Entry Island

On the walk down the hall he felt as if he were pulling each foot free of treacle. He closed the door of his room behind him and leaned back against it. When he shut his eyes the ground shifted beneath his feet and for a moment he thought he was going to fall over. He opened them again quickly.

He found the remote for the TV in the dark and turned it on. Better to have something meaningless to shut out, than to lie listening to reproachful silence. He kicked off his shoes and lay gingerly on the bed. His ribs were less painful than before. The nurse was right, he thought. Just bruised. And he wondered again who had attacked him the previous night. Not Norman Morrison. And certainly not Kirsty. So who? He spread his hands on the bed on either side of his hips, as if some unseen pressure were bearing down on him and pressing him into the mattress.

His throat felt rough and his eyes were on fire. He closed them and saw flickering red light through the lids. His breathing was slow but laboured, as if each breath took a conscious effort. His whole body was screaming out for sleep.

The hours passed in an almost fevered delirium, not always fully conscious, but never quite asleep. The passage of time was punctuated by frequent, involuntary glances at the clock. The last time he’d looked it was 1.57. Now it was 2.11. The TV channel had reverted to its nightly diet of teleshopping special offers. Tonight, a kitchen device capable of chopping any vegetable into a dozen different shapes or sizes.

Sime swung his legs off the bed and stood up. He walked stiffly into the bathroom, avoiding the mirror, and ran the cold tap. Cupped hands splashed icy water on to his face. The shock of it brought momentary relief from the fatigue that numbed him, and he rubbed himself vigorously dry with a towel. In the bedroom he slipped his feet back into their shoes.

Beyond the curtain he slid open the inner glass door, then the fly screen, and unlocked the outer window, sliding it aside and slipping out into the darkness of the car park. The wind blew in across the bay in cold gusts. He zipped up his hoodie, pushed his hands deep into his pockets and started walking. Anything to avoid the excruciating boredom that came with insomnia.

The yellow light of street lamps fell in gloomy patches on the tarmac, reflecting off the roofs of cars in the car park. The main north — south highway was deserted. Lights shining from the windows of the hospital across the way were the only sign of life. Lights that shone for the sick and the dead, and for those who had to deal with both.

He had walked no more than fifty metres when he heard a woman cry out. And then a man’s voice. At first he thought that perhaps the woman was being attacked, and he spun around looking for the source of the voices. And then it came to him that these were the sounds of people making love. Voices that drifted out into the night from one of the hotel rooms, issuing from behind curtains drawn across doors left open for air.

Sime closed his eyes. Other people’s lives, he thought, and felt the ache of lost love, of moments once shared and now misplaced. Although his marriage was dead and hopelessly beyond resuscitation, he missed the warmth and comfort that comes with being close to another human being.

He stood for a self-conscious moment, listening to the shared experience of the strangers beyond the curtain, almost wallowing in his own misery. Before an ugly thought wormed its way through his self-pity. He looked back along the row of glass doors to his own and made a quick count. And then a moment of pure, incandescent jealousy seared his soul.

Without even thinking, he strode towards the lovers’ room and slid the screen door roughly aside, dragging the curtains out of his way. Pale light washed into the room from the street lamps outside, spilling across the bed and startling the man and woman mid-passion. The man rolled to one side, and the woman sat up, wide-eyed and staring towards the figure who stood silhouetted in the doorway. The bedside light snapped on, and Sime gazed in disbelief at the dishevelled figures of Marie-Ange and Daniel Crozes, their nakedness only half hidden by a tangle of sheets.

‘Sime!’ There was both disbelief and alarm in Marie-Ange’s almost involuntary evocation of his name.

So many things passed through his mind in a single moment that not one of them achieved any clarity. His wife and his boss were making love in her hotel room. Two people having sex. People he knew. One he respected, the other he used to love. And when suddenly the fog of confusion cleared he realised with a sickening sense of betrayal that this was not a one-night stand. He saw the half-empty bottle of champagne that stood on the dresser, the two empty glasses. The clothes discarded carelessly on the floor.

‘How long?’ he said.