Ursula looked at her watch: 3 a.m. She dried her eyes, her face, on a tissue, and pressed it into the mass grave in the compartment at the bottom of the car door. The DVD was still playing in the back of the headrests. On the driver’s seat, the imprint of Max’s behind could still be seen.
Tentatively, she stole a glance at the two girls. Both of them had fallen asleep again, their faces changing from white to green to red to blue as the scenes changed on the television. She had given them both a double dose of Calpol, and this seemed to be working wonders. Now there was just the sound of the TV to deal with.
Dare she? Ursula slipped her hand to the volume control and tentatively, by increments, reduced it by half. The promise of silence grew in the car. Just as she was about to lower the volume further, however, Bonnie stirred and let out a moan. Ursula froze; the girl shifted in her seat and went back to sleep. It was now or never. In a single bold move, Ursula brought the volume down to zero. She turned off both the screens, and darkness joined the silence in the Chrysler. The girls remained asleep.
But the darkness, the silence, brought no solace. Out of the window she could see fog accumulating, piling layer upon layer within itself. Her mind was whirring, replaying the exchanges with Max, trying to determine the innocent and guilty parties, constructing a powerful case that would lay the blame at Max’s door. She knew this way of thinking would only drive her crazy, but she was powerless to stop it, and anyway she didn’t want to. The problem, she thought, was that Max’s door was also her door. Or it would be so long as they remained married.
Why didn’t he need her more? He didn’t appreciate her, never paid her a compliment, didn’t even seem to notice her some days. When she bought sexy underwear, he didn’t notice; when she tried to get him to come to bed early, he didn’t notice, sat on his computer into the small hours. She was just the person who kept his house running, looked after his daughter and was useful for a shag every few months. If she had a casual affair with someone, he probably wouldn’t even care. Could she have a casual affair with someone? Could she?
She shook her head. It was stupid to think this way, stupid to visualise the future as it might be without Max, just her and Carly. What benefit could come from going back to the single life? She had lived out her twenties, her early thirties, as a singleton, had lived it until she had grown tired. She had fallen pregnant with Carly at the right time, just as she was feeling the hollowness of a life without family, just as her friends were beginning to have children, and the spectre of a barren life had started to haunt her darker moments. She had spent years creating a family home, such as it was. Surely it wasn’t all for nothing?
It was stuffy, so stuffy in here. Without making any decisions, she found herself standing on the road, closing the car door behind her, weighing the keys in her hand, glancing at the two sleeping babes through the window, their little chests rising and falling like an expression of the rhythm of the world; and the night was expansive and cold, made mysterious by the writhing of the fog; and she could see, and hear, people playing football on the other side of the road. Imagine that! She found herself wanting a cigarette. Despite everything, this brought a smile to her face. It was so surreal. This whole evening had been surreal. This orange light transforming everything into a Seventies sci-fi flick.
She looked around. Most people seemed to be asleep, but she imagined eyes everywhere, watching the children. She pressed a button on the moulded plastic rectangle from which the sabre of the key protruded, and the doors locked with a mechanical clunk. She was a gaoler. Or a prisoner locking the doors as she escaped.
This desire for a fag was too much. Where on earth had it come from? She hadn’t smoked for at least ten years, ever since she met Max; he had fundamentally disapproved, made her feel wretched; she had been proud as a child when she quit. How pathetic. Why shouldn’t she have a quick fag now? Just the one. Max would smell it on her but what difference would it make? But she didn’t have any cigarettes.
Her eyes fell on a tiny orange point of light lying low inside a silver Golf GTI. It brightened, moved to the side, then looped out of sight like a sparkler. She looked down and saw that her feet were moving automatically. For a moment she thought that the spell would be broken and she would trip, but they carried on, these feet, one after the other after the other. And then she had reached the car.
The person lying on the seat, which had been reclined almost to a horizontal position, hadn’t noticed her approaching. Music could be heard coming from within, a song she vaguely recognised. She looked back at her car – yes, if the children woke up, she would see them moving – then knocked on the window.
There was a sudden movement in the darkness of the vehicle and the music came to an abrupt halt. Then the seat was cranked slowly upwards and a man arced into the orange light, cigarette clamped in his mouth, eyes haunted by fatigue. Struck by the ridiculousness of the thing – this man rising up like some stage prop, his quizzical expression, the bizarreness of playing out one’s story on the motorway – she smiled.
He lowered the window, regarded her, said nothing.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ she said.
‘Is something funny?’
‘No, not at all. What could be funny?’
‘But you’re laughing.’
‘Oh God, sorry. I’m not laughing at you. I mean, oh God, I mean, it wasn’t you. It was just quite funny how you rose up like that.’
‘Rose up?’
‘Yeah. You know.’ She laughed again, blushing unbearably.
He looked uncertain, then smiled. ‘I’m Tom,’ he said. ‘Tom Popper. They call me Popper, or Pops. Occasionally Poppy.’
‘Ursula. Ursula King.’
They shook hands, formally, through the window. Posh, she thought. Really posh.
‘What can I do for you?’ he said.
‘What? Oh, yes. Right. I – I couldn’t help noticing the cigarette.’
He rummaged in the glove compartment, ignoring things that fell to the floor. ‘Please,’ he said, and then he was holding a packet of cigarettes, already flipped open with a cigarette protruding. She slid one from the pack. The little papery pencil tugged on her lip.
He held his own cigarette, now almost a butt, out to her. ‘I haven’t got a lighter myself, and the car one’s broken. So I got a light from someone down that way earlier and I’ve been chain-smoking ever since.’
‘There’s a lesson in there somewhere,’ said Ursula.
‘Yes: get a lighter.’
She lowered her face to the window, her mouth close to his fingers, and lit her cigarette from his; for an instant she saw herself from the outside, and thought she must look like a whore.
‘All right?’ said Popper.
‘Fine,’ she said quickly, and took a drag. ‘Just a bit chilly. Still, that’s the smoker’s lot, isn’t it?’
There was the slightest pause.
‘How rude of me,’ said Popper. ‘You’re welcome to finish it in here. Sorry.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘It would be rude of me.’
‘Nonsense. It was rude of me not to offer, and it would be rude of you to refuse.’
Rule number one: never get into a strange man’s car. Could she . . . yes, she could see the children from here. And she could see the fog-shrouded hill where Max had gone; when he eventually came down, he would be able to see her. There she was, in Popper’s Golf, shutting the door behind her.
There was an awkward silence as the car adjusted to the presence of a stranger.
‘So what do you do?’ said Ursula.
‘That’s rather direct.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I’m in the army.’
‘Oh, right. Navy? Air force?’
‘No. Army.’
‘Right.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m a publicist.’
‘Very showbiz.’
‘A publishing publicist. But I don’t say that because of the alliteration.’
‘Oh, I see. Fiction? Non-fiction?’
‘Non-fiction. Niche stuff, as Max puts it.’
‘Max, Max. Not the black guy? Tall? I think I bumped into him earlier. He was trying to borrow a phone or something. I have a good memory for names and faces.’
Ursula sighed. ‘That would be him.’
‘Seemed like a decent bloke.’
‘God, this cigarette’s good. Really, really good. I haven’t had a smoke since . . . for years.’
‘I haven’t started you smoking again, have I?’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Now I feel guilty.’
‘Don’t. It’s good. It’s really good.’ She took her iPhone out of her pocket. Of course. No signal.
‘Everything all right?’ said Popper.
‘Oh, yes. Just checking for a sign of him.’
‘Who?’
‘Max.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘Up there. Over the hill, so to speak. To get a phone signal.’
‘Why don’t you give him a ring?’
‘I haven’t got a signal either.’
‘Same here.’
There was a pause while Ursula peered into the blackness, trying to catch a glimpse of her husband.
‘Do you have kids?’ she said, without looking at Popper.
‘Never been blessed.’
‘Married?’
‘Nope.’
‘God. You know, when Carly, my daughter, was born, Max was out of town on business. No skin-to-skin contact or anything. I think that makes a difference, don’t you?’
‘I . . . I wouldn’t really know.’
Ursula stubbed out her cigarette and sighed. The fog was building outside the window, as if the motorway was lifting into the clouds.
‘Anyway, enough about me,’ said Ursula. ‘What brings you to this traffic jam?’
‘Just been to see my father. He’s poorly.’
‘Flu?’
‘Rather more serious than that, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh God, sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. Not your fault. Sorry.’
‘Is he . . . I mean, it isn’t . . .’
‘Well, you know.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, don’t be.’
Popper’s cigarette had gone out. The woman’s face was lined, her hair desiccated and without lustre, and the backs of her hands looked to him to have the merest hint of ageing. She was behaving rather oddly, too, distracted and jittery. Come on, he thought. She was human, just like him. She – like him – like everybody – would come to death in the end.
Ursula thought she saw movement on the hill. On impulse, she seized Popper’s hand.
‘Um . . . Ursula?’
‘What?’
‘You’re . . . er . . .’
‘Sorry,’ she said, and removed her hand, still peering out of the windscreen. ‘I thought I saw Max coming down. But it wasn’t him.’ She caught Popper’s eye, and realised how her words sounded. ‘Not that . . . I mean . . . look, I’m sorry. It’s been a stressful night.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Popper. ‘I understand.’ He placed his hand on hers. Did all hands feel like this? Like a bird in its final moments of life? Like a mechanical thing, barely living? Like the hand of his father? To her, he thought, his own hand must seem like some matted and bloodstained paw.
He released his grasp. Simultaneously, and in opposite directions, they both looked out the window into the night.