Peter and Steef's U2 concert night

Peter and Steef’s U2 concert night begins as a shared experiment in ecstasy and becomes a test of loyalty: Peter moves from feeling shut out of the crowd to claiming a profound bond with Steef, then helps him through a drug-fuelled panic. The night’s physical intensity and emotional candour sit alongside Peter’s troubled marriage to Eva and the grief that still shapes his life after the loss of Lieve.

Background and Emotional Stakes

The concert takes place in a period when Peter is trying to find a new balance after the loss of Lieve. He later tells Hetty that he is no longer consumed by grief day and night: he and Eva have new friends, and he has returned to music and motorcycling. Yet being in therapy brings back the suffering they have lived through. The concert’s exhilaration therefore belongs to a life in which recovery and grief coexist, not to a clean break from the past.

Peter’s grief has also been bound up with guilt and avoidance. At Lieve’s grave, he remembers staying away since the funeral and describes feeling guilty rather than the love he thinks he ought to feel for a child he never got to know. That unresolved pain gives weight to the concert’s temporary release. Music draws Peter into the present, but the night does not establish that the loss has been overcome; it reveals how intensely he can feel when music, drugs, and Steef’s company loosen his usual restraint.

The Concert and the Crowd

Steef’s ecstasy appears to take effect within about twenty minutes. At the Amsterdam ArenA, he bounces with excitement, joins the wave, whistles, waves, claps, and chats with strangers. Peter, by contrast, monitors every bodily sensation and feels nothing at first except the need to urinate. He is anxious about leaving Steef alone, and the press of the crowd makes that dependence tangible: as the audience surges toward the stage, Peter follows behind Steef’s broad back, apologizing as people push past him.

When Peter finally goes to the toilet, the filthy floor soaks his trainers. The crude, uncomfortable detail gives way to a sudden reversal: back among the crowd, he feels the music, the audience’s affection, and a sense of belonging. He jumps and raises his hands as the stadium moves together. During “Elevation,” the crowd becomes, in his perception, a single swaying mass. The concert changes from something Peter fears he is missing into an experience in which he feels included at last.

That release also becomes sexual. Peter responds to the people around him with uncharacteristic openness, touching and kissing a young woman in the crowd and wanting to go further before she turns her attention back to the performance. He then sees Steef again and, as they jump together, feels that they belong together. The drug amplifies the sensation, but Peter’s thoughts give it a personal meaning: he regards Steef as his friend and soulmate, not merely a companion at a concert.

From Exhilaration to Crisis

After the concert, Peter and Steef leave hand in hand with two women from Budel. They share long, wet kisses with them outside, but the mood has already changed for Peter. When one woman offers to go home with him, he no longer wants her company; he wants to be alone with Steef. The swift turn from sexual possibility back to the friendship he values makes the night’s shifting attachments explicit.

The evening continues at a nightclub. Peter takes another half-pill despite thinking that he should not. He turns off his mobile phone and removes his wedding ring, then reflects that Eva does not know where he is and may not worry. He wants her to worry and be afraid. This deliberate gesture introduces a harsher strain into the night’s freedom: Peter’s separation from his marriage is not simply forgetfulness or intoxication, but includes a wish to make Eva feel his absence.

Steef becomes convinced that men he identifies as Yugoslavs are after him and insists that they must leave immediately. As they push through the club, Peter sees Steef trembling and becomes frightened too, imagining that the men may be waiting outside. When a doorman considers involving the police, Peter intervenes. He says that Steef is ill and claims that his medication is in the car, asking to be let out so Steef can take it. The doorman opens the door, and Steef rushes outside.

Aftermath and Significance

Outside, Steef is still overwhelmed. Near the water, Peter wets his hands and places them on Steef’s neck; Steef turns toward him in tears and admits that he is terrified and wants the feeling to stop. Peter suggests water and food, asks whether he should call Rebecca or Eva, and remains with him. The earlier scene of two friends swept up in music has become one of care: Peter’s attention shifts from his own euphoria to Steef’s immediate fear.

They walk for what feels like hours through quiet streets and past empty office buildings. As the sky grows lighter, Steef stops, holds Peter by the shoulders, and thanks him for being his friend, calling him a remarkable man. Peter is moved and says that, despite what happened at the end, he had an incredible night. The closing exchange does not erase the panic or settle the complications in Peter’s marriage. Instead, it gives the night its clearest outcome: after the drug-driven confidence, sexual experimentation, and fear, the connection Peter returns to is his friendship with Steef.