at the back of the Norderkerk.’
Van den Bergen sighed. Hastily grabbed a fistful of almost-boiled pasta from the bottom of the sink. Poised to down this makeshift dinner to keep the codeine company. ‘I’m on my way.’
‘Hey. You’re back,’ Ad said, sleepily.
He rolled over, putting himself at the edge of the single bed, facing her. Flicked back the duvet, so she could clamber in and nestle into his bare chest. Groggy. He had only half-slept, of course. One ear constantly on alert for the key in the door. It wasn’t lost on him that she’d actually returned from work a full hour ago, and had sat downstairs with Sharon, swigging that drink they drank. What was it? Rum n Ting. Conspiratorial giggling about something or other. He only hoped he wasn’t the butt of their jokes. But how could he be? He’d been there for more than forty-eight hours and had only seen George for about three of those in a state of wakefulness. ‘Good day?’
‘Knackering,’ she said.
Failing to ask him about his day, which he had spent sprawled on Aunty Sharon’s fishy sofa, propped on overstuffed cushions that stank of baking and hairspray, watching some daytime soap on television called Doctors. Stuffing his face with fruitcake to stave off boredom.
George disrobed and pulled on a baggy T-shirt that sported some musician’s name. One of those English acts he didn’t recognise. Dubstep something or other. Maybe that wasn’t even a musician. He couldn’t keep up with George’s likes and dislikes. Deep house. Garage. Old skool. It was an entirely different language for a small-town Groningen boy like him; serving only to estrange, where once it had exerted a strong, magnetic pull. But still. She was a sight for sore eyes, even silhouetted against the landing light.
‘Come here, hard working genius. I’ve missed you.’ He had kisses for her, filled with desperation and longing and ardour and not a little disappointment. Here was his erection, pressed into her warm, voluptuous body. ‘Oh, I love you so much.’ A hand between her legs. He would show her how he had been thinking of her all day long. Surely, she must have given him some thought, in amongst her mysterious schedule of ‘research’ and ‘work’, none of which she ever expanded on.
George pushed him away. Treated him to a peck on the cheek. ‘Aw, I’m sorry, Ad. Do you mind if we don’t?’ Turned her back on him and shuffled to the other side. ‘I’m proper shattered. I’ve not stopped all day.’
In such a narrow bed, his knees inside her knees, his erection touching her bottom technically counted as spooning. Didn’t it? Spooning was what you did when you were in a comfortable relationship. He could definitely do spoons.
Deflating slowly, he asked, ‘How come you’re always back so late? Last night. You were even later. I asked and you never answered me.’
There was a pause. A considered intake of breath.
‘Sometimes new people turn up. Last night, there was a bit of a set-to between Aunty Sharon and the manager. Then, there was some mess to clean up. I had to work longer, is all. It’s one of those jobs. It’s complicated. I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
In the darkness, breathing in the musty smell of old wallpaper and eavesdropping on the soporific sound of passing cars, at odds with the disconcerting whistles of insomniac youths, roaming the local streets and up to no good (he knew he was beginning to sound like his mother), he decided privately that she was being evasive. He wasn’t even entirely sure what ‘one of those jobs’ constituted. Cleaning something or other, though he didn’t know where. He would quiz her about it over breakfast, before he left for the airport.
When her phone buzzed insistently at 2am and she left the bedroom to answer it, he made another mental note to quiz her about that over breakfast too.
Laughter trilled from somewhere along the hall, carried laterally to the sleeping, dreaming girl along with a rotten perfume of cigarette smoke and alcohol. Though it was ring-fenced beyond several thick walls, the tendrils of this throbbing organism – her mother’s own experiment in grafting rare cultivars with exotic pond life and social climbers, fed by hedonism and infamy – crept under her bedroom door nonetheless.
The Police were in attendance, reggae beats syncopating badly with the even rhythm of her dream. Sting’s voice ushering her towards wakefulness. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Daddy’s home: sitting with his legs crossed in the modest garden of their large Mayfair townhouse, reading a medical journal in summery warmth. Watching him intermittently, revelling in his presence, she frolicked with her mother’s beloved terrier, Rudi, beneath the whippy branches of their small maple tree. Helping Gretchen to pour into glasses the cloudy lemonade, which, standing on a chair, she had helped to make and which she and her father would now drink together.
Except Daddy wasn’t home. And the thud, thud, thud of Blondie’s beating glass heart pushed sleep further and further away from the girl on unforgiving waves of sound, until she realised that this was neither their London house, nor their Berlin residence, nor the villa in Juan les Pins.
More laughter. Men’s this time. Deep and throaty. Glasses clinking.
Consciousness had taken a hold of her fully, now. The comforting dream had slipped beyond her recall. Soft Cell were complaining, instead, of having to endure ‘Tainted Love’. Staring at the high ceiling of that New York apartment, she considered that she might have liked that music, given half a chance. She was at an age, after all, where she had just started to take an interest in the charts. Top of the Pops on their television in London. American Billboard’s Hot 100. Full of new, exciting bands. Boys with lipstick, wearing black. Cheap-looking, stubby keyboards sporting mysterious names like Roland and Yamaha, that were a world away from the grand piano in the music room, at which she sat for hours every week, having Mozart drummed into her reluctant fingers by that stern old hag, Frau Bretschneider. Both instrument and teacher had been imported all the way from Berlin, like Mother’s favourite dinner service. But Mother and her friends were greedy. They had claimed the youthful synthesised beats as theirs. Though in truth, some of Mother’s younger friends had created those songs, thereby distorting even the soundtrack to her childhood with her mother’s notorious celebrity and her cronies’ sycophancy. How she’d like to run away, get away from the pain it drove into the heart of her.
Advancing in her pyjamas and dressing gown down the hall, the music thudded louder. The smells became ever sharper. Those tendrils beckoned her forwards; pulling her in towards the melee. On the other side of the door, beyond which she had been expressly told by Gretchen that she must not under any circumstances venture after lights-out, she beheld the writhing organism. A gathering, at least two-hundred strong, that stretched from one end of the vast, wood-floored drawing room to the other. Semi-naked men. Suited men. Men dressed as women. Women clad in outlandish, futuristic outfits. Some, barely dressed at all, breasts jiggling as they danced. Wearing incongruous hats. Dwarves carrying platters of food on their heads which some guests stuffed lasciviously
