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JIM
On the night of Wednesday, 24 October, after working all hours, basically until I was ready to drop, I
dreamed of Emma and I dreamed of Benedict Finch too. I remember this because in the moment
before waking properly, when the dream was most intense, I clutched her, pulled her to me, and
expected her to understand why. She’d been in the dream with me after all.
Instead I scared her. She yelped and sat up, confused by being woken abruptly.
‘What?’ she said. ‘What is it?’
I realised my mistake then. Her voice, her actual real voice, chased the shadows of the dream
away.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
She relaxed, fell back onto the pillows and looked at me with sleepy eyes. She said, ‘You look
exhausted,’ and then, ‘What time is it?’
I’d forgotten for a moment that dreams are private.
The dream starts at Portishead lido, where I’m meeting Emma for a coffee in the café. I sit down
opposite her. We’re the only customers. Across the room, amongst a host of empty tables, there’s one
that has a ‘reserved’ sign on it. Outside, the water in the Bristol Channel looks grey and squally under
clouds that are darkening, filthy and low. I feel as if we’re in the last place on earth. I crave a
cigarette.
‘I like it here,’ says Emma.
‘Really?’ I say. ‘I feel as if I’m in an Edward Hopper painting.’
She laughs. ‘Nighthawks? I know what you mean.’
‘Something like that,’ I say. I don’t know what the painting is called, just that it shows a stark bar,
only four people in it, muted colours, and a big dose of bleakness as its theme.
‘You don’t like it?’ says Emma.
‘No, it’s fine. It’s nice.’
Emma starts talking fast. She’s brimming with ideas that spill out of her and bounce off in different
directions, as if you’d tipped out a basket of tennis balls and suddenly they’re bouncing everywhere at
once, their individual trajectories too fast and too random to track.
Her dark eyes flash and dart, and her skin is a soft, dusky brown. Her lips are full. In repose, her
face is symmetrical, perfectly proportioned. When she’s animated she looks intelligent, intense and
engaging. When she smiles it’s surprisingly mischievous.
As she talks, Emma disentangles the string of her tea bag from the handle of her cup and dances the
bag up and down. It releases dark curlicues of flavour that creep through the hot water and mesmerise
me. I’m enjoying the moment, loving her company, but my cosy trance is broken abruptly by a silence
that’s weighted with suspense, like a breath held, because Emma’s stopped talking, and she’s fixated
on the table that’s on the other side of the café, the one that’s reserved.
‘Jim,’ she whispers. ‘He’s right under our noses. Look.’
I turn and I see him too. Benedict Finch is sitting a few feet away from us and I realise that the table
was reserved for him. He’s wearing his school uniform, just like in the photo we put out of him. He’s
a really beautiful child.
I get up, but my motion is retarded, and I can’t move towards him as quickly as I want to. The air
around me is viscous and intolerably heavy. Where my bones should be I feel only weakness, a