The Museum of Doubt by James Meek Read Free Book Online Page B

fight it, it was becoming part of me and that was me for the rest of my life with this extra, unwanted, itching skin.
    As things stood the rest of my life was being measured out in red cat’s eyes beaded along the A90, and the vision of the long cat of after dark expired at the water’s edge, if not sooner. Arnold, I said, Arnie, wait, OK. Whatever you think, let’s talk. Let’s take time to talk. We’ll go down the waterfront and get a carryout and sit up all night and talk it over. All weekend if you want. I can’t talk when you’re driving like this. It’s putting the wind up me.
    Arnold laughed. Putting the wind up you! he said. Good. Scientists say thirty per cent of the human brain is set aside exclusively to react to fear.
    Bollocks, I said. Sixty.
    The laugh went out of Arnold’s face. He was leaning forward, his chin almost over the wheel, staring ahead. I don’t know I want you to talk, he said.
    Come on Arnie. She was 17, she knew what she was doing.
    She was 16.
    OK, she was 16 at the beginning, but she was very self-possessed.
    It’s interesting you talk about possession, said Arnold.
    Christ, you’re the one who was doing the my daughter my daughter bit! I was working up an anger because I could see we were going to make it to the terminal and up the ramp no bother. She was old enough to be living by herself. It’s not like I was the first.
    Arnold’s left hand came swinging off the wheel and I flinched. But he was just changing down from fifth to fourth.
    What are you doing? I said. We swung off the dual carriageway onto the back road into Queensferry, the long way round to the terminal, narrower, slower, and with great opportunities for head-on collisions.

    You’re such a bastard, Con, said Arnold, and you never bother to remind yourself of it.
    I had a tight hold of the door-grip with one hand and my seatbelt with the other. We came up behind a Capri tanking along at 70 and Arnie took it on a blind bend just as something bright and screaming came round in the other direction. I closed my eyes, bent down and wrapped my arms around my head. There was a shrieking sound and horns, the Capri must have melted its brake pads to let us in, and we lived to fight another second.
    Whatever it is I’ve done to upset you, Arnold, I’m sorry, I shouted.
    No need to shout, said Arnold, frowning.
    Slow down. There’s a bend – Jesus.
    How d’you think it feels when you’re wife’s just died and they put you in jail for it and the daughter you raised for sixteen years stops seeing you ’cause she’s getting screwed by a man the same age as you are?
    Not good. Bad. There’s a fffffff … there was no connection! She didn’t want to see you any more. Nothing to do with me. We were in love for a while, it was good for both of us, and then we drifted apart.
    We were accelerating into absolute darkness on the wrong side of the road. There was nothing to overtake any more. Like the wrong side was smoother. I could see the orange glow of Queensferry ahead and a pale scimitar of headlights rising and falling through the trees before we got there, the car we were about to go head to head with, though we knew it, and they didn’t, they’d dip their headlights and slow down a little, voodoo steps to safety, they would never know. Apart from the apocryphal 30 seconds. He’d almost convinced me with that one.
    There’s a car coming, I said.

    It’s OK. We won’t hit it. You know, Con, 95 per cent of teenage girls who have relationships with men twice their age or more say love was never a factor.
    I remembered reading that in Marie Claire when I was still seeing Jenny and worrying about it.
    You’re talking shite, Arnold, I said. You’re starting to believe your own apocrypha. There aren’t any facts about love. Would you move to the right side of the fucking road?
    It was over before I had time to wet myself, and when we’d swung round the bend into the blaring glaring squealing ton of glass and metal