The car rocked from side to side on the quiet country road as I thrashed around, restrained only by my seatbelt, beating my fists against the steering wheel and screaming at the top of my lungs. It wasn’t fair, none of it was fair. I was trying so hard to help Mum and Dad and Cerys. I didn’t push Michael in front of a car or anything, why was I being punished like this? When I was finally done, I opened my eyes, panting, and sawthree sheep stood in front of the car, each looking less impressed than the last.
‘Do you have a better idea?’ I asked.
One of the sheep leaned down to grab a mouthful of grass and chewed slowly while the other two continued to stare at me.
‘Oh, sod off,’ I yelled, leaning on the horn, pressing it over and over and over until the woolly chorus of judgement dispersed. ‘Sod off, sod off, sod off, sod off—’
A loud rattle on the passenger side window was enough to scare me out of my skin. An older man in a flat cap glared at me as I jumped so high, I hit my head on the roof of the car. His walking stick and backpack said ‘rambler’ but the fact we were on our own in the middle of nowhere added a fun frisson of ‘serial killer’ and I quickly locked all the doors with my elbow.
‘Excuse me!’ the man shouted when I did not wind down the window. ‘Are you in trouble?’
Exactly the sort of thing a serial killer would say.
‘Oh, no, I’m fine, thanks for asking,’ I said loudly, looking around the front of the car for a weapon. Maybe I could chuck a Coldplay CD at him. Maybe I could play one of the Coldplay CDs. It would be enough to scare me away.
‘You do realize that according to the highway code, a car horn should only be used to indicate danger,’ the man said, his white mutton chops only adding to his stern demeanour. ‘It very clearly states the horn should not be used to express annoyance.’
‘Is that right?’ I replied as my fear boiled away into irritation.
‘Yes. Rule number 112, you can look it up in the copy I’m sure you have in your glovebox.’
He was not a serial killer but a do-gooder which was somehow even worse.
‘So what you’re saying is, I shouldn’t press it now?’ I said, hand hovering over the horn. ‘When I am in fact very annoyed?’
‘One should only use the horn to indicate danger,’ he repeated, chest puffed out like one of the racing pigeons I was very certain he kept at home. ‘I can’t see anything that puts you directly in harm’s way.’
‘No but I can see something that puts you directly in harm’s way,’ I warned, the heel of my hand slamming into the horn over and over and over.
‘This is a nice village, we won’t stand for the likes of you!’ he threatened as he backed away, taking long, speedy strides. ‘I shall call the police!’
‘Call them!’ I shouted as he clambered over a stile and began to run-walk away, the most embarrassing of all walks. ‘Go on, see if I care!’ Collapsing against my dad’s beaded seat cushion, I closed my eyes and stamped my slippered feet in the footwell. ‘Please call them,’ I muttered when he had disappeared from sight. ‘It’s the only bloody way I’ll get home.’
Predictably, the angry rambler turned out to be nothing more than another man full of empty promises. After a whole hour of waiting for the authorities, I gave up, and abandoned the car at the side of the road. Without my phone, and entirely incapable of reading a map, I had no idea where I was, but my old pal, the highway code fanboy, had mentioned a village nearby and while it might be a nice village that wouldn’t stand for the likes of me, I suspected it would still have a payphone thatwas less picky about its patrons. Armed with my car keys and eighty pence in change I’d found on the floor under the passenger seat, I set off to find help.
The skies were clearer on this side of the hills, fewer clouds in the sky and more patches of bright blue with long, hazy rays of winter sun shining down on the bare trees. It was beautiful really, cool and crisp and peaceful, the kind of day that gave life meaning. If you were the sort of person who actually had a life and weren’t caught in an endless cycle of bickering siblings, vibrators from their dad and pigs in blankets. In spite of my promise not to think romantic thoughts about a taken man, I couldn’t stop myself from wishing Dev was with me. If I ever got myself out of this situation, it might be nice to have an old friend back in my life. Cambridge wasn’t that far from London, we enjoyed vaguely criminal activities, why shouldn’t we be friends? It was entirely possible for two grown adults to enjoy a platonic relationship even if one of the two once used a rudimentary computer program to see what their future children would look like and had developed a mild but more recent obsession with his forearms. I might even like his fiancée, I thought as I followed the path of the rambler, hopping over the stile in my slippers. She was probably a wonderful person, the kind of woman who always had something insightful to say and sent her friends flowers just because. She was probably called Anastasia and taught Pilates on the weekends when she wasn’t helping out at a donkey sanctuary, and didn’t have social media.
‘Maybe I’ll just be friends with Dev,’ I muttered, marching on in my PJs.
Fifteen fretful minutes later, a small limestone cottage with a neatly tended front garden came into view, but there was no one home. Five minutes later, I found another equally deserted house and ten minutes after that, I found myself in the heart of a tiny village, practically a hamlet if not for the beautiful, ancient-looking church in the middle of it all. I’d never really been a religious person, we weren’t brought up with it as kids, but I did love a good church. There was something about the idea of a group of people getting together to say, hey, we haven’t got trucks or diggers or cranes, and concrete is a good couple of hundred years away from being invented, but shall we build a massive building with massive glass windows and a big pointy bit on top to celebrate this thing we all believe in? As someone who couldn’t put together an Ikea coffee table on her own, I had to respect it.
There was a small village green bordered by a post office, a pub and a bakery-slash-coffee shop, all closed, but outside the pub was just the anachronism I was looking for. Honestly, in this day and age, it would have been less jarring to see an actual TARDIS in the middle of the road than an old BT phone box.
‘At least this one won’t be smashed to shit and covered in graffiti,’ I said as I pulled open the door to find a dangling cord with the handset missing and at least three dozen roughly sketched penises. I closed the door, defeated. Yes, I’d broken into a stately home, fallen down some very dangerous stairs, maimed Father Christmas and blown myself, my home and my family to bits, but I was not in the mood to freeze to death in my pyjamas, in a phone box covered in badly drawn knobs.
‘Not today, Satan,’ I muttered as I stalked across the village green. No, I wasn’t a particularly religious person, but needs must when the devil shits in your teapot, it was time to seek help from his arch nemesis, the birthday boy himself.
Not having ever been to church on Christmas, I had no idea what to expect. The nave was empty, not a single soul to be seen on the wooden pews. My footsteps echoed off the stone floors and right away, I felt better. Even though I wasn’t religious, a church still represented faith in something bigger than yourself and trusting that there was a plan. I couldn’t think of anything I needed more than a little faith, apart from maybe a sandwich. I hadn’t eaten all day and I was starving.
Wandering along the rows of empty pews, I paused and picked up a prayer cushion, turning it over in my hands. It was quite nice, navy blue with scarlet and gold embroidery. Michael’s Catholic mum would have loved it and I might have tried to buy her one if her son wasn’t a cheating shitbag and she hadn’t sent me a Facebook message to say how nice it had been to know me and what a shame it was that we would never speak or see each other again less than twenty-four hours after Michael and I broke up.
‘No cushion for you, Moira,’ I whispered, placing it carefully back where I had found it.
On the other side of the aisle was a confessional. I’d always quite fancied a go in one but when I mentioned it on a day trip to Salisbury cathedral, Michael’s Catholic mum crossed herself and went to light a candle.
But there was no Moira to stop me now.
‘If you are up there, you probably think this is hilarious,’ I muttered, letting myself into the dark wooden box. ‘Before I start, you’re not obliged to listen or anything, it’s not like I’m a regular, and I know it’s your son’s birthday. You’re probably very busy, so don’t worry about sending me a sign or anything like that.’