The Ritual

with Gayle?’ He glared at Phil. ‘And you with Michelle? Eh? She had a face on
all day, like a bulldog chewing on a wasp. I’d have got shot of the pair of them years ago. Put them out with the fucking bin bags. Let alone married them. I mean, what were you thinking?
I’d rather be on the street than have to look at one of their miserable faces for a single night.’
    Hutch reached out and grabbed Luke’s calf muscle hard. ‘Luke. Luke. Luke. Too far. Too far.’ Then Hutch stood up quickly and said to them all, ‘Fellas, I’m done
with you all. Remind me to never ever set foot in a room again when you’re together. Like we don’t have enough to deal with. I mean, men, get real. We’re in some pretty deep shit
right now.’ He stalked away, into the treeline to urinate.
    ‘And whose fucking fault is that?’ Dom shouted after him.
    Luke still didn’t feel that he had finished, or had said anything right. ‘Once we get out of here, we go our separate ways.’
    ‘Well, as far as you are concerned, yes. I won’t be looking you up again. You can be sure of that,’ Dom said and laughed, a note of triumph in his voice, that made Luke fondly
recall smacking his face with both fists.
    ‘Fine by me.’
    ‘We only went camping because you’re so skint. Me and Phillers and H wanted to go somewhere warm, but you couldn’t afford it. We were thinking Egypt for some Red Sea diving. So
this is what happens when you compromise for a free spirit, who lives by his own rules. Who ended up selling CDs for a living and is always skint.’ Dom raised the zipper on the tent flap.
    Luke sat still and tried to regulate his breathing. The rage was strangling him again. When he felt like this, he wondered if, one day, he might actually kill someone.
    ‘Best thing for you to do now,’ he said to the closed door of the tent, ‘is to think of how you are going to get your fat useless arse out of this place tomorrow. Because I
won’t be here when you wake up.’
    ‘Piss off.’

TWENTY-SEVEN
    Phil and Dom were both snoring inside the tents. Phil sounded like an engine, inhuman. It was not a noise Luke could get used to. He and Hutch could hear them as they sat
opposite each other in silence, more coffee brewing in the pot between them. As long as they could find water, coffee was the item they had plenty of. They smoked and stared at the little blue ring
of fire on the stove. It was the only thing that offered any comfort in a forest that had become as light-less as an ocean floor. The darkness became disorientating if you looked into it and tried
to make sense of anything that suggested itself. Rain pattered about them.
    Luke had shrunk inside himself and was accompanied by familiar thoughts. Why did some people have everything: careers, money, love, children, and some nothing? He’d not even come close to
those things.
    Or had he? Again, he revisited the unresolved questions of his existence. If he’d married one of those girls he’d chucked one year after meeting them in his twenties, like Helen or
Lorraine or Mel, would he now be just like Dom, or Phil or Hutch?
    And the full gravity of the last few years came pressing upon him again, even here, in this place, in these circumstances, after all he’d been through he still wasn’t free of
himself; whenever he stopped and rested, when the external distractions abated, he always felt worn out, so tired by his life; was forced to acknowledge that he had achieved nothing for his pains,
his transience, his changes of direction, or lack of direction, his misfires and mistakes. And he admitted to himself that he had always coveted his friends’ families, homes, careers, their
seemingly contented lives. Without such, it came to dawn on him a few years ago, you could not even begin to hope to be accepted. Not really; not in this world when you were well past thirty. But
he’d always hated himself too, for craving what Hutch, Phil and Dom had; those impenetrable worlds that so many took for granted; he loathed himself for desiring acceptance, when he also knew
how thwarted every job and relationship made him feel. But still, he craved it all. It was at the heart of his unhappiness, his despair. He would probably die incomplete, undecided, and
disappointed.
    ‘Buddy. There’s something I never told you.’ Hutch kept his voice low, but it was tense, as if he were about to make a difficult confession. Luke looked at Hutch’s face.
Light from the flames