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‘Each morning in every family, men, women and children, if they have nothing better to do, tell each other their dreams We are all at the mercy of the dream and we owe it to ourselves to submit its power to the waking state’ – La Révolution surréaliste, No 1, December 1924 ALPES-MARITIMES, FRANCE July 1994 A Mountain Road Midnight When Kitty Finch took her hand off the steering wheel and told him she loved him, he no longer knew if she was threat­ening him or having a conversation Her silk dress was falling off her shoulders as she bent over the steering wheel A rabbit ran across the road and the car swerved He heard himself say, ‘Why don’t you pack a rucksack and see the poppy fields in Pakistan like you said you wanted to?’ ‘Yes,’ she said He could smell petrol Her hands swooped over the steering wheel like the seagulls they had counted from their room in the Hotel Negresco two hours ago She asked him to open his window so she could hear the insects calling to each other in the forest He wound down the window and asked her, gently, to keep her eyes on the road   ‘Yes,’ she said again, her eyes now back on the road And then she told him the nights were always ‘soft’ in the French Riviera The days were hard and smelt of money   He leaned his head out of the window and felt the cold mountain air sting his lips Early humans had once lived in this forest that was now a road They knew the past lived in rocks and trees and they knew desire made them awkward, mad, mysterious, messed up   To have been so intimate with Kitty Finch had been a pleasure, a pain, a shock, an experiment, but most of all it had been a mistake He asked her again to please, please, please drive him safely home to his wife and daughter   ‘Yes,’ she said ‘Life is only worth living because we hope it will