Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

Adam Thorpe

spending too long making out with the jigging female. Suzie feels her stomach sort of fire up, sweat happening on her temples, her belly going shiny with it. Crazy! He is a sociable guy, that’s all. Says who? Another peal of laughter breaks its bubble on the train’s ceiling. She stares at nothing out of the window, feeling like the outside’s mist of greyness. Which may in fact be on its way to turning black. It’s getting dark way too early every day these days. Going backwards, again. England, going backwards. Eventually he swims back down the aisle (she always sees it as like that, like swimming, the way people steady themselves with their hands on alternative head-rests) and slumps into her old aisle seat. He is somewhere else.

He does do this phased- out thing, and not just when he’s done a bit of chem: he drifts now and again, like he is swivelled round in his own body and contemplating the interior. But it isn’t the same, this time; he is excited. His long eyelashes meet each other and his eyes are rolling about beneath the lids and his sharp straight nose – his mother’s nose – is a little rucked up, like a cushion you want to smooth out. He is breathing almost heavily; anyone’d think the trip to the toilet was a run around the block. ‘What’s up, Jazz?’ He doesn’t open his eyes. Instead he says, quietly, ‘I’ll pick up a deal.’ ‘Eh?’ ‘Earphones. The mobile. Have a hunt on the £2

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