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This was something about which we’d always been quite fastidious, and while neither of us panicked, we both were forced to contemplate the theoretical notion of parenthood, of how that might feel, what it might look like. We thought about it as we cycled across a squally Skye, we thought about it while lying whisky-breath’d in soft, strange beds in various B&Bs, we thought about it while peering at Ordnance Survey maps in search of shelter from the latest downpour. We even joked about it, that if it was a girl we would call her Carlisle, if it was a boy, Preston, and we found the idea … unhorrific. ‘Pregnancy scare’ is the traditional phrase and yet we weren’t scared in the least, and this, too, felt like another milestone.

On our return journey to London, we squeezed into a bunk the size of a large cot and Connie revealed that she was not pregnant after all.

‘Well, that’s good news,’ I said. Then, ‘Is it?’

She exhaled, then turned and lay with her hand across her forehead. ‘I don’t know. I think it is. It always was in the past. I actually feel a little disappointed, to be honest.’

‘Me too,’ I said, and we lay in silence for a while in our shared berth, taking in the implications of this.

‘That doesn’t mean we should start trying, full on. Not yet.’

‘No, but if it happens …’

‘Exactly. If it happens — are you okay?’

‘Just cramp.’ In truth I could no longer feel my legs, but didn’t want to move away just yet.

‘For what it’s worth …’ she said.

‘Go on.’

‘For what it’s worth, I think we’d be quite good at it. Being parents, I mean.’

‘Yes, so do I,’ I said. ‘So do I.’

And I returned to my own bunk, sure in the knowledge that she was at least half right.

88. couchette 2

We didn’t speak much on the sleeper train to Munich. We lay very still, stacked on shelves, in off-white cubicles of moulded plastic, wipe-clean, with ample sockets for recharging appliances. It was all very smooth and functional, but the hum of the air-conditioning and the blackness outside the window contributed to the impression that we were new inmates in some intergalactic prison cell.

We could have flown to Italy, of course, but I wanted us — the three of us — to at least touch on Germany and Austria, and wouldn’t it be more fun, more romantic, to be a red dot sliding across that great land-locked central mass? Playing cards and drinking wine in our reasonably priced pre-booked couchette while Albie strummed his guitar and read Camus next door, then waking refreshed in Munich, a city new to all of us. There were Raphaels and Dürers at the Alte Pinakothek, Monets and Cézannes at the Neue, there was a famous Bruegel, a Turner — Connie loved Turner. We would go to the beer gardens with Albie, sit in the August sun and feel light-headed with lager and meat. Munich was going to be wonderful.

But now Albie was gone, lost in Europe with a lunatic accordionist, and we two stumbled on in a daze of concern on her part, and guilt on mine. While Connie lay on the top bunk pretending to read, I stared out of the window.

‘He’ll probably have a much better time without us,’ I said, not for the first time. Not for the first time, there was no reply. ‘Perhaps I should call him anyway.’

‘What for?’

‘I’ve told you. To apologise, chat. To check he’s all right.’

‘Let’s just … let’s just leave it be, Douglas. Yes?’ She switched off her light and the train moved on. Somewhere out there lay Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Wuppertal and Cologne, the German industrial heartland, the mighty Rhine, but all I could see were the lights on the Autobahn.

89. margaret petersen

My mother died shortly after our return from Skye, the first time a grave had opened up in my road of life. Another landmark, I suppose.

It seemed that she suffered a stroke while sitting quietly at her desk during a biology class, and it took her ever-obedient pupils some time to respond and raise the alarm. My father rushed to the hospital only to discover that a further stroke had killed her while she lay on a trolley awaiting diagnosis. I arrived two hours later and watched as he responded with quite startling rage; at the bloody pupils who had remained stupidly in their seats, at the bloody teachers and hospital staff, at whoever was meant to be in charge of this whole life and death business. My mother’s death was ‘bloody stupid’, he said — she had been two bloody years away from retirement! Grief manifested itself as fury then indignation, as if there had been an administrative error, as if someone somewhere had fouled up and got the order of things wrong and he would have to pay the price by continuing to live on, alone. Men, alone; it just wasn’t right.