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I wish I could report here that Regina told me to put my money away and held me to her warm, soft breast and soothed my brow, the kind of thing that would happen in an arty film or novel. Two lost souls meeting, or some such nonsense. But in real life lost souls don’t meet, they just wander about and I think, in all honesty, she was as embarrassed as I was. A nervous breakdown in a red-lit booth was a breach in etiquette, and there was a palpable briskness as Regina took the remaining hundred euros, stood and opened the door.

‘Goodbye, Paul Newman,’ she said, her hand on my shoulder. ‘Go and find your family.’

80. mellow times

In the Mellow Times Café they played Bob Marley’s Greatest Hits, which even I would have rejected as a little obvious. My bud-tender, a tall boy called Tomas with a patchy beard and a flute-y, lisping voice, asked me what I wanted, and I asked for something that would simultaneously calm me down and cheer me up, not too strong; did such a brand exist? Seemingly it did; he gave me something called Pineapple Gold and, like a good GP, advised me not to combine it with alcohol, though it was too late for that advice as I had already been to several bars.

Back in the honeymoon suite, I pulled out my phone and noted a series of texts from Connie that I imagined represented a spiral of lunacy:

Where are you?

Call me!!!

It fun here!! Join us

come have fun

u ok hun?

funny old man callme!!!

love you loads

But even that last message failed to cheer me. ‘I love you’ is an interesting phrase, in that apparently small alterations — taking away the ‘I’, adding a word like ‘lots’ or ‘loads’ — render it meaningless. I opened the windows wide, set the Jacuzzi to massage, placed my ‘gear’ in a saucer on the edge and climbed in.

I wish I could report some psychedelic odyssey. Instead, I felt the same sense of overheated melancholy that I usually associate with three p.m. on Boxing Day. Good God, did people really go to prison for this? My head hummed with the unpleasant throbbing one feels in a bath that’s too hot, a sensation amplified by the fact that I was in a bath that was too hot, bubbling and churning like some terrible casserole. The drug was failing to bring about the amnesia I craved. I was, if anything, even more painfully aware of the failure of my best hopes. Despite my efforts, or perhaps because of them, the Petersens were stumbling. If there had been two of us, or four of us, perhaps there might have been some balance. But together we had the grace of a three-legged dog, hobbling from place to place.

By now I was feeling rather ill. The bedroom smelt like a burning spice rack and it was a non-smoking room, too, adding to my paranoia. My heart was beating far too fast and I became convinced that it would pop like my father’s and I would expire like a rock star, on the floor of an Amsterdam sex hotel after three beers and two puffs of a very mild joint. One hand on my chest, still soaking wet, I stumbled into our absurd bed and waited beneath damp sheets for Connie to come home.

She returned at three a.m., just as she had that first summer. It had been my firm intention to sulk but she was dopily affectionate, settling her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelt smoky, there was an unfamiliar spirit on her breath and a slight, not unpleasant smell of sweat.

‘Oh my God,’ she murmured. ‘What a night.’

‘Was it fun?’

‘In a teenage kind of way. We went to see bands! Did you get my texts? We missed you. Where were you?’

‘I met a prostitute. Called Regina. Then I OD’ed in the Jacuzzi.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, is that right?’

‘Where’s Albie?’

‘He’s next door. I think he brought some friends back.’ And sure enough, through the door of our adjoining rooms could be heard the sound of laughter, and an accordion playing ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’.

81. exposed floorboards

From now on there would be no more returns at three or four in the morning. Now we went to bed and woke together, stood at the sink and brushed our teeth, shaping the habits and tics, the gestures and dances of a life together, beginning the process by which things that are thrilling and new become familiar, scuffed and well loved. Specifically …