Bon Voyage

Sid and Edna stepped off the train, looking like they’d landed on Mars. ‘Bit different from Lewisham,’ I said cheerily, as I drove them from the station.

Their daughter had booked them into my room upstairs, a present for mum and dad on their silver wedding. The South of France, though not the Côte d’Azur.

And not a whisper out of them till next morning. ‘The noise of them bloody frogs.’ Edna’s voice. ‘Kept me awake all night. And bitten all over.’ Sid said something. Edna again. ‘Go on, finish the bottle, why don’t you?’ Sid said something else.

Real-life violence isn’t the choreographed stuff you see on screen, it’s clumsy and helpless, just the sound of it, and the silence afterwards is even worse.

They wouldn’t let me drive them back to the station, so I left them at the bus stop, in what little shade there was, a black eye, a plaster, and the big brown suitcase between them.