In the first twelve months her e-mails had been full of suggestions that he follow her out there, and the one trip he’d made to see her had ended up like a glossy sales pitch. Then she’d given up, and though she’d never said anything he got the feeling she was probably seeing someone else now. He hoped so anyway.
He closed the door behind him and made to walk to the study but hesitated, looking at the stairs, snagged by the memory of the video. He walked down a flight and retraced his filmed steps from the bedroom door, down the second flight to the ground floor, hesitating again in the hallway.
The kitchen seemed the most obvious place he’d have walked in his sleep but standing there he felt drawn to the lounge instead. He followed his instincts and walked through, staring around the room again for any sign that he’d been in there during the night. Seeing nothing obvious, he edged around the room, studying everything in more detail, studying the bookshelves in particular, finding nothing.
Finally he walked through into the kitchen. He’d been in there briefly that morning and had looked around. He’d seen nothing and was surprised now that he hadn’t noticed the book on the table, an old paperback collection of East European poetry, picked at random no doubt from the shelves in the lounge.
He sat down and flicked through its pages. He assumed this is what he’d done for the lost seventeen minutes the previous night. He’d gone into the lounge, taken a book off the shelf, brought it into the kitchen and sat at the table with it as if reading.
Looking at it now made him wistful, partly because of the mournful poems, Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Milosz, partly because it was a book from his pre-university days. The person who’d first read these poems had been a romantic, learning them, reading them aloud. It was a wonder where he’d gone.
He’d grown up he supposed, moved on. He took the book with him now, up to the study. He’d show it to Ruth tomorrow, fill in the blanks, let her keep it if she was interested. And as his rational mind had known all along, there’d been a mundane reality behind what had happened last night, behind the sleepwalking at least.
Once in the study he opened the drawer in the desk where he kept his address books and diaries. He had nothing for Natalie or Matt, only their parents’ addresses. He had a contact for Rob though. The two of them had exchanged Christmas cards every year, always updating addresses, saying how they should get together sometime.
About seven years ago Rob had left a message on Alex’s answering machine but that was as close as they’d ever come to real contact. And now, finally, he was about to return the call, even though Rob probably wouldn’t be there, somewhere in central Africa instead, reporting on some grisly conflict for the Telegraph.
He rang the number, listened to Rob’s voice on the answer-message, unchanged and oddly familiar after all this time, waited for the beep.
‘Hi Rob, it’s Alex, er... Alex Stratton. I’m guessing you’re overseas but if...’
He was cut short by a click at the other end and Rob’s voice saying, ‘No, Alex, I’m here. I was screening.’ Alex was thrown, and after a moment’s silence Rob added, ‘Amazing. Amazing. Jesus, it’s good to hear from you.’
‘I thought you’d be in Africa,’ said Alex, aware of how lame he sounded but still stunned that Rob had answered.
‘No, I’m finished out there. Got a gig in Kosovo. That’s why I was screening - I’m leaving in a couple of days and there’s a shitload to do.’
‘Kosovo?’
‘Yeah, not as odd as it sounds. I was in Bosnia for Reuters before I ever went to Africa so I’m an old Balkan hand. Anyway, forget that! I mean, this is momentous. Alex Stratton finally graces me with a phone call.’
‘I know,’ said Alex. ‘I’ve been meaning to get in touch for years but you know how it is. Have you kept in touch with the others?’
‘Only Nat really, phone call every year or so. Had a couple of letters from Will but that dropped off pretty quickly. And Matt, Matt just slipped off the radar from the minute we left. Have you heard anything from him?’
‘No.’ He thought back to Luke’s visit. ‘Listen Rob, the reason I’m calling, I found out last night, Will died of a drug overdose.’ There was silence at the other end, enough that eventually he added, ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yeah, I’m still here.’ There was another pause before Rob spoke again, his tone one of somebody who simply didn’t know how to react, who perhaps thought he should be saddened and yet wasn’t. ‘I don’t know what to say. I mean, Jesus, it’s terrible. I haven’t seen him in ten years though. It wasn’t intentional, was it?’
He didn’t need to know, was just asking what seemed like the right question, but all the same, Alex said, ‘They don’t think so. He’d been an addict for six or seven years, heroin. Truth is Rob, he never got over the accident.’