In the Everglades of Florida, Albie is bitten by a snake that finds its way into his shoe, and I suck the venom from his filthy heel. Hiking in Snowdonia a sudden storm descends, Albie slips and breaks his ankle and I carry him through fog and rain to safety. A freak wave sweeps Albie off the Cobb at Lyme Regis and, without hesitation, without even thinking about taking my car keys and phone and placing them somewhere safe, I leap into the pounding surf, dive and dive again beneath the grey waters until I find him and carry him to the shore. It transpires that Albie needs a kidney. My kidney is a perfect match — be my guest, please. Take two! If ever he were in danger, I had no doubt about my instinctive courage and loyalty.
Yet put me in a little breakfast room in an Amsterdam hotel …
I would apologise, that’s what I’d do. I would take him somewhere quiet and explain, that I was tired, that I had not slept all night, and perhaps he had not noticed but there were certain tensions between his mother and me and that consequently I was a little on edge, but that I loved him hugely and couldn’t we now move on, both literally and figuratively? The train to Munich was in two hours. We’d be in Italy in two days’ time.
But when I returned to the hotel, I found Connie leaning on the reception desk, the heels of her hands pressed to teary eyes. Without looking up, she slid the letter towards me, written in Albie’s scrawling hand on the back page of my itinerary.
Mum, Dad,
Well, that was fun!
I appreciate the effort and all the money but I don’t think the Grand Tour is working out. I feel like I’m being got at all the time, which isn’t much of a holiday for me, surprise surprise, so I’m heading off and leaving you to get at each other instead. At least now you’ll be able to stick to your schedule, Dad!
I don’t know where I’m going. I might stay with Cat or I might not. I’ve taken my passport from your room and also a little money — don’t worry, Dad, I’ll pay you back, and for the mini-bar too. Put it on the bill.
Please don’t try to email, text or phone. I’ll be back in touch when the time is right. Until then I just need some time to clear my head and think certain things through.
Mum, don’t worry. And Dad, I’m sorry if I disappoint you.
See you whenever,
Surely you have to succeed, if you give everything you have.
We had taken a sleeper train once before, to Inverness then on to a cycling holiday in Skye, the autumn of our second year.
The trip had been a birthday surprise; meet me at such and such a time, bring your passport and a swimming costume, the kind of larky spree that was new to me. If Connie was disappointed to discover that she would need neither passport nor swimming costume then she didn’t show it, and we laughed a lot, I recall, in the tiny couchette of the train from Euston. In the films of my childhood, sleeper trains were shorthand for a kind of suave sauciness. In reality, like saunas and Jacuzzis, sleeping compartments are not nearly the sensual playground we’re led to believe and this is another way in which fiction lies to us. The real experience can easily be simulated by paying two hundred pounds to make love in a locked wardrobe on the back of a fast-moving flatbed truck. Nevertheless, we persevered despite a great deal of giggling and cramp, and somewhere between Preston and Carlisle there was a mishap with birth control.
