Fallout by Sadie Jones

again.
    She had a dimple, Luke saw, enjoying the little sign of fragility, that she could be sweet. Paul obviously liked it too.
    ‘Off you go, Luke,’ he said, ‘you heard.’
    Luke went.
    They talked about the actresses they had seen. The drink went straight to their empty stomachs and exhaustion made them all slow, sleepy.
    ‘Joanna Harris, Rebecca Rose, Amanda Larch . . .’ said Jack, scribbling biro onto his list.
    It was after ten. Ron the landlord’s counter-wiping was resentful.
    ‘They were the best,’ said Paul. ‘Let’s sleep on it. In at nine.’
     
    ‘Still driving that Mini, Leigh?’ said Paul, out on the pavement.
    It was just the three of them. The others had gone – Jack Payne giving a lift to Mike and ignoring everyone else.
    ‘It died a noble death,’ said Leigh. ‘Did your Ford Anglia make a recovery?’
    ‘Full. It’s doddery though. It’s round the corner – can we give you a lift anywhere?’
    We . Leigh looked from Luke to Paul.
    ‘I’m in Camden,’ she said.
    ‘We’re in Fulham. Not much of a detour,’ said Paul, and they laughed, because of course it was.
    They were revived. They had a late-night wakefulness, like morning. They could stay out. They didn’t have to sleep.
    ‘Camden it is, then,’ said Paul. ‘On my way.’
    The streets were totally empty and dark as a mine.
    ‘Remember when we met?’ said Luke, from the back of the car. ‘It was just like this.’
    Just as he said it the power came back, windows appearing in the dark, revealing the buildings above them; ambient light where there had been none.
    Paul laughed. ‘Just like magic,’ he said, trying for dryness but expressing only wonder.
     
    Leigh’s bedsit was tiny. The bed took up most of the floor and there was a lino vestibule for a kitchen on one side of the door and a single sash window hard up against the corner. She shared a bathroom on the landing.
    The two men came up with her and the three of them stood squashed all together by the front door, Luke and Paul not presuming to go into the bedroom part of the room. Leigh went in, by the bed, and spread her arms out.
    ‘Well. This is me,’ she said.
    Luke and Paul nodded and Leigh kicked some clothes under the bed. She had painted the walls white, green and brown, in geometric patterns, hand-drawn, and the lampshade was hooped paper. A plant sagged by the window. She made coffee, and then all three sat on the bed – there was nowhere else – but still bundled in their coats, partly because it was cold and partly because they didn’t want it to look as if they were undressing at all.
    ‘I’ve got a two-bar,’ she said.
    ‘Crank it up,’ said Paul.
    Leigh put the electric heater onto the pine table because if it went on the ground it singed the sheets. She got into a tangle with the flex tying around her legs and then knocked over some leaflets from a museum onto the floor, and she began to laugh. They all three laughed for a second but Leigh had a giggling fit coming on; a rising hysterical surge of gasping laughter, for no reason but that there were two men in their dark coats sitting on her lonely bed and staring at her fighting with the two-bar heater. She couldn’t stop.
    ‘Sorry,’ she managed, horrified, unable to control herself. She was crying with laughter. ‘Someone slap me,’ she said.
    Paul and Luke exchanged a look.
    ‘It’s probably hysterical hysteria,’ wept Leigh, ‘like Freud said, it’s a sort of mad sex thing, you know – repressed virgin needs or – God, I have to stop – I’m a woman . . .’
    And she slithered onto the floor between the bed and the wall, laughing more, the giggling bumping up against sorrow, threatening to release something from her, weak sadness or abandon. Her legs were feeble. She could not breathe for laughing.
    Paul found that he was blushing. His cheeks were burning. It wasn’t the two-bar, that had begun to glow furiously; it was the words sex , Freud and, mostly, virgin . He