J Fifteen minutes. Twenty. If only he’d stop playing silly buggers and run, he’d be sitting nice and cosy in Matilda’s lap by now

S She’s disappeared again. It’s pitch black. No moon. No stars. It’s too much. I want to curl up by the side of the road and go to sleep

J Thirty minutes and no sight of him in my back lights. Go into reverse. Where’s the silly sod gone?

S I close my eyes and dream of the Friday evening I met a magnificent woman in a club called Mingles in Piccadilly Circus, London Town. How I drowned in her voluptuousness our first time together. How I discovered visitors from the past in that bed-sit in dingy old Clerkenwell. How I danced around a fire that first night in an empty woodland campsite in France. How she cooked a lovely meal for me on a little Calor gas stove. How we threw rosemary branches on to the flames. How we sipped Armagnac. How we gathered each other up in our eyes and held on tight

J Good Lord! Lying in a field like he’s sleeping in a five-star hotel

S Well, come on, gerrin, if you’re coming, startled me out of my reverie

J Well, come on, gerrin, if you’re coming. I have to call out thrice before he wakes up and gets into Matilda, shivering. Bloody nutter

S She puts Nina Simone into the cassette deck and sings along:

There is a balm in Gilead

To make the wounded whole

There is a balm in Gilead

To heal the sin-sick soul

J Me, I’m a bomber and a sapper. Know how to detonate. Know how to diffuse

Slipping into the Middle East

Puddles of oil do not announce themselves but lie with the quiet patience of landmines, ready to skitter us into oblivion. We’ve finally picked up the main road to Iraq, and Jessie is forced to coax Matilda very slowly ahead. Yes, we have a sense of déjà vu, but at least it gets us talking again. A stream of oil tankers whizzes past us. Time is money on the oil run and the roadside is testament to the price. Tankers lie upturned on each side of it like garrotted skeletons with disembowelled bellies, which the wilderness of grass, bark and bracken has long since claimed as its own.

To our right is the barbed-wire fence of Syria. Behind us is the West. Inside me is a strange beast.