Jordan was waiting, sprawled on the embankment behind the car. Spotting Elizabeth, he stood up, waved and smiled. ‘Hi.’
Perhaps Coca Cola could teach the world to sing.
She pressed the key fob and the car lights flashed. ‘Ready?’
Jordan turned and beckoned a young woman who was sitting, cross-legged, a little way from him on the grass. She hoisted an outsized rucksack on to her shoulder and joined them.
The girl might have been anywhere between sixteen and twenty-two. Elizabeth had seen how girls at school morphed from children into young women once they swapped school uniform for teen fashion. A dozen tiny plaits, incorporating beads and coloured ribbons, punctuated her fashionably unkempt dark hair. Despite the heat she wore several layers of blouses and cardigans. A diaphanous purple skirt covered her legs, swirling around the tops of her Ugg boots. Ugh – not on a hot day like this. She was pretty, with a waifish quality but without a trace of the ingénue. The aesthetic might be described as hippy nouveau – less tie-dyed and more contrived than its precursor. (Elizabeth guessed she dressed this way not out of allegiance to a philosophy but because it flattered her slight figure.)
‘This is really kind of you.’ She had a confidence about her suggesting that she was older than she looked. ‘I’m Layla. After the song.’
Elizabeth looked at Jordan and raised her eyebrows.
‘We can give her a lift, can’t we?’ he said. ‘Mum always gives people lifts. She says it’s good karma.’
And, clever lad, you’ve lifted the most attractive hitchhiker on the M4.
Laurence never gave people lifts. He said it was asking for trouble. ‘They make horror films about hitchhikers. Why is that, d’you think?’ Elizabeth was with Laurence on this but a refusal now risked sparking off a showdown, something she didn’t relish in such a public arena. Not trusting herself to say anything, she opened the boot of the car and shifted the bags to one side. Layla heaved her rucksack in.
When they got in, Jordan insisted that the girl sit in the front whilst he stationed himself in the back, behind the driver.
‘We’re only going as far as Cardiff,’ she warned as they gathered speed down the slip road, wanting to make it clear that she had no intention of going out of her way for her uninvited passenger.
‘Yes. Jay told me.’
Jay? Elizabeth peered into the rear-view mirror, but Jordan had sunk into the corner, out of sight.
‘That’ll be fantastic,’ Layla continued, ‘it’s really, really kind of you.’
It was obvious from the girl’s effusive thanks that she sensed Elizabeth’s annoyance and was trying to win her over. She pegged away. ‘I love your earrings. Gorgeous blue. What is it?’
‘Lapis lazuli.’
‘Lapis lazuli. The blue and silver look fantastic with your skin tone.’
Elizabeth was finding the girl’s schmoozing hard to stomach. ‘Thanks.’
Layla picked up the CDs that Laurence kept stacked in the space beneath the player. ‘Elgar. Stravinsky. Bruckner. Great selection.’
Oh, come on.
After several minutes of unrequited conversation, the girl swivelled in her seat, directing her attention at Jordan, thus relegating Elizabeth to role of tolerated taxi driver.
What had he told this Layla girl while they were in the car park waiting for her? How had he described their connection? Elizabeth’s my mum’s partner’s mother. Was that how he’d put it? Of course all the girl was bothered about was getting a lift so it would have been of little interest to her.
More to the point, how was she going to explain Jordan to Diane’s friends? (She was sure to meet some during the coming week.) This is Jordan Fry. He’s my son’s lover’s child from a previous extra-marital liaison. Pick the bones out of that.
Alex had been with Vashti for less than a year. Elizabeth had tried, once or twice, to find out about her but all she discovered was that they’d met at a music festival in Cornwall the previous summer. At the time he’d been ‘seeing’ an amenable girl called Rachel, but poor Rachel had been dumped within weeks. Presumably Ms Fry had run through a string of partners before Alex came along. Or maybe not. Jordan must have been a turnoff for the majority of young men. They wouldn’t have put up with the limitations that a child imposed. Charismatic though Vashti clearly was, Alex might not have been so keen to team up with her had her son been three months or three years old, still requiring nappy changes and babysitters.
Jordan and Layla were talking. Their murmured conversation, smattered with laughter and half-finished sentences, did not include her. She was invisible to them, as forty-nine-year-old women are to most teenagers. She selected the button ‘3’ on the radio, enjoying the tremor of disapproval as Tchaikovsky joined them in the car.
Layla and Jordan. Kids these days had such ridiculous names. The girl had explained that she was Layla ‘after the song’ but who might Jordan be named after?
As far as her own name went, Elizabeth felt short-changed. She’d been named after the queen. Three queens in fact – ‘Elizabeth Mary Victoria’. Her parents had evidently been obsessed by royalty but she wished they’d been more adventurous. Why not Boadicea or Cleopatra or Guinevere? She’d read an article in the Sunday Times magazine about a Byzantine empress called Theodora. It was improbable that someone called ‘Theodora Guinevere’ would end up as a school secretary, albeit in what Jordan had so accurately described as a ‘posh’ school. When her sister came along, a few years later, her parents had switched from royalty to botany, christening their new daughter ‘Rosemary Violet Iris’. Rosie worked in the bank, lending weight to Elizabeth’s (shaky) theory that ‘safe’ names led to safe lives.
On they sped, past the junction with the M5 where a considerable proportion of the traffic peeled off, heading south for Devon and Cornwall. A blue sign flashed past. NEWPORT 19. CARDIFF 32. SWANSEA 73. She sighed. Another half hour. Her lower back was aching and, straightening her spine and flexing her shoulders, she sat as tall as she could, bracing her arms on the wheel and pushing herself back into the seat.
What was she doing thirty-two miles from Cardiff? Why on earth was she hurtling down the M4 with a boy she scarcely knew and a hitchhiker, for heaven’s sake? When it looked as if she’d have to cancel the trip, seeing Diane had seemed the most desirable thing in the world. But, as she’d confessed to Maggie, visiting Diane could be a challenging business and suddenly she could think of nothing nicer than being at home with a pot of coffee and a good book. And Jordan manacled to the railings for safekeeping.
Barely six weeks after meeting at art school, Diane had married fellow student, Paul Raines. Paul was handsome. Black haired, blue eyed, he might have been Tom Cruise’s older brother, had Tom Cruise ‘existed’ in nineteen eighty-one. The wedding had been a wild, arty affair. Everyone dressed in white and the wedding breakfast consisted of strawberries, bars of milk chocolate and mugs of cider. They’d danced themselves to a standstill. If Elizabeth had harboured doubts, seeing Diane and Paul together on that day and feeling the magnetism that bound them, dispelled those doubts. They’d seemed destined to be together forever and ever.
They were twenty when they married and twenty-one when Paul died of a brain haemorrhage on his way to the chip shop.
After that, Diane had gone to pieces. Drugs. Alcohol. Sex. Nothing that she hadn’t dabbled with before, but now on a destructive scale, as if she had to punish herself for being alive when Paul Raines wasn’t. Elizabeth – a student, living in another city, caught up in her own affairs – had done what she could to be supportive. But it wasn’t enough. One day the hospital had contacted her to say that Diane had overdosed on sleeping pills. It was touch and go for a while and that’s when, sitting at Diane’s bedside, she’d made a promise to Diane (and herself) that if ever Di needed her, she would come – no questions asked.
Diane had wanted her to come to Cardiff this week. That’s why she was hurtling down the motorway.
The road crested a hill and seemed to break free of its confines, the landscape broadening out into a gigantic patchwork of greens and yellows sweeping down to the Severn. The day was clear and two bridges were visible, one ahead and one off to the right, both spanning the estuary. Beyond lay a ridge of hills, topped with a skein of clouds. Three lanes of traffic careered down the incline and she felt her seat being pulled backwards as Jordan hauled himself towards her.
‘You’re way over the speed limit,’ his voice came from behind the headrest.
She glanced at the luminous figures displayed on the dashboard. Ninety-two mph.
‘Don’t you like going fast?’ she asked, at the same time braking to seventy.
‘The faster you go, the more carbon you emit,’ he said.
They reached the bridge that climbed up and over the Severn, the river’s swirling, muddy waters visible through gaps in the rails that formed the sides of the massive structure.
‘Crow-esso yuh jim-ruh or however you say it.’ Jordan attempted to read the words on the white sign at the side of the road. ‘Welcome to Wales.’
Layla laughed. ‘It’s pronounced,’ she cleared her throat and declaimed, ‘Croeso I Gymru.’
‘You Welsh?’ Jordan asked.
‘Sort of,’ Layla said.
‘Cool.’
Hypocrite.
It was only as they joined the queues at the toll booths on the far side that she remembered Carl’s parting words that morning. ‘You’ll need cash for the Severn Bridge. Five pounds fifty.’
Elizabeth had cash – plenty of cash – but it was in her handbag which, on leaving the service station, she’d locked safely in the boot of the car.
She turned to Layla. ‘You wouldn’t have any money by any chance?’
The girl rooted in her bag and held out a jumble of small coins, sweet wrappers and fluff. ‘I’ve only got … one pound seventeen pence. Sorry.’
The cars crawled forwards towards the pay booths. She would have to get out and retrieve her bag from the boot but would it be best to do it now, whilst she was several vehicles away from the kiosk, or when it was her turn at the window? Either way it was a very public proof of stupidity.
A hand tapped her shoulder and Jordan passed her a tightly folded ten-pound note.
‘Thanks,’ was all she could find to say.
‘That’ll make it twenty-five quid you owe me.’
Layla laughed. ‘Wow. That’s a pretty steep interest rate.’
Elizabeth handed the note to the attendant and dropped the handful of change into the tray between the front seats. The barrier arm lifted and she drove through.
Elizabeth consulted the sat-nav. ‘We turn off at the next junction. Where shall we drop you, Layla?’
Up until this point, Elizabeth had avoided showing any interest in her unwanted passenger. Knowing nothing about the girl minimised her existence and compensated, in a small way, for her own spinelessness in allowing Jordan to dupe her into this.
‘Oh, anywhere’ll do.’
‘Where are you heading?’
She shrugged. ‘Perhaps I’ll stay in Cardiff. I’ve got friends at the uni. They’ve all got part-time jobs here so they’re sure to be around.’
As instructed they took the second exit off the huge roundabout and were deposited immediately into a leafy suburban street. Elizabeth pulled into a lay-by next to a bus stop. ‘Will this do?’
‘Great.’
They all got out of the car. Elizabeth opened the boot and Layla hauled out her rucksack. Jordan took a phone from the pocket of his baggy jeans, flicked it open and held it out towards Layla.
She laughed, raising her hand as if to stop him but he had already taken the picture. ‘You horrible boy. Why d’you want a photo of me?’
‘I’m keeping a record of the week. Show my mum.’ He fished out a pen, pulling the cap off with his teeth, offering the pen and his other hand to the girl. ‘Gimme your number. I’ll text you.’
She took the pen and scrawled a string of numbers across the back of his hand. ‘I wish you were a few years older, Jay.’
Jordan blushed and dipped his head.
‘Well … safe journey,’ Elizabeth said.
‘Thanks again for the lift.’
They got back in the car, Jordan in the seat next to her this time. Glancing in the rear-view mirror she saw the girl waving and crossing to the opposite side of the road.