I sat in the passenger's seat of a grey Ford Transit van next to a builder called Mick, from Essex. He'd seen me loitering at a petrol station a fair distance from the accident, and asked if I was all right.
"Just need a lift to the M1 service station so I can get a lorry from there." I looked into his kind eyes, which had wrinkles around them.
He scratched his short grey hair. "You're not a druggie are ya?"
I shook my head, then pulled up the sleeves of my arms to reveal two perfectly unmarked forearms.
"Cmon, it's over 'ere." He led me to his van.
Now, seated in his van I felt quite comfortable. It was as if we'd known each other for years. He lived in Harlow, in Essex, an hour from London, but had a job in North London. "Them posh families in North London, they've got the money see, so I travel." He was filling up his van with diesel and on his way home when he'd seen me. "What's your story then?" He handed me a plastic cup and Thermos flask and told me to help myself.
I sipped the tea, thinking about what my story really was, what I wanted to tell him. I decided against telling him my real name, and instead said I was called Ford. It was all I could think of, looking around the front seat of his van. It was either that, or Mick, which I thought would look a bit suspicious, or Ikea, or Macro - we were on the North Circular road after all. So I stuck with Ford. "Like the car. There's a character in this science fiction story I like, he's called Ford Prefect. My parents were big Douglas Adams fans." I smiled weakly and sipped the tea.
He nodded and turned up the radio a bit.
We arrived at a motorway service station where Mick dropped me off. He'd tried to get a bit more of 'my story' out of me during the rest of the journey. He'd even offered his neighbour's sofa for me to sleep on, "She's always got waifs and strays staying, mates of her sons. Somewhere to kip while you sort yourself out?"
But as kind as it was, I knew I had to get further away than one of the Home Counties. I needed to get way away from London if I was to escape Chris, properly. To never ever see him again.
As I jumped out of the van, Mick shook my hand and pressed some notes into it. I opened my hand and it was thirty pounds. "Take care of yourself. And don't spend it on drugs, alright." He smiled and his eyes crinkled again around the edges.
"I can't take this. It's yours." I tried to give it back and he wouldn't hear any of it.
"You take it. It's yours. Good luck to you finding your new life. I hope it's what you're looking for." He threw the money back to me, it lay on the ground and I picked it up before it blew away. "Besides, helping you is more important than a couple of quid. Take it, enjoy it, spend it. Sure you'll do the same to someone else who needs it one day."
I slammed the door and he was gone, in a cloud of black diesel smoke.
I'd always heard stories about 'the kindness of strangers' but never really believed it, or experienced it myself. I tried my best to do my bit, living in London can be pretty dog eat dog: I stood up on the Tube for someone who needed the seat more than me; I said thank you and please; I tried to have a little chat to shop assistants, or clients in the studios during my work experience. It was nice to get a glimpse of someone's life rather than just exchange money for goods, like a self service till at a supermarket. But never before had someone been as kind to me as Mick. His kindness hit me so much, as I stood all alone in the service station on the M1, I sat on the ground, took a breath and my body shook.
I thought about texting Lena, but then realised if I did I may well fold, and come back to London to stay at hers, and I knew how that would end.
Full of McDonalds for dinner, I'd found a table near where the lorry drivers sat for breaks, so I could strike up a conversation about 'going north', then my phone rang.
Chris.
Of course it was.
My finger hovered over the reject button before answering. I didn't even say hello and I was hit with a tirade of pure Chris: "What the fucking fuck are you fucking doing, eh? All my stuff in the bags? If you think you're getting away with this, you really don't know me. I'm not even sure how angry to get at the moment. This is just the warm up … " He shouted at me about the state of the flat first. I put the phone on speaker, and sat it on the table. Then he moved onto the car: "Fucking police called about the car 'cause I'm the registered keeper. You little shit. It's a good job you were insured. It took me a while to convince them of that. They still think you were drunk driving, that's why you ran away, but some plumber said you didn't smell of booze, but you were a bit dazed. You've had a narrow miss there." And I let him shout at me about the car for a bit as I stared out the window at the lorries doing a sort of mechanical ballet, manoeuvring between each other as one arrived and the other left. Their drivers formed their own little ballet too, sharing cigarettes, comparing routes - bits of paper I assumed were routes - before joining me in the warm for food, then changing partners, and doing it all over again.
I noticed the voice projecting from my phone had stopped.
"You still there, Darryl? Can you hear me?" Chris said, quieter now.
"Chris, I am sorry. I don't know what came over me. It was the air con unit, the heat, my lenses, lunch with Lena, I don't know. It was all of those things, and none of them. But I had no choice. I had to do it; I had to leave, because I couldn't be the person I am when I'm with you, any more."
"But I love you, babe."
"Do you? Or do you just love me making dinner for you, doing what you want? Having someone to fuck for hours, on tap, whenever you want? Isn't that what you love about me, Chris?"
Silence.
I picked up the phone to check he hadn't hung up. No, he was still there. "I need someone who takes my dreams seriously. I need someone who loves how I'm always floating about in the Milky Way with my dreams, and who realises that's who I am. I need someone who realises that doing a job I love, which means something to me, is as important to me, as whether the towels are piled up in colour order in the airing cupboard is to you. I can't work in the KFC because I'd rather die. Some people can, they can just turn a switch and do a job that pays them, and come home and buy a new games console. I'm not that person. What's so sad is that you still don't know that, after all this time of being together."
"I always knew the age gap would be a problem. We're from two different decades. Maybe it was never going to work."
"We are. You're right. Maybe it was always doomed to crash and burn." I shrugged to myself. It felt strangely liberating not having to fight with him any longer.
More silence. "What about my car? Work's going to hit the roof when they see it. What am I supposed to do about that eh?"
"It's insured, like you said. When I'm settled I'll send you a cheque, but to be honest, I think all the stuff I left but paid half for, it's swings and roundabouts."
"You what? You're going to do what? You are un-fucking-believable. I literally, can't … "
"Bye, Chris. Have a nice life."
"You don't know who you're dealing with. I will come after you, and I will get what I'm owed, just you wait -"
I did know exactly what I was dealing with, I'd lived with his madness and moods and unbelievable temper for far too long. I put the phone down. And he was gone.
It was a bizarre night in the service station. I got talking to a group of other hitch-hikers: one an Irish man in his late twenties who had spent the last week on a drink and drugs bender and needed to get back to Ireland to see his 'Mammy', and a couple who were on their way back from a music festival, having lost their friends - and part of their minds too, it seemed - and with no other means of travelling without money. I was relieved to climb into the lorry of "Call me Douggie," a long distance lorry driver with a thick Glaswegian accent, on his way back home from London with a load of fridges and freezers for Currys.
We had got talking over hot drinks in the early hours of the morning. I'd just about had enough of the bizarre antics and people I'd met trying to hitch-hike, and he was feeling lonely before a long drive back home to see his wife and kids - two men about my age, called Jimmy and Gregor. "You're not a smack 'ead are ya?" Douggie had asked over hot drinks.
I immediately pulled back my sleeves to show off my perfect forearms.
"Right enough. I'm away to Glasgow. Any good to you?"
"Glasgow'll do me fine." And we had cheersed our tea and coffee.
Once in the lorry the risk of hitch-hiking was just starting to sink in. I'd been lucky with the first lift, but now I realised I was probably pushing my luck. For the first few miles, I had a knot in my stomach. This hitch-hiking lark was pretty hairy. I thought I could judge people pretty well, pick out the weirdoes and ones who'd chop you up and put you in their wardrobe. But then I'd watched a documentary about Dennis Nilsen, the civil servant who'd done just that, with gay men he'd met at a club in Earl's Court, London. And he looked like any other civil servant.
Douggie looked like any other long distance lorry driver. The same as all the others I'd watched from my table in the service station. Only he was friendly. But of course he would be friendly if he wanted to persuade me to travel with him so he could chop me up and put me in his wardrobe, now, wouldn't he? Dennis Nilsen had been pretty friendly to those guys he'd picked up, too, if I remembered rightly.
I felt a shake and woke up. I realised I'd not slept properly for over twenty four hours. Douggie was shaking me and asking if I wanted some black coffee, his flask was in the glove box.
If he wanted to chop me up, he'd want me asleep, so he wouldn't offer me coffee. But then again, he'd be clever, he wouldn't be that obvious. He'd pretend to want me to have the coffee and really want me to sleep, so he could ...
"Eh, Ford, you want a coffee or not?"
I took up the offer and as the caffeine did its work, we had a friendly conversation about our lives. It was a bit like a first date, but without the promise/threat of sex at the end.
"I still can't believe your parents named you Ford. As in Ford Cortina, Ford Sierra, Ford Mondeo?"
"Yep, all of those. Although none of those are my middle name. Mercifully, I was saved from that."
"Did they work at the Ford factory, that's down London isn't it?"
It was Essex or east London, depending, but I didn't like to split hairs with Douggie. This was a question I'd not anticipated. "Err, Dad used to, but they wanted to name me after something they both loved. Dad bought his first new car when he was at Ford, a brand new Cortina. Mum said she was well impressed and that's what made her mind up to go out with him on the first date. So it was all down to Ford, really." Where on earth was all this coming from? I must have a talent for this. I'd better remember all this for next time I'm asked, if I'm sticking with the name.
"Aye, right enough, lad, right enough." He told me about his wife and, in particular, her temper. At first he referred to her as She Who Must Be Obeyed, then he abbreviated it to SWMBO, which just confused things with his thick Scottish accent, so in the end he settled on Shona - because that was her name. He'd gone 'away to the pub' one Saturday to meet some mates. A quick one became a few hours, and Shona called his mobile, telling him his dinner was on the table. Douggie - bless him, I thought he'd have known better since being married to Shona long enough to produce two sons in their twenties - but instead of coming home, he'd stayed in the pub, "for a few more wee drinks," he said. Shona appeared, shouting the odds in the middle of the pub, telling everyone how his dinner was in next door's dog and if he didn't come home right away she'd not give him any beer money for the next two weeks.
That had stumped me, that one. I said, "Does Shona work too?"
"Aye, lad, just a few hours in a shop in the middle of town - just about pays for her hair and nails I'd say." He laughed to himself and smiled at me. "Now she gets all my wages sent to her bank, on account of how I used to drink them all away when we were first wed. Now she gives me an allowance each week for drinking, packs of crisps and stuff with me mates. Without that, I'd have nothing. Nothing at all."
"And did she?"
"What?" He looked to his left at me.
I'd frowned and asked, "Stop your beer money?"
"A woman of her word, is Shona. She did, lad, aye she did. And right enough, I'd wasted her dinner, and her and the lads ate without me."
"How often do you lose your beer money?"
"Oh, it's not always that. She has a whole set of things to pull from her little box of tricks, depending on how bad I've been." He smiled to himself.
"Does it make any difference?"
He nodded. "And look, I'm only telling you this for a laugh. I do love her, the mad old bird that she is. I'm a pretty mad old bastard too when I want to be, so it sort of evens itself out, I reckon."
We sat in companionable silence for one junction of the M1, as he turned the radio up and we enjoyed Radio Two's Confessions programme, where someone wrote in asking for forgiveness for something they'd done, and the studio and audience decided if they were or were not forgiven. We listened to the DJ reading the letter about a woman who'd not told her son's girlfriend she'd cooked the roast veg, potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and gravy with meat juices. She'd happily chucked a Linda McCartney nut loaf in for the girlfriend, but completely forgot about all the other bits, cooking them in meat juices, especially since the girlfriend had said, 'No it's just the meat, I love the rest.' This was because her mum did a separate batch of veg and Yorkshires, just for her, all safely cooked in sunflower oil.
"What do you reckon?" I asked Douggie.
"I reckon, what she doesn't know won't hurt her. I mean, what harm can a bit o' meat juice do? She's a growing lassie, I'm sure. Little white lie, that's what that is, Ford. And you don't get through more than twenty five years of marriage and two children without a few of them every now and again. D'ya know what I mean?"
I nodded, then told him some stories about Chris's temper. I referred to Chris as "my friend who I used to live with" but Douggie was a man of the world, I wasn't fooling anyone. After the burned-dinner-and-cheesecake-pouring-on my head incident Douggie said, "Do you still live with this Chris lad?"
I sniggered slightly, he'd not been referred to as a lad for many years, much to his chagrin. "Not now."
"Up to when then?"
"A while ago." I looked out the window and started to comment on a lorry we were currently overtaking.
"Is that why you're here?"
More lorry commentary. The colour was suddenly very absorbing, especially how much it contrasted with the colour of Douggie's lorry.
"Ford, you can tell me. I won't tell anyone. I thought Shona had a temper, until I heard about your Chris. Fucking hell, he sounds like a fucking psychopath."
"No, he saved that for when the bathroom cleaners were stored in the kitchen cleaning zone. That was when he really lost it."
He smiled, and I could see the crinkles around his eyes. "So you're on the run? On the run from Chris, the psychopath? And you're using me as a getaway vehicle?"
"You could say that, I suppose. You're not going to tell anyone?"
"I couldn't if I wanted to. I don't even know your name. I'm guessing it's not really Ford."
I looked away and stared at a car below.
"Sounds to me you've had a lucky escape. Where do you want me to drop you when we get to Glasgow? I can drop you at the coach station, but that's pretty full of smack heads. The train station's not much better. How about … "
"Wherever you think best. I'm not bothered."
We pulled into a lorry park for an overnight stay. Douggie retreated into the back of the lorry's cab to get comfortable and I sat nervously, still part of me expecting him to appear with a chloroform-soaked hanky. He didn't, of course, and eventually I fell asleep across the seats. I woke to the orange light of the dawn across a car park full of lorries, the sun shining on their bodywork and giving the whole scene an out of this world feeling. This feeling intensified when, joining the dawn chorus of birds, was a pre-breakfast show presenter on Radio Two playing cheerful music and being far too chirpy for five a.m.
Douggie appeared from the sleeping area, threw on a coat and boots and left for the nearby trucker's café. He reappeared with a black coffee for both of us. When I started to say I didn't drink black coffee, he pushed it gently into my hands and explained we were "away in a quarter hour," so I might like to think again.
A few more comfortable hours passed, during which he told me about his two sons, what they did, how they'd so quickly grown from little shitting, puking machines with dummies and rattles to big puking, drinking, shagging machines with facial hair and no eye contact.
I continued with my story about how my made-up Mum and Dad had been united via a Ford Cortina, and he seemed to enjoy the diversion and amusement the fantasy provided.
We approached a large city, and I asked if it was Glasgow.
"Right enough, aye."
He weaved our way through the gradually thinner and more full of traffic streets until he reached the city centre. Somehow, he managed to navigate the lorry until he dropped me right in the city centre, near a row of shops selling tartan hats and sticks of Glasgow rock and Scottish shortbread. Tourists swarmed to the shops, taking pictures next to a man in a kilt playing bagpipes.
This was Scotland alright. And I'd made it in one piece.
Douggie stopped the lorry. "This alright?"
"Looks perfect. Thanks again. Good luck with Shona and the boys."
"You too, good luck with the new Ford. I hope Scotland means he's the right person you wanted to be."
He waved and I slammed the lorry door. He disappeared leaving a cloud of diesel fumes and the smell of air brakes.
I walked along the road, passing tourist shop after tourist shop, all selling the same authentic Scottish wares, all probably imported from China. I shook the cynical thought from my mind. I am not Darryl any more, I am Ford. And Ford lives in Glasgow.
I felt thirsty so I paused outside the next shop, which looked like it would sell cans of drink and not just tartan shortbread. I stared at its window full of little cards with hand written notes on. In front of the window was a crowd of men, talking to each other in a language I didn't understand, all leaning towards the cards, writing down details on bits of paper.
Have they not heard of online notice boards like Gumtree in Scotland?
I walked into the shop then I put the can of Coke I'd chosen on the counter and fumbled in my pocket for some coins.
The woman behind the counter said in an accent as strong as Douggie's, "Alright there, hen?" She chewed and folded her arms across her bosom before adjusting her jet black back-combed beehive hairdo, "Is there anything else you'd like, hen?"
"I don't … "
"Not from round here are you, hen?" She patted her beehive again. "Just got off the coach, have ya? Come up from London have you, hen?"
What was it with all the hens? What was she on about? Darryl would have just paid for the drink, smiled and left. But I wasn't him any more. I was Ford. And Ford hitch-hiked, slept in lorries with strangers, made up stories about his parents. I wasn't going to let this woman and her 'hens' and hairdo scare me, I was going to answer her question properly.
"Right enough, hen. Bye." She looked to a customer stood behind me and took their paper and chocolates, scanned them and took the money.
I turned to leave. Maybe I wasn't quite that new Ford person, not just yet.
"Did you forget something, hen?"
I was standing at the door, the busy street outside, full of tourists. The whole city of Glasgow ready for me to explore and see what it could offer me. I didn't believe in fate, but I did seem to have been pretty lucky on the old 'kindness of strangers' count over the past few days. Maybe this is where it runs out.
"I said, did you forget something, hen?"
I turned and walked back to the counter. "I've just got here, right, an, I don't suppose you've got any jobs as a photography assistant going begging, have you? On the cards outside, or is it all plumbers and builders?" I smiled and flicked the ring pull on the can.
"No, hen, I don't," she smiled.
I started to turn away, fiddling with the ring pull again.
"But right enough, I know a man who has."
I pulled the ring pull and Coke sprayed all over my top, down my arms and across my groin.
"Alright there, hen? Shall I get you a wee paper towel?" She handed me some paper towels and told me about her brother who had just started up his own business as a photographer, and he meant to put an advert in her shop, but he didn't get round to it, "He's a busy man, my poor wee brother, so he always tells me. A busy and disorganised man. Is that any good, hen?"
Is that any good? I could have hugged her, but as I leant in, I saw her eyes widening, and she held out her hands to stop me approaching further. "No need for that, hen. I haven't hugged my brother since the millennium so if you think you're coming near me, you've another think coming." She reached behind the counter wrote a name and number on a bit of paper then handed it to me.
"Thanks, who shall I say sent me?"
"Shona, tell Ewan, Shona sent you. Now come on, I've other customers to see to. I've to ring my long lost hubbie, Douggie, find out if he's back in town yet.” She waved me towards the door, adjusting her hair and checking her bright red nails. “Off you go, hen. Off you go." She looked behind me at the queue of customers.
I left the shop, holding onto the piece of paper. Shona and Douggie, can't be the same. That's far too much of a coincidence, isn't it?