, but looking much younger. A face like a schoolgirl’s.

And her clothes. He had costed up her outfit in an instant, figuring the white blouse was about £12 (probably M&S). The pink, off the shoulder jumper £60 (mohair, from Next, say, Soft to touch. Easy to wash). The black skirt maybe £30 (creased, it looked like cotton). And the high black boots, they had to be £120 at least (they were leather, no mistaking that).

It was easy for him to do such costings. He had found that women liked a man to appreciate what they wore and he made a point of checking out the shops, going through catalogues. For a moment, when she had come in, he had been hopeful, but when she had looked in his direction, almost staring straight at him for god’s sake, and he smiled, she had ignored him.

She might have been admiring the fucking flock wallpaper for all the response he got.

That kind of mistake happened all too often in The New Eagle, now that the familiar local girls had been displaced by a smarter, cooler breed. So all he said now was, ‘She’s nice but there’s no chance.’ And he felt the silence close back in ready to choke him. Knew that in a moment they would both clear their throats again, reach for their glasses, swallow and look around aimlessly, helplessly.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he said abruptly, standing up.

‘You can’t go yet,’ protested Stephen. ‘It’s still early.’

‘But I’ve had enough.’

‘Is that the reason?’ challenged Stephen. ‘You’re sure you’re not worried about getting your beauty sleep? To be ready for your job?’

‘That’s not it,’ protested M, stung by this taunt.

‘So you’re not worried?’

‘It’s just a job,’ said M. But he knew he was lying. To him it was THE JOB. That’s how he thought of it. In capital letters. Like some strange foreign place. Some dangerous land that he knew nothing about.

‘So why don’t you talk about it then?’

‘What’s there to talk about?’ asked M, as if he had never considered this as a possibility before. Whereas, in fact, he had decided earlier that was one topic he wanted to avoid. Couldn’t risk. Now he doubted that decision. Realising that keeping silent wasn’t going to solve his problems, and that THE JOB was the one topic that might actually disperse the dreadful silence that oppressed him. Talking about that would be a bit like hitting someone.

‘All right, I’ll tell you about it’, he said suddenly. ‘But first let me get another round.’ Then, on his way to the bar, he surprised himself. Instead of going the shortest route, he veered away towards the blonde girl and he started to walk awkwardly, as if fighting his way through a crowd, even though the floor was empty, until he was right by her and said, haltingly, feigning breathlessness, ‘It’s busy …. in here .. . tonight … isn’t it?’

For a few seconds the blonde looked at him blankly, as if she might ignore him again and he felt the anger rising inside him, felt like lashing out, then she smiled, actually began to laugh. A wonderful laugh.

Welcoming. And sultry too.

Not like a schoolgirl’s laugh at all.

For the first time ever, M felt that The New Eagle was not so bad. And, even better, that it might be the right place for him to spend his last few hours after all.

TWO

‘No, no, stop, please.’

‘You started it.’

‘But I can’t take anymore. My sides.’

‘Wait till you hear what happened next.’

That’s the way it had been all evening, Wendy’s dining room filling with shrill laughter again and again as she and Gloria laughed so hard that at times they thought they would be ill. When they recovered, they told themselves they’d have to be more careful, mustn’t overdo it again, but they were never able to control themselves for long.

It was bound to be like that, reflected Wendy again, since they hadn’t met for such a long time. (Too long, she had thought sadly, at first, then recovered, been realistic. Knowing she couldn’t hope to see all her friends all the time.) It was inevitable that their get-togethers would have a frantic quality, the need to catch up on so much driving them to talk faster and faster. Yet leaving them feeling that they could go on forever and still not cover everything.

So it was a shock to Wendy when Gloria said, ‘Oh, God, it’s nearly ten.’

‘Only a quarter to,’ she protested, staring at the gleaming carriage clock on the sideboard, studying its hands as if she had not been fully aware of exactly what time it was, minute by minute, for the past hour or so.

‘We agreed to finish early,’ Gloria reminded her. ‘Because we both have a lot to do tomorrow.’

‘But we haven’t had dessert. You can’t go yet. You’ll think I don’t know how to look after my guests.’

‘Don’t talk to me about food, please. I couldn’t eat another thing. It’s been super. Really. I don’t understand how you manage to do all that you do, and still have time to cook a meal like this.’

‘There isn’t anything very wonderful about doing my job and taking a few Cordon Blue courses,’ argued Wendy. ‘You know I find it easy to be organised. That it’s disorder I can’t handle. Chaos. That’s my dread.’

But Wendy was only half listening to herself. Her attention was still on the clock, her mind toying with ideas of time. She was troubled by the way the hours and minutes were so objective, so unforgiving. Fleeing at the same inexorable rate whether you laughed or cried.

Then she put that complaint out of her mind as well. Accepted that wishing couldn’t change time’s course, that the only thing to do was to live every moment as fully as possible. And she tried to. But it could be so hard to do, so much easier to back down. Like now. She could simply continue to chat harmlessly to Gloria even though she had more serious matters on her mind and should already have said so, long ago.

Now she forced herself to make an effort, spoke more consciously than she had all evening. ‘Please stay a little longer.’

Gloria stopped where she was, changed her own manner immediately. ‘Does that mean you want to talk?’

‘Haven’t we been talking?’ countered Wendy, giving a high pitched laugh and shifting about on her elegant chair, as if it had suddenly become uncomfortable. Despite her desire to be honest, she was taken aback by Gloria’s sharpness. Felt uneasy with this prompt to go ahead immediately. More quickly than she had intended.

She had to work hard to resist the temptation to retreat. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Yes, you’re right. I do want to talk.’

‘About M?’

‘Has it been that obvious?’

‘Wendy, you don’t have to tell me anything, if you’d rather not. I don’t mean to pry. I’m just concerned.’

‘I know that. And I’m sorry to be so indecisive. I want to tell you. It’s just that I promised myself earlier that I wouldn’t. Because I thought I’d be better to face things myself than to look to others, even you, for assistance. Only now that you are here, that doesn’t make sense. But it’s still hard for me to break my promise to myself. I want to be sure that it’s not merely because it’s late or I’m feeling weak.’

‘It’s not that late,’ said Gloria encouragingly, ‘and you are not weak. You don’t need to solve everything in life yourself. Asking your friends for a little help is not a crime. But if you’re not ready to admit that, let’s pretend that it’s not your choice, that I forced you to own up. I’ll even ask you some questions to get you started.’

Wendy stared at the candles flicking on the table between them for a moment, admiring their fragile glow, then looked back at Gloria. ‘You’re sure you don’t want any dessert?’ she asked, awkwardly.

‘For instance,’ said Gloria, ignoring the question, ‘what’s worrying you right now? Are you upset because M hasn’t phoned?’

Wendy looked over to the clock again, genuinely keen to see what time it was. Because for the first time all evening, she had been distracted. Had stopped counting the passing minutes, listening for the phone.

He should be home by now, she thought, if he has kept his word. And he should have called me. But perhaps something had come up to delay him, she reflected.

Perhaps …

Her mind went blank. She couldn’t imagine anything plausible … or wouldn’t. She must simply try to be more confident, she told herself. More trusting. He might still call.

And she focused on Gloria again. ‘I was hoping he would call. I thought he would, even though I told him that he didn’t have to. That he should simply go out and have fun, if he was going to go out at all.’

‘So what is bothering you?’

‘Nothing obvious. Just various little things. Like his determination to go out this evening, when he should be resting. Of course, I understand that he might like to do something, that he’s bound to be feeling a bit edgy.’

‘More than a bit,’ suggested Gloria, ‘because this isn’t just a new job. I mean, it’s not as if he’s going to become a brain surgeon or whatever but he’s going to find this a long way from selling nuts and bolts.’

‘M’s been doing much more than selling nuts and bolts. He was promoted recently to stock manager.’

‘Even so, selling houses must seem like a leap in the dark.’

‘A leap, yes. But a leap up, towards success, not into the dark. Oh, I know that it must seem like that to him sometimes, but I also know he can manage it. I’m sure he can. He is clever.’

‘So what are you worried about?’

Wendy looked over to the clock yet again and saw that more time had gone by … forever. It was nearly 10.30 now. Why hasn’t he called? Has he decided not to? Or simply not thought about it? Or isn’t he even home yet? ‘It’s just a feeling I have,’ she said. ‘Something new about him. It’s hard to put into words. Marriage is part of it.’

‘Is M still feeling uncertain about that?’

‘You make it sound like I’m forcing him. I don’t want to.’ Wendy paused to consider that, then went on. ‘If I seem to be pushing him, it’s only because I’m sure it would be for the best, that it would help him, and I’m trying to make him see that.’

‘Perhaps he can’t at the moment. Perhaps he finds marriage a little overwhelming. A great idea for the future. But you’ve confronted him with it. If you give him more time, he might be more comfortable with it.’

‘He’s twenty four! He’s had time,’ countered Wendy, and then, remembering time’s mysterious nature, she realised that twenty four years could be both a long time and very little, depending.

Gloria drove that point home. ‘Twenty four years is enough for many people but M might need a little more, given his parents.’

Wendy frowned and hunched forward to sip her cold coffee. ‘Surely they’re not the problem. They’re odd but alright, really.’

‘But not exactly madly in love with each other, are they?’

‘No, they are a bit of a mismatch.’

‘And I bet M’s mother has mixed feelings about him getting married. She’ll miss him if he moves out and lives with you.’

‘She will but that shouldn’t make any difference to M. I’ve told you that one of the great things about him is that he’s very clear about what he wants, and doesn’t let things stand in his way. Not wildly macho, always thinking about cars and money and that. No, he just has simple tastes.’

‘I know. You’ve always thought that this makes him a real man, the first you’ve known, as if all those other guys you went out with were fakes.’

‘He is different from them, and so much better for me. But at times I’m not sure I understand him, because he is so different.’

‘So you are seriously worried about something. About him, I mean.’

For a few moments Wendy sat silently pondering this question. Time was teasing with her again, producing rapid changes in her mood. Feelings aren’t limited by time, she thought. They could shift enormously, the equivalent of thousands of miles, in seconds.

For whereas earlier she had thought she only wanted to talk about M because he hadn’t phoned, now she felt differently. Now she realised that she was worried about him, and that she had to talk about him.

‘Don’t be concerned about keeping me,’ said Gloria. ‘If it’s important to you, I can stay.’

‘Okay,’ said Wendy, nodding her head, too anxious and preoccupied finally to think any longer about anything as trivial as offering dessert. ‘The truth is that I am worried about him. Very worried.’

THREE

Detective Inspector Peters looked up and stared wildly around his office, as if looking for some intruder that he could hear but not see. Thinking, Time, it’s the ultimate enemy. Invisible and relentless. ‘It’s half past two already,’ he said abruptly. ‘Can you believe it?’

Collins, his colleague, looked up from his desk, met his eyes and smiled beatifically but said nothing. Merely raised an upright finger to his lips, signalling for silence, then made a funny face.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ said Peters, ‘I should get back to work.’ Work, he thought, Christ! How could anyone call this work? Filling in forms. Reading useless reports. Shifting files. That’s what they had been doing all evening … all night. Sitting together, locked up in their small office at the station.

But it was only during the past hour or so that they had managed to ignore each other long enough to turn to their task. Peters had been the one to settle them down then, so he was a little surprised that it was now he that was skiving off. Then he saw the reason for Collins apparent diligence: he had a golf magazine spread open on his files. It was the nuances of chipping and putting, not crime and punishment, that had kept him shut up.

‘Asshole,’ said Peters. ‘We need to get these reports done by ….’

‘There’s time,’ interrupted Collins. ‘It’s isn’t two thirty yet. It’s only twenty seven minutes past.’

Isn’t. Only. Peters looked across the stark furnishings of their office to examine the quality of the night outside. The blackness seemed to have an eerie, malignant guise. It pressed against the station’s windows like a sea of inky water. Another enemy.

For Collins, it’s not already two thirty, he thought, it’s only twenty-seven minutes past. Didn’t he ever feel that time was fleeing? That it was late? Late in the day? Late at night? Perhaps too late altogether?

Which of us has the right attitude? Me, who is so restless? Or Collins? Who is never upset? For whom twenty seven minutes past is early, not late? Is half a glass half empty or half full?

That was the kind of quandary the police were supposed to get used to. Excel at.

Who gives a shit? thought Peters, worried about drowning in his work.

He shut his eyes and strained his ears to listen to the night, picking out and identifying a few distinct sounds in the distance. A speeding car. Solitary footsteps.

But them aside, there was an overwhelming sense of peacefulness. The soothing hum of London at its lowest ebb, the antithesis to the great tide of indecipherable screeches, clangs and howls that was its customary tone.

‘Do you ever wonder if this might be the moment?’ he said.

‘What moment, for Christ’s sake? Can’t you see I’m busy?’

‘THE MOMENT,’ said Peters. ‘The moment when all the craziness suddenly stops forever. The violence, the assaults, the murders, everything. The moment when the citizenry finally wake up and shake off their useless criminal instincts. The moment they stop fucking about with everyone else’s lives and start getting on with their own.’

Collins noisily flipped a page of his magazine. ‘What I was wondering about was whether it is time to knock off for coffee?’

‘I’m not joking,’ said Peters. ‘If you’d get your nose out of that crap for a minute and listen, you’d understand what I mean. Listen. Listen to the night. It’s so goddamn quiet out there, isn’t it? As if maybe this time, finally, nothing bad will happen ever again. That the war is over. That the last shot’s been fired. It’s like when you look at the phone and feel like it’s never going to ring again.’

‘I never feel the fucking phone’s not going to ring again,’ said Collins. ‘As for the crazy bastards out there, we both know they will carry on messing about, noise or no noise. A little silence is like sweet music for some of them. The perfect accompaniment to their crimes. If you were really good at listening, you could probably hear some crime taking place right now. Come on … strain your pretty ears. And let me know if you detect something. We could do with a little excitement.’

‘Jesus, Collins, you’re sick,’ said Peters, but he wasn’t really angry. Just thinking again about that sea of files on his desk, the danger that it might drown him.

This is sick, he thought, the myriad details of their current cases. The drivel that the naive optimistically referred to as evidence. Random bits spewed out by members of the public desperate to call themselves witnesses, even though most of them were so unobservant they must have trouble recognising themselves in the mirror. I got a good look at him, they’d say, proudly, and immediately you knew you were in trouble.

What was he like? you asked, pretending that you were still hopeful, even though you were already thinking that in a few weeks time you would be sitting at your fucking desk trying to make a picture out of the dozen conflicting descriptions that were as inconclusive as a blood stain.

He was tall, they would say. And heavy. Oh, not all that tall. Or even all that heavy. But big. Sort of. Bigger than you, for instance. At least I think he was.

Jesus, it made you wonder why criminals bothered to wear masks.

So Collins was right, in a way. They did need a new case. Something to get them outside again, away from these files; something to renew their sense that they were serving some purpose.

They had been warned during training that a time would come when they would yearn for more action in their work. Hampton had sat on his desk explaining the fundamentals of police procedure, his stomach hanging over his belt like a growth, a reminder of what happened to detectives who spent too much time sitting down.

"There are only three things you have to remember. One: it’s your office that counts, not the street. It’s in your office that your most important decisions will be made."

Two: your three by four melamine desk top is the most complex territory you will explore. That’s where you will find solutions, that’s where you will catch the guilty, not the streets.

Three: it’s exercise with pen and ink that puts people behind bars, not racing through the city in a panda with your lights flashing.

Maybe, thought Peters. But recently he had the feeling that his office was a cage, his desk a trap, his notes an evasion. That this routine would never achieve anything. Because it’s out there, in that awful darkness beyond the windows, that crimes happened. As if on cue, the scream of a siren interrupted his thoughts.

‘There,’ said Collins, happily. ‘Maybe that will be something different for us.’ Then he continued his battle with his more serious concerns: How to conquer downhill lies and Scoring from the sand.

Listening to the siren fade away, Peters wondered what Collins meant by "different". He might be hoping for an eccentric digression from the traditional horny man humps non-consenting woman formula, to catch his interest.

But it was hard to imagine what that would be. It seemed to Peters that they had already dealt with every imaginable type of sexual assault.

More likely Collins simply wanted a case that they could solve with a little less effort than it takes to put a man on the moon.

Ideally they would walk into the bedroom and find the guy with his prick still in the girl and a signed confession saying, Your honour, the victim refused consent and fought like a fucking alley cat.

That would certainly make a change from the norm, since nearly all of the cases that they dealt with were always spoilt by a massive degree of uncertainty about what had happened.

Rapes were so different from murders. At least investigating a killing there was a body and you knew you had a crime on your hands.

Whereas with rapes – "alleged rapes" – you could never be sure what you were dealing with. Instead of a good, heavy, immobile lump of flesh all you ever got were a series of ambiguous complaints that led to the greatest failure rate of any department of the Met.

Too few rapes reported. Too few rapes pursued. Too few pursuits leading to assailants. Too few assailants prosecuted. Too few prosecutions succeeding.

Collins said that failure didn’t bother him. We might not jail the bastards every time but we can certainly scare the shit out of them.

Peters was less flexible. The cycle of nonsuccess sickened him and he clung to the hope that somehow they would find some way to break the fruitless pattern.

Some way to make a difference.

But, so far, there was only one thing that he knew for certain: that they were not going to find it if they were forever sitting at their desks shuffling papers.

He shoved aside the files he had been working on. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘we’ve got to make a decision.’

‘Found something, have you?’ asked Collins, suddenly intent, no longer smiling, wanting and ready for a startling development.

Peters paused, enjoying the moment, the sense that he had finally distracted Collins from his golf.

Then he said, ‘Here it is: do we just have coffee? Or do we go the full monty and have a doughnut as well?’

FOUR

M was alone with the blonde girl in a strange room. He still didn’t know her name. He hadn’t bothered to ask. Why should he? He liked to think of her as ‘the blonde girl’.

The room was very bright, the walls were carefully covered with dazzling floor-to-ceiling mirrors. There were no chairs, nothing to sit on except an extraordinarily large bed that was positioned precisely in the middle of the room. Right away he thought that that was an odd place for a bed. Whatever you were doing, you would have to walk around it. But he didn’t complain. He didn’t plan to do a lot of walking around. For what he had in mind, the bed’s position was just fine. All he said was, This is an unusual room.

At that, the blonde girl turned and faced him, smiling in the same friendly way that she had in the pub.

But this time M felt none of the surprise that he had earlier and, better, none of the concern. This time he did not have to waste time trying to decipher the smile’s meaning. This time he knew that the girl would do whatever he wanted.

Not that she had promised him anything. On the contrary. On the way back from the pub to this room she had suddenly said, very precisely, I’m not going to make love with you. Not tonight.

But he knew that they would make love. He knew because tonight it wouldn’t make any difference what she said. Or thought or wanted.

None of that mattered to him. This was one girl who would not get to make all the decisions. For once he was going to be the one to determine what happened.

Feeling that he had that power over her gave him an utterly new and delicious sense of freedom. Finally, for the first time ever with a strange girl, he felt that he could afford to be indulgent. He could give in to her whims, pretend that he didn’t care what they did together. He felt so liberated that he even enjoyed being so generous.

Knowing what lay ahead, knowing beyond any doubt exactly what was going to happen between them, regardless of the mood she was in, he felt there was none of the usual need to rush ahead, to test his chances as soon as possible, for fear of missing an opportunity.

That’s why he had immediately, recklessly, pretended to go along with her warning. You’re right, he had said. We shouldn’t make love. Not tonight. We don’t know each other yet. I understand.

After that, they didn’t talk about the possibility anymore. They didn’t go on and on about it, like a lot of people on dates. That was another advantage of knowing that it was going to happen, no matter what. You were free to have fun. Then they reached that strange mirrored room and she asked him if he wanted a coffee or a beer?

He said it didn’t matter and he meant it. He didn’t mean he didn’t care. He did, and when she asked him again, he took the beer. He only meant that, for once, whichever option he took, it wouldn’t make any difference to what happened between them.

Then she asked him if he would like to listen to some music or just talk? Again he was able to say he was easy. What would she like?

For once he did not have to calculate feverishly which choices might improve his chances with her later. Whether it would be best to keep her busy, distracted sort of, or to have her sitting quietly beside him.

Whether he should wait awhile and give her a chance to relax, or try something right away.

When he sat on the bed in the centre of the room, he did not have to wonder about the turned down sheets.

On any other night he would have thought