The car park was empty. It would close in another hour if the caretaker could drag himself away from his cottage to padlock the gate. The windscreen misted up, obscuring the view of the winter wheat, the dun hedgerows, the bulk of the aerodrome and beside it the gray cracked tarmac of the runway from where Mrs. East’s pilots had taken off on their wartime bombing missions. Beyond the mist, raindrops fell and ran together to create ripples of descending water. When the joint was rolled, I plucked it from his fingers and got out, briefly feeling the wet slap of the wind before I slid open the side door and got into the back. After a minute, I heard him open his door and get out on the driver’s side. He was gone minutes and when he finally came in, his hair and face were wet with rain.

Marcus gave me a smile that was just a movement of the lips. I sparked up and we smoked, passing the joint to and fro, but that wasn’t what we were there for. The rain fell on the roof and the radio, tuned as always to Radio One, played deeply inappropriate songs—Ricky Martin was “Livin’ La Vida Loca.” Britney Spears was “Born to Make You Happy.”

When the spliff was halfway down, I pinched it out and, without meeting his eye, I crawled over to where he was sat, back against the wall panel, legs stretched out. I’d bought a black dress for the occasion and now I knelt in it before him, my knees either side of his thighs, his face at the height of my breasts. I stayed like that for a moment or two and then leaned in to press against him. His hands came up around me and I pushed against him and kissed him hard, and felt a quiver of triumph as he reacted, as his mouth opened and his grip tightened and I pulled back only long enough to pull my dress over my head.

All the sorrows and hurts were outside and couldn’t get in for now. I felt them circling, pressing against the windows, but they could not reach me. In the past, I had struggled to want to fuck Marcus often enough or at appropriate times. It took drink or a spliff, a fight, another woman eyeing him. But I wanted him now, even though I knew it was the end. It was like burning the house you live in, when there is a storm raging outside in the middle of winter. Don’t say you haven’t wanted to, never had the inkling, the almost-knowledge that everything you love and hold dear is holding you back. Back from what? I was going to find out.