Back at home, I want to call Adam. I want to understand how he feels, why he has been rereading book two. Why he looked like he might look if he was reading book three. But I know he doesn’t want to talk to me, tonight, so I must sit alone. I feel further from him than I ever have done.
It’s okay, though, because there is a plan for our closeness. I gather the violin and the fencing equipment around me. Tomorrow, I will use them well. Tonight, for company, I have the television. I turn it on. I see Luke. There he is, identi-fitted in front of me. Next to him there is a picture of Ally. The newsreader is saying that there has been a significant development. I mute her. The Nicole-red ticker tape along the bottom of the screen says it too. I change channels. There is a man in a black beret and a mac making absurd facial expressions to a woman with 1970s bouffant hair. I can do without more berets and macs. If Nicole and Huhne think they can live in my television, they are wrong. On another channel, a man and woman are having sex. The programme doesn’t show enough to be useful revision. I turn off the TV.
It’s fully dark outside now. I think of an evening run, to get myself in shape, for the fencing, for Nicole. But I think too of the purr of the Maserati, its sleek black invisibility. More prudent to have an early night. I could revisit book three, in bed? But no. That closeness will not motivate tonight. It will depress me, given the earlier distance. Instead I will sleep and try to dream of him.
And I do.
A saucepan, a saucepan, a giant saucepan and flames! And I’m in the pan, and the pan is Feltham. It doesn’t look like it, but I know it is. Adam is there, under the flames, not in them, like me. And he is turning them up, then turning them down, then turning them up.
DC Huhne is putting a lid on the pan, even though there’s no water in it, just me. She is waving some keys, and she is going to lock the lid onto me. I see the lid close over me, and although it’s a glass lid, I cannot see through it. I know Adam is out there, to be seen, but I’m stuck in here, getting hotter and hotter. Then I’m out of the saucepan and in Adam’s offices again. Except the reception girls are not like they were – they are Huhne and Nicole and Helen. And when I ask for Adam, they tell me he is not there, that I cannot see him.
‘But he is there! He is there!’ I scream, because I can see him, in the glass maze of offices. And I want to follow him, break into that box where he’s hiding from me. They won’t let me, the women – they tie me up with violin strings and they secure me to a great big violin so that I can’t move, can’t wriggle, even a little bit. And they winch me up to the very top of the building, its asphalt roof, and they leave me there on the violin, which is now more like a cello because it has one of those struts at its base. And I can see now into the building, which is suddenly transparent. What I see is Adams, lots and lots of Adams, all fornicating with a three-headed Nicole, Helen and Huhne beast. And Jimmy is there, guarding them with a Maserati. But it’s not a black Maserati – it’s made of fire and ice. The ice is so cold and it wafts up towards me, and consumes the violin-cello into a pool, and in the pool Adam is dunking me up and down, up and down, and I think we are in Hampstead Heath again, by the ponds. And he is saying ‘I know, I know, I know!’ over and over and over.
So I know then that he must die. But I am tied to the violin-cello, so there is nothing I can do. Then there’s a hissing behind me, over my shoulder, getting closer and closer, so that I think it’s a loud steam engine or a car, but it’s not, it’s a snake, a green snake with a red beret. It slithers round and round me on the violin and it opens its great big mouth and I can these fangs, the fangs that would penetrate me, fill me with their poison.
‘I know, I know, I know!’ Adam is still shouting.
‘It wasss me,’ the snake says. ‘I told him, he knowsss everything now.’
Just when I think the snake is going to bite me, it slithers off me and sheds its skin, and now it’s a naked Nicole, slithering over to Adam. And above me, there is something kicking my head, and I see sparkly blue toenails, and I know it is Ally, hanging from the neck of the violin. But the toenails become nails, now, attached to a shoe, drilling into the crown of my skull, making my head bleed. Meanwhile, the snake coils itself round Adam, tighter and tighter until I can see he’s turning redder and redder and redder and I want to save him but I can’t move, I am tied, I am tied to this wooden violin. And he’s dying, he’s dying, I can see that he’s dying.
‘Adam!’ I shout ‘Adam! Adam! ADAM!’
With a start I awake. For a moment I think I am still in Hampstead Pond, because the bed is wet, and the sheets are sticking to me like water-weed.
But no. It’s only my expression of fear. My sweat.
And something else.
The something that first happened when I was fourteen.
A very wet dream.
I push the covers off me and dart away from the bed. How can I be aroused by Adam dying? How can the death of Adam, my saviour, my love, possibly bring me happiness?
I run to the shower with the covers and turn it on to cleanse myself. But it is cold, cold as the ice of the car and the pond. It is too cold even to numb me. I dart out again.
I cannot be here, alone. I must have Adam. He must know I love him. I must call him, I must call him. But he will know, he will know somehow I dreamt about his death and it aroused me. He will know. I double over with guilt for dream Adam, of somehow destroying him with impotence, bound as I was to the wood.
I try to breathe. It is difficult. I go the front door and open it up and let the fresh air come in. But the bright lights out there are too bright, too fast approaching, so I shut it again.
I must speak with Adam. I dial their number. Nicole answers. I throw the phone down. The snake, the snake that would kill Adam. The snake that I must seduce.
If I’d had a sabre, you see, in the dream, like George, and his dragon, I would be fine. I would never have been bound up in the first place. I would have been able to defend myself from seeing the death of Adam. Could have killed the Nicole-snake. And Jimmy. And Huhne. And all of them. Struck and blown that through, defending mine and Adam’s love.
I will learn, tomorrow, I will learn my arts at fencing. Then, should Nicole not be seducable, should she wish to destroy Adam, I will be prepared.
And Adam must never die.