Skinner dozed, and dreamed of mud.
They had returned from the restaurant just after midnight, their taxi having first dropped Andy and Alex at the West End. Having checked that Jazz was sound asleep, Sarah had gone straight to bed, but Skinner had remained downstairs, padding around barefoot, sucking idly on yet another bottle of beer.
Finally he settled down on the settee to replay a video tape of the evening's televised football. Motherwell had been his boyhood team, and thus had retained his lifelong adherence, yet he watched their resounding victory over Rangers with a strange apathy.
He had lived up to his earlier announcement by consuming a substantial quantity of alcohol, yet he could feel no effect, not the slightest trace of exhilaration, not the slightest fuzzing of his thought process. What he felt instead was restlessness, an almost overwhelming urge towards physical activity, and driving wakefulness.
The tape had run out, to be replaced by yet another screening of The Devil Rides Out, when Sarah appeared in the doorway, Wrapped in her white towelling robe.
`Bob, its gone one-thirty. I'd like to sleep, but I can't knowing that as soon as I've dropped off you're liable to come up and Plant your big feet in my back! Come to bed, please.'
He sighed, deeply. 'I just don't feel sleepy, but to please you, okay; He had lain there beside her in the dark, listening as her breathing slowed and smiling at her occasional soft snores but resolutely awake himself. Finally he had switched on his reading light and picked up his bedside novel, a piece of Terry Pratchett fantasy which he was reading for the second time.
He had enjoyed perfect sight all his life, but he was reaching that point in early middle age where tiredness at the end of a long day was beginning to take its toll of his eyes.
Gradually, the script became fuzzy; gradually he had held the pages further away, to try to retain focus; eventually the book had slipped from his fingers.
Skinner dozed, and dreamed of mud.
He was back in the field, staring across its flat grey acres, standing in his muddy-trousered uniform amid the jetsam of the crash. The unclothed, disjointed doll was at his feet. Unthinking, he bent and seized it by an arm, to pick it up. It hung awkwardly in his grasp, the limbs flopping unnaturally, the head lolling backwards.
It was quite a large doll, and strange in the way it was put together. Probably very expensive, he thought, remembering the model which he had bought for a friend's newborn daughter. The ball-sockets joining limbs and head to the trunk were remarkably lifelike, with no sign of the rubber bands which showed when most of the cheaper types were twisted to this extent. The touch of it, too. In his hand it didn't feel like plastic, as had his purchase. This one felt almost..
He dropped it, with a shriek of horror…
… and woke in the same instant, his lips still drawn back in the shape of his dream-scream.
This time Sarah woke with him. 'Bob, honey! What is it?' She took him in her arms.
It's okay,' he mumbled. I'm sorry.'
'What was it? What were you dreaming about?'
He shook his head. 'Nothing. It was nothing.'
It was hardly nothing, man. You're in a lather.' It was true, he realised, conscious of the cold sweat on his body,
'It was just a bad dream, love. You remember, I had them for a while after that business a couple of years back, when I got shot.'
`Sure I remember. But you didn't wake up screaming then.'
'No? Well, maybe it's only now that the full impact's coming home to me. Don't worry about it, it's just a one-off. The cold sweat's probably just the booze working its way out.
Now go on, get back to sleep. I'm fine now.'
To convince her, he switched off his reading lamp. In the dim green light of the radio-alarm's LCD clock, he saw her looking up at him doubtfully, but he forced a smile and pulled her to him.
It took longer than before but gradually she settled to sleep in the crook of his arm. He kissed her hair, and pulled the quilt up over her bare shoulder. He stared up at the ceiling, half-afraid of what he would see; but all that was there was magnolia emulsion, reflecting a faint green tinge from the alarm.
As he lay there wide awake, a part of his mind knew that it was not so much that he was unable to sleep, but that he dared not.