There was something attractive about the lights along the E18. Miriam did not quite know why, but she had always liked them; a childhood memory, she supposed, from the back of the family Volvo on the way to visit her grandparents. The warm glow from the lamps. Wheels against tarmac. Soft voices from the front. Her parents. The way they would flirt with each other with the radio in the background, always after a mild quarrel: she wanted jazz, he wanted classical. How safe she had felt in those days.
‘More coffee?’ Jacob said, pushing his round glasses up his nose.
‘I still have some left, so no, not just now.’ Miriam smiled, taking another sip from the metal cup. They had to stay awake, after all; this could take all night.
‘I brought two Thermos flasks.’
He turned up the heating a little inside the car.
It was cold outside. Practically winter. But Miriam still felt warm. She leaned back against the headrest and looked up at the lights again. The naivety she had had as a child almost made her smile now; how innocent and pretty everything had been. Her mother’s hands softly stroking her father’s hair. The way he had smiled at her. Time without end. Childhood was like that. Every single moment would last for ever. She emptied the coffee cup and smiled to herself, a little sleepy now; with every streetlight they passed she got flashbacks to the lovely trips of the past. She had given it a great deal of thought recently, what she had been like as a teenager. She couldn’t wait to grow up. Now, she realized how good her life had been back then. She smiled, and poured herself another cup of coffee from the Thermos.
‘Odd, isn’t it?’ Jacob said.
‘What is?’ Miriam said, her eyes starting to close.
‘Sometimes you can plan too much, and then it turns out there had been no need.’
The young man with the round glasses smiled as he looked at her, but his face was a little odd; it was almost as if Miriam could not focus on it properly.
‘Do you know what I mean?’
‘No, not really,’ Miriam said, taking another sip of coffee.
She needed to stay alert, clear-headed. It could take time. They might have to be there all night, and she was already starting to nod off. Not good. She drank more coffee as Jacob turned to her and smiled again.
‘Take the coffee, for example,’ Jacob said. ‘I packed Coke, Farris and bottled water, in case you didn’t want coffee.’
Miriam didn’t know what he was talking about. She leaned back and looked up at the lights again. They seemed even warmer and more yellow than she remembered them. Billie Holiday. Her mother always loved her singing. Miriam smiled to herself and suddenly had to concentrate to keep hold of her cup, which seemed to be slipping out between her fingers.
‘But you said yes to coffee immediately, so the others were wasted.’ Jacob chuckled softly, and shook his head. ‘I could have spent that time doing other things, don’t you see?’
Miriam looked drowsily in his direction, but his face was no longer there.
‘How long until … we … get there?’ she mumbled. ‘Until we join … the others?’
It took her for ever to utter the last sentence.
‘Oh, they’ll have to manage without us.’
‘What … do you mean?’
‘We have more important things to do, don’t we?’
The young man with the round glasses turned and smiled at her again.
But Miriam did not see it.
She was already asleep.