One wrong turn, p.2
One Wrong Turn, page 2
I flicked my eyes to the rear mirror again, my chest aching, temples throbbing. By now the man and his torch had been swallowed entirely by the fog but I had the unsettling feeling that I could somehow still see his darkened silhouette punching a hole in the mist.
Biting the inside of my mouth, I drove on slowly. The fog hurtled towards us, streaking through the cones of yellow light arcing out of the headlamps, tumbling against my windscreen.
‘We should go back,’ Ben said.
‘We can’t. You know it’s not safe to reverse. It’s too narrow to turn around.’
‘You could pull in.’
‘No, Ben. Someone could drive right into us.’
A vision appeared in my mind of a vehicle rear-ending us; the Polo collapsing, concertina-style, crushing us mercilessly.
I pushed it away and plunged on into the fog, feeling guilty about not stopping, unsure if I’d done the right thing.
What had the man been thinking?
My insides contracted as I flashed again on how close we’d come to colliding with him. Then I glanced across as Ben ducked and squinted through the windscreen.
‘Er, Abi?’
A set of brake lights and hazard lights were shining in the gloom.
3
I slowed down a bit more. The lights were over to our left, glowing hazily from the rear of what looked to be an estate car that had pulled over in a lay-by.
The car’s outline was indistinct – blurred and shrouded by the hanging mist – but I could see that it was a red or maroon Mercedes. The windows were darkly tinted. At the front the bonnet was raised.
‘Breakdown,’ Ben muttered.
My headlamps lit up a middle-aged woman who was standing outside the driver’s door in the vaporous air, watching our approach.
Her shoulder-length, chestnut-brown hair was damp and bedraggled underneath a woollen beanie, her neck and chin wrapped in an elaborate scarf. She was bent partly forwards from the waist, her shoulders hunched against the cold in a long, quilted jacket, the sleeves stretched over her hands as she balanced the moulded plastic handle of a baby car seat in the crook of her arm. The hood was up on the car seat, the corners of a blanket draped over the sides, and she instinctively drew it inwards to her body in a protective gesture as we got nearer.
I locked eyes with the woman for a brief second and the look she gave me was so stricken and lost that I felt an immediate tug of sympathy.
‘Pull over,’ Ben said.
‘We can’t.’
‘There’s space further up.’
I squinted. The lay-by appeared to continue on beyond the estate car, and I couldn’t spot any other vehicles parked there. Perhaps, on better days, it was a viewpoint of some kind.
‘I’m not pulling over, Ben.’
‘Seriously? She looks really worried. We should check she’s OK.’
I pulled my gaze away from the woman as I began to accelerate.
‘Abi!’
‘What?’
Ben lunged for the steering wheel, tugging it to the left.
‘Are you insane?’ I yelled.
‘Pull over now, or stop and let me out,’ he shouted back. ‘Your choice.’
I could see how much Ben meant it. He was practically vibrating, his eyes boring into me. And he was still clinging to the steering wheel, making it difficult for me to drive on.
Maybe it was the lawyer in him. He’d always had a keen awareness of right and wrong, an overdeveloped sense of civic duty. In the past, he’d signed us up to help with city litter picks. He volunteered for a homeless charity on alternate weekends. I knew he wouldn’t let it go if I didn’t stop.
Veering into the end of the lay-by, I braked hard with gravel crunching under my tyres, then pushed him away. After wrenching the gearstick into neutral, I cranked on the handbrake and fumed as Ben twisted in his seat and gazed out of the rear window, my breaths coming hard and fast.
I didn’t say anything, but I was pretty sure Ben knew what I was thinking. If we hadn’t taken a wrong turn, we wouldn’t be here.
‘That was stupid,’ I told him, switching on my hazards, checking on the woman in my mirror at the same time.
She looked almost ghost-like in the dismal fog, but I could just about see that she was standing on tiptoes and peering our way, her posture stiff and guarded.
‘Ben?’
The wiper blades swooped from side to side in the stillness. The radio burbled. The fog and darkness pressed in.
‘Can we go now?’
‘Not yet. Let me talk to her first.’
‘Are you serious?’
He was just reaching for the door lever when I made a grab for his wrist. I must have squeezed too tight because he winced, then pulled his arm away and rubbed his skin with a hurt expression.
‘What about the man I almost hit?’ I hissed.
‘He’s back down the road. This will only take a second.’
Ben got out before I could challenge him any further. I stayed where I was for a jangling moment, trying to get my nerves under control, the foggy air streaming in through his open door like a torrent of cold water. Then I grabbed my phone from my handbag and stepped out of the car, hugging my arms around myself against the damp and the cold.
I didn’t have a coat on. It was in the boot along with my suitcase. For now, the roll-neck sweater I was wearing would have to do, but I could already feel the frigid air permeating my leggings and the canvas of my battered Converse.
I hadn’t turned off the engine and it rumbled behind me as I ventured after Ben. I loved him, but sometimes his insistence on doing ‘the right thing’ could be infuriating.
‘Do you need some help?’ Ben called out.
The woman seemed to withdraw from him, and for a second I got the impression she was considering locking herself and her baby inside her car for safety, until I leaned out and waved at her. The moment she glimpsed me she seemed to relax a little bit.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Thank you for stopping.’
She waded through the fog to take up a position in front of her car, with the baby car seat bumping against her thighs and her breath forming misted plumes. The back glow of the car’s sidelights cast her partially in shadow.
‘What happened?’ Ben asked.
‘Ugh. It’s this stupid hire car.’ She had a refined accent and her coat and leather boots looked like designer items. Her hair was frizzy and mussed from the fog, but I thought that she had expensive extensions fitted. It also didn’t escape my notice that a Mercedes was a high-end choice for a hire car. ‘There was this awful grinding noise as we were coming over the hill and then a terrible crunch, and after that the engine and the power steering just completely failed on us and all these warning lights came on. We were lucky to get off the road. You’re the first people to come along.’
‘Would you like me to take a look?’ Ben offered.
‘Do you know much about cars?’
‘Well, no, not really.’
That was an understatement. I wasn’t sure Ben even knew how to check the oil or fill up a windscreen washer. He’d have no chance fixing a mechanical issue.
‘What about a breakdown service?’ I suggested. I didn’t really want to talk to the woman, but the sooner this was over, the sooner we could get on our way.
‘I called the hire car company, but they’ve been hopeless. They’ve said they’ll send someone, but it won’t be for a couple of hours at the earliest.’ She shivered. ‘They can’t give us a replacement car until the morning, apparently. And no taxi firms will come out in this fog. We didn’t think it was safe to wait in the car in case someone hit us, but I’m worried about the baby getting cold. Did you see my husband?’ She went up on her toes and peered behind her. ‘He went that way to try to find help.’
I traded a guilty look with Ben. I was a bit surprised that her husband had left her alone with the baby in such dreadful conditions, but I guessed that was a sign of how desperate they’d become. Or maybe the fog had got to them. I was already feeling spooked standing out in it. It was odd how it smothered most sounds.
‘I think maybe we did see someone, but we were past them before we really understood what was going on,’ Ben said, covering for me. ‘And then we saw you and thought we should probably pull over, so . . .’
He shrugged as I stepped out to take a look at the broken-down car. I couldn’t see inside because of the raised bonnet and the foggy darkness but the exterior paint was dewed over with moisture, which made me think they must have been stranded here for a while.
Again, I felt sorry for her. It must have been frightening being alone in the night. Maybe Ben had been right to stop, after all.
‘Boy or girl?’ I heard myself ask.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Your baby.’
The words seemed to clang in my head.
Did my voice sound normal, I wondered, or had she picked up on the catch in my throat?
‘Oh. A girl. Her name’s Lila.’
I swallowed, feeling very aware of the buzzing and clicking in my ears, and of how closely Ben was watching me.
You can do this. It’s OK.
The woman leaned backwards to look down at her baby and her face, though apprehensive, lit up for a second.
‘How old is she?’ I managed.
‘Six months. She’s sleeping right now, thank God.’
Six months.
I was only half aware of Ben reaching out to me. The press of his hand in the small of my back.
‘Perhaps you could add an extra blanket if you’re concerned about her catching a chill?’ I suggested.
The woman’s brow furrowed and I immediately worried that I’d offended her.
‘Abi’s a qualified nanny,’ Ben explained.
‘And I’m sure you have everything under control,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean to interfere.’
‘No, that’s kind of you, but I actually think—’
She stopped talking and turned around to stare into the thick fog behind her.
Footsteps were approaching.
Saturday Morning
11.04 a.m.
Samantha waited eight minutes for Paul to return. It felt like eight hours.
Turning in her seat to look through the rear window, she tried to focus on Lila. Be in the moment. Breathe.
But the panic was overwhelming, a heavy weight massing in her chest, and when she did finally see Paul burst out of the hotel’s sliding glass doors, striding towards her with his cheeks blowing and the baby bag swinging at his side, she didn’t know whether to be relieved or more frightened.
Because if they could forget such a simple thing, then how could they believe they could really come through this unscathed?
‘How was it?’ she asked Paul, after he’d opened the door behind her and placed the bag next to Lila’s seat, then climbed in the front.
‘Fine, I think.’
‘Who did you talk to?’
‘Only the same girl on reception. She gave me another room key. Said it happens all the time.’
Except they both knew it didn’t. Not like this. And not to people like them.
4
The man with the torch materialized from the heavy fog and slowed from a jog, raising his chin and studying us in a watchful silence.
‘There you are,’ the woman said. Then she smiled at us. ‘My missing husband.’
Her husband’s face was patterned by darkness, but he looked to be in his early to mid-forties. Probably a few years older than his wife. His drenched mackintosh hung limply from his shoulders and moisture dripped out of his hair and slid down his face. The designer spectacles he was wearing had clear plastic frames that gave him a vaguely Scandinavian appearance.
I squeezed my phone in my hand as he paced closer, the beam of his torch slashing through the murk. Next to me, Ben’s shoe scraped tarmac as he backed up a step.
‘This nice young couple pulled over to see if we needed any help,’ the woman explained. ‘They said they might have passed you?’
The man stopped and contemplated us without saying anything, then cast a tense and lingering look towards my car. I could see now that his torch was just the one on his phone.
‘We think so, anyway,’ Ben said. ‘It’s so hard to see anything in this fog.’
The man’s attention returned to Ben and stayed there, his gaze hardening, judgement flickering in his eyes.
I could tell Ben was uncomfortable about being stared at so openly because he made a performance out of stamping his feet and rubbing his hands together, shuffling a step closer to me. At last, the man broke eye contact and glanced down into the baby car seat, then reached for the handle, only for the woman to move it away from him.
‘We’re both fine,’ she told him. ‘Lila’s still sleeping. Did you fall?’
She gestured with her chin at the moist, grassy stain on his mackintosh that was visible in the light of his torch.
‘Something like that,’ the man mumbled, slowly pulling his gaze away from her and fixing on Ben again. He’d obviously decided that Ben had been the one driving and that it was his fault he’d ended up in the hedge.
‘I was just saying that no taxis will come and rescue us,’ the woman said.
I rubbed my arm and conjured an awkward smile without saying anything. I wasn’t sure what it was about the couple exactly, but something about them put me on my guard. I could feel the hairs rising on the back of my neck. A tingling spreading across my scalp.
I knew it could just be me. I’d always been easily intimidated by confident and wealthy people, especially if they were older than me, which was something my job hadn’t helped with very much. All of the families I’d previously worked for as a nanny had been rich and demanding. I hated how easily I fell into a subservient role.
‘How many taxi firms have you tried?’ I asked, unlocking my phone and opening my internet browser.
‘All of them.’ The man straightened and swivelled his head my way, as if he was only now paying proper attention to me. ‘The local ones and the not so local ones. That was why I was trying to flag you down.’
‘Oh, you were?’ Ben said.
The man ignored him, keeping his focus on me. Moisture had beaded on his spectacle lenses but there was no escaping his penetrating gaze.
‘Well, we’ve stopped now.’ I threw up my hands, feeling painfully self-conscious. ‘Although from what your wife has said, it doesn’t sound as if there’s much more we can do, so I guess we’ll just—’
‘You can give us a lift,’ he said.
A moment of stillness, of tension. His words seemed to hang in the air.
‘Oh, would you?’ the woman gushed. ‘That would be so helpful.’
‘Well, we’re actually in a bit of a hurry . . .’ I began.
‘At this time of night?’ She looked puzzled.
‘That’s right.’
‘Then why did you stop?’
I hesitated, unsure how to answer. It was obvious they didn’t believe me. Even I didn’t believe me.
‘Did she show you her hand?’ the man asked, swinging his torch beam towards his wife.
The woman pulled an embarrassed face, then wriggled and stretched the arm she was holding the baby car seat with until her hand emerged from the sleeve of her coat. As she turned it in the light of the torch, I could see that her palm and the back of her hand were wrapped in a bandage that was stained with blood. Some of her fingers and the cuff of her coat sleeve were darkly stained, too.
‘I cut it trying to open the bonnet,’ she said with a faint laugh. ‘I don’t know why we bothered. Desperation?’
‘So here’s the thing.’ The man took a step closer, holding me in his intent gaze. I could see his Adam’s apple plummet as he swallowed. ‘My wife is hurt and we need your help. We’d appreciate it if you could give us a lift to the nearest hospital.’
I didn’t want to say yes.
I couldn’t say yes.
But I was also aware that what they were asking wasn’t unreasonable. They were stranded with their baby in the cold and the fog, they were clearly desperate, and while the woman was injured, the damage to her hand didn’t look severe enough to justify an ambulance.
‘Our boot is pretty small,’ I hedged, nodding at the size of their estate car and concentrating on not looking at Ben. ‘We don’t have much room for more luggage, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s not a problem,’ the man said. ‘We can just bring one suitcase and what we need for the baby.’
‘Please?’ the woman begged.
Now I did look at Ben, silently urging him to back me up and invent a plausible excuse, but instead of meeting my gaze I saw him begin to nod.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘We can do that. Right, Abi?’
Saturday Morning
11.28 a.m.
The motorway traffic was light, the wintry sun flat and low. Behind them, Samantha could hear Lila babbling softly and crinkling the pages of a padded book. In different circumstances it could have been a pleasant drive.
Except that Paul was checking his mirrors and monitoring his speed incessantly, being careful not to draw any unwanted attention to them while peering watchfully at the occupants of every vehicle that happened to overtake.
Samantha had been repeatedly glancing at her side mirror, too. It was a habit – or maybe a superstition – she was finding it impossible to break.
With a groan she reached up and massaged the painful knot at the base of her neck, a lancing hotness forking down behind her scapula and up into her scalp.
‘Hotel pillows?’ Paul asked.
‘Mm-hmm.’
They’d paid cash for the hotel, just as they’d paid cash for the takeaway they’d shared last night. They’d had to use a credit card to hire the car, but Paul had sourced it from a small, local company where they hoped they might not be traceable in a hurry.
The Mercedes had been the last vehicle available. Or so Paul had told her. Secretly, Samantha had some uncharitable suspicions about that, the same way tiny bubbles of unease had percolated in her tummy when he’d surprised her with the Lexus for her birthday last year.
