Free Cupid's Dart by David Nobbs

light off, which I hadn't wanted to do, because I enjoyed looking at her face, it was so expressive, so mobile, so lovely. It looked so innocent, unsullied even by the advances of all those darts players, their hairy flesh pressed against hers.
    'What are your parents like? Talk to me about them,' I said. 'I want to know you, Ange. Not carnally. Not biblically. Truly. I want to know who you are.'
    'You might find out if you stopped rabbiting.'
    A merited rebuke. I kept quiet. I waited patiently, but she didn't speak.
    'Tell me about your dad,' I said, very quietly, very gently. I knew that she didn't think much of him. She'd called him a tosser to the darts players.
    'He's dead.'
    'Oh, I'm sorry.'
    'He died when I was seven.'
    'Oh, I'm sorry.'
    'I can't hardly remember him.'
    'No, I suppose you wouldn't.'
    It did cross my mind that it was strange, if she hardly remembered him, that she had called him a tosser, but I supposed that it wasn't that strange really. Her mother might have told her enough about him to justify the word. Probably she was very close to her mother.
    'And your mum?'
    'What about her?'
    'Well, what does she do?'
    'Cleaning. Takes in ironing. Washing. Bit of dress-making. You know.'
    'No, Ange, I don't know. I've been very lucky.'
    'Mum's all right. Keeps things going.'
    'Do you love her?'
    'Course I do. She's my mum.'
    'What about brothers and sisters?'
    'What about them?'
    'Well, do you have any?'
    'One sister, two brothers, there was a third but he drowned in the river when he was three.'
    'Oh my God. Poor Ange.'
    'Yeah, well, it's life, isn't it?'
    'Not exactly.'
    I felt so close to her, lying at her side talking almost in whispers, and yet so far away from her, with my inability to really imagine what her life in Gallows Corner had been like. I waited patiently for her to continue. It was so quiet in that boxy, stuffy room. So quiet. Then suddenly there was the sound of a man peeing long and loud and from quite a height in the room above, bursting in upon the brief magic of our shared silence. I expected Ange to comment, but she didn't. I wondered if it had only been in my mind that there had been any magic, any miraculous togetherness, in our silence.
    'Ange?' I whispered. 'Are you asleep?'
    She was. I felt ridiculously deflated.
    I tried to get to sleep too, but it was impossible. I kept thinking about Ange's life in Gallows Corner, about what Lawrence and Jane would say if they could see me now, about all the work that remained to be done on my Ferdinand Brinsley Memorial Lecture, about what Ange would think of it if I read it to her, about how we would part in the morning, about . . . oh God . . . about whether we would ever meet again. I also thought about how desperately I'd needed a pee, ever since I'd listened to the man above. I had, after all, drunk three-quarters of a pint of beer.
    I must have fallen asleep, because otherwise I wouldn't have woken up. At first, when I woke up, I couldn't think what had happened. Where was I? I reached out to feel the bedside table, my clock, my note-book kept open in the hope of inspiration. They weren't there, I wasn't at home – and why was I lying on top of my bed dressed in my shirt, trousers and socks? Had I got very drunk somewhere? At Lawrence's and Jane's? Oh God. That would be all Lawrence needed as an excuse to sack me. He hated me. He wanted to replace me with Mallard.
    I stretched my arm out and touched something soft. I almost screamed. There was somebody else in the bed. I went rigid with horror. Jane? Had I gone to bed with Lawrence's wife?
    I sat bolt upright and remembered. Ange. Room 393. Relief flooded over me, but only for a moment. This wasn't much better. What was I doing lying in my clothes in a hotel bed beside a twenty-four-year old darts groupie who was still in her clothes? Supposing she claimed I'd lured her back to my room and raped her? Shirt-sleeved don in clothed sex horror. He told me to keep my clothes on, and I believed