The Overnight Part 28

"You to put your seat belt on, I hope."

As Jake drags the belt across himself his elbow stings as if the fog has penetrated an open wound. The Mazda begins to withdraw from the patch of light, which dims as it grows more diffuse. He's only dreaming that the shop is determined not to release it; perhaps the blurred web that one splintered headlamp lens is casting on the wall has given rise to the idea. Is the fog behind the car retreating less than the wall? He tries not to fancy he's helping it trap them by saying "Shall we wait a moment?"

"That isn't your idea of being female, is it, changing your mind."

He has to tell himself she isn't like Greg. "I want to see the others get away, don't you?"

"I was going to till you distracted me."

He mustn't argue. She needs to concentrate on driving, however unreasonably she's behaving, even if fighting to 352 stay quiet beside her feels like trying to breathe underwater. The Mazda swings backwards in an arc, illuminating how Connie's car is holding itself so still it could almost be mistaken for deserted. When a dark glistening shape inches out of hiding beyond the Rapier a cry begins to prise his lips apart, and men Jill reveals it's her car by remembering to switch her headlamps on.

He doesn't know if Mad is taking her time so as to pay him back for suggesting she ought to. She doesn't follow Jill's rear lights until they're smouldering with fog. As the Mazda cruises past Connie's car he seems to glimpse the bonnet raising itself a fraction, like a trap about to be sprung. He does his best to find it again in the mirror without alerting Mad, but the fog hides it before she steers around the corner of the bookshop.

As the cars veer away from the shopfront Jake thinks he hears an incomprehensible voice as m.u.f.fled as it is enormous. He sees Greg, a greyish silhouette that ducks and shelves a book and ducks again so fast it looks determined to finish all the extra work. Is the voice manipulating it like a puppet? The silhouette rears up and either sends the cars an ironic salute or shades its eyes to watch them, only for the fog to deny it the pleasure, if that's what it's having. Then the nearest saplings drift by, dripping as though they have been dredged up, and the Mazda puts on speed. It creeps so close to Jill's angry lights that Jake wonders if Mad wants her to feel threatened for guiding them so close to where the Mazda ran Lorraine down. Until the fog swallows the broken tree-stump and Mad eases her foot off the accelerator, he has to restrain himself from treading on the brake.

He's increasingly unsure whether he's continuing to hear a wordless mutter underneath the fog. The impression refuses to fade, which aggravates his sense that the cars are being held back. The tarmac oozing from beneath the Nova resembles a stream of mud so closely that he has 353 to keep renewing his belief that the vehicles are advancing, though far too slowly to outdistance the memory of his glimpse inside Connie's car. When Jill's brake lights brighten he's afraid to learn why until he sees that her headlamps have lit on the diner, which is shut and unilluminated from within. "So Ross couldn't have called from there," Mad says.

Just now it's more important to Jake that they're at the exit from the retail park. Shadows as low as the furniture parade through the diner while Jill's headlamps turn towards the gap. As the Mazda follows, Jill drives across the deserted road into the lane between hedges bristling their tarry spikes as though the beams have roused them. Jill sounds her horn, and she and Connie wave at the mirror above the windscreen. Mad echoes Jill, and she and Jake both wave, but he isn't sure the others see this before the fog extinguishes the rear lights of the Nova. With a sigh he prefers not to interpret, Mad steers left behind the diner.

He won't be able to breathe easily until he can be certain what he glimpsed behind Texts isn't pursuing them under cover of the fog. He peers nervously towards the buildings and the open s.p.a.ce they're helping the fog to obscure. He has to clench his teeth until they ache so as not to urge Mad to drive faster. The diner is succeeded by an unfinished block with polythene for windows, which he tells himself are nothing like eyes so weighed down by cataracts they sag out of their sockets, and then there's even less of a building, mostly a roofless cage of metal. It lets more of the glare of the floodlights reach the car, but why is a portion of the light so close to the ground? Because it belongs to a vehicle that lurches between the incomplete buildings into the path of the Mazda. "Watch out," Jake deafens himself by screaming as he clutches at the wheel.

The car is almost in the hedge on the far side of the road before Mad regains control. "What the--was She remembers 354 she's a lady and demands only "What are you trying to do to us, Jake?"

"Didn't you see? You must have seen. There was a car or something."

"Where?" To his dismay she tramps on the brake. "Show me where."

He wants to plead with her to drive away, but he twists in his bonds to stare through the rear window. One skeletal corner of the building under construction is visible, but there's as little sign of another vehicle as he has to admit he saw when he grabbed the wheel. "It must have been the fog," he says.

"Yes, well, whatever you think you see from now on, can you leave the driving to me? I'd expect Greg to try and take over, not you."

She eases the car back across the road and picks up almost no speed. The unfinished buildings crouch lower as if the earth is swallowing them. The murk settles over the last of them as the tunnel under the motorway yawns ahead, a cave daubed with giant drooling symbols and inhabited by wakeful fog. As Mad steers up the ramp to the motorway, which Jake was expecting to be blocked off, she says "Do you think it's because we're so tired we've all been getting at each other?"

"I wouldn't know."

In fact he believes tiredness is the least of the reasons, but can't be bothered thinking about it when she has accused him of resembling Greg. The car ventures onto the motorway, having hesitated at the top of the ramp, and she matches Jake's resentment. "Maybe you can speak up if you see a phone or Ross for that matter."

Jake is tempted to retort that Ross would hardly have wandered onto the motorway, but is that the case? He might have in search of the nearest phone. The lights of Fenny Meadows fall away below the car, and it appears they were diluting the fog, which closes down in front of the windscreen as though a skyful of unshed rain has 355 settled on the blanked-out landscape. The rays from the headlights b.u.t.t it with a feebleness not far short of exhaustion, but the car must be maintaining its progress, because a marker of some kind has loomed into view beside the road. Is the fog beyond it thinning? No, Jake is seeing another of the lights he saw in the retail park, and now he knows what they are. A fen is a marsh, and marshes sometimes emit will-o'-the-wisps. As a child he read about them and wished he could see one, and he has been granted his wish. He's about to point out the phenomenon to Mad when she frowns across him at the marker. "Is that for the next phone? How far does it say--was The light hurtles out of the fog and splits into the beams of a pair of headlamps on the wrong side of the motorway--in the same lane as the Mazda. Above them the windscreen of a Jaguar wags its wipers in reproof. Beyond one cleared segment of the gla.s.s the driver, a man whose forehead is bagged in a leather cap pulled down low, is grimacing at a mobile phone. As though to demonstrate he's even stupider than this suggests, he takes his other hand off the wheel to gesture drunkenly. Having time to a.s.similate so much detail convinces Jake that Mad is able to avoid the collision; she's already spinning the wheel. Then the speed of the Jaguar does away with the distance between the cars, which turn into a single explosion of metal and gla.s.s. In that instant Mad seizes Jake's hand, which he closes around hers. There's a moment in which he yearns for hers to be Sean's, and yet he's grateful for her closeness, because something that's delighted by the crash doesn't welcome their reconciliation at all. Indeed, it spews whatever's left of their intelligence into the dark. 356

JILL.

She beeps her horn and Mad 'so car answers, which puts Jill In 'so car answers, which puts Jill In mind of the start of a hunt. When she waves at the mirror Connie imitates her, except there's no reason to think of it like that--no reason to suppose Connie's making fun of her or indicating slyly that she regrets not being in the Mazda. The fog drags the Mazda away by its headlamp beams, a reddish tinge fades from the glaring nothingness between the hedges, and then the mirror shows Jill only the gap, which continues to shrink between the hedges as the Nova coasts forward. "Shall we get going now?" Connie suggests.

"We are."

"All right then if you aren't comfortable driving any faster. I just feel uneasy leaving Anyes shut in any longer than we absolutely need to. Woody too, of course."

Jill wonders about smiling at the dutiful afterthought but isn't sure that Connie wouldn't think she was presuming, a possibility Jill resents more than somewhat. "You can blame me if you have to," she offers instead.

"Thanks, only it's really my responsibility." 357 Jill isn't going to pretend to herself: she would rather have Jake as her pa.s.senger. Connie made it clear when she just about asked that she wished she needn't travel with Jill. The wet blackened spikes of the hedges close in behind the car. As they and the fog solidify into a single lightless ma.s.s, Jill says "So you'll take all the responsibility, you said."

"I'm not sure if I can quite do that, can I? Not unless you want me to drive."

"I certainly don't, thanks."

"Then you'll have to be responsible for that, won't you? Some people think I'm not too bad."

"I don't recall saying you were."

Connie turns her head as if to force Jill to acknowledge her expression. When Jill concentrates on the illuminated sc.r.a.p of road the veil of fog is doling out, Connie says "At driving."

"I've got people like that too."

"I expect your little girl's one."

"She'd be on my side, don't you worry." Jill grips the wheel harder while she tries to regain control of her words. "She's one reason why I asked how much blame you're going to take. She's the best reason."

The moist hiss beneath the car fills another pause during which she refuses to look at whatever expression Connie's showing her. Eventually Connie says "None at all."

The curtailed road seems to quiver with Jill's disbelief until she recovers her grasp on the wheel. "You'll never get away with that."

"There's nothing to get away with. I didn't come along till a good while after you and Geoff split up. I hope you aren't telling your daughter I did."

Jill feels as if her brain is growing maggoty with disagreements that hem the car in even more oppressively than the fog. She doesn't understand how she could have let the misunderstanding develop, yet part of her wants to use it as an excuse to confront the other woman now that 358 she has her trapped. It requires quite an effort for her to say only "I was asking if you're going to tell whoever needs to know you were behind us breaking out of the shop. I wouldn't mind keeping this job."

"I don't think we're too likely to do that, or Mad or Jake either."

Now Jill feels like a child cheated out of a promise and stupid enough to protest "But we broke out for Woody as much as anyone."

"Did we? He might think we were trying to get away from him."

"You won't say that, will you? Who's it going to help?"

"I'll be helping by phoning. That'll have to do till I've had some sleep."

Jill no longer understands what Connie means, if her remarks signify anything except less oxygen in the car. "Just let me drive, then."

"I don't remember starting the argument."

Nor does Jill--it's as though the memory has been swallowed by the dark--but she dislikes feeling accused. "Can't we try to get on with each other while we're stuck with this?"

"You think I'm not trying."

"I don't suppose you want to be in this situation any more than I do."

"Even less."

Jill has made all the effort she's making. They can't argue if they don't talk. She focuses on ignoring the inert lump of hostile silence into which Connie has subsided, because their progress can't distract her from Connie's presence. The black road crawls incessantly towards her under the fog the hedges appear to keep r.e.t.a.r.ding, and only the bends of the lane oblige her to be even slightly vigilant. Even they emerge so gradually that she could dream they're taking time not to disturb her. She has no idea how many have sunk back into the fog or how far the 359 Nova has advanced when Connie says "Are you doing it on purpose?"

"All I am is driving that I know of."

"That's what I mean. Are you deliberately going the slowest you possibly can?"

"No, I'm going the safest."

"There's such a thing as being too safe. No wonder--was When she interrupts herself Jill is certain Connie intends her to know she's thinking of Jill's marriage that was. Jill sucks in a stale-tasting breath that's designed to suppress any answer, then hears herself demand "No wonder what?"

"It'll be a wonder if we aren't both asleep before we get anywhere at this rate. I feel as if we're hardly out of Fenny Meadows."

Jill resents sharing Connie's impression, but her own goes further. Her notion must be the fault of her lack of sleep--the notion that their arguments are contrived to be an extra hindrance. This strikes her as so idiotic that she snaps "You'd rather I went faster and ran us into the ditch."

"I can't see any ditch. I can't see any anything except what I've been seeing since it's beginning to look like forever."

"You want me not to be able to stop if we meet something coming."

"Who else is going to be along here at whatever time of night it is in this? They'd hardly be driving to Fenny Meadows, and there's nowhere else to drive."

Jill almost cites the motorway, except of course it's shut and in any case she has never seen anyone use this route to it. She still won't be told how to drive, especially by Connie. She's overwhelmed by an impulse to twist the wheel and ram the Nova through the hedge to speed across the field. 'Fast enough for you?" she can already hear herself enquiring. Only reluctance to damage the car holds her 360 back, and she isn't certain that it will if Connie antagonises her any more. She's daring her to add to her uninvited comments when Connie slaps herself on the forehead as if a mosquito has bitten it. She can hurt herself all she likes as far as Jill's concerned, but apparently the blow aimed to wake her brain up, because she says "We'll have to go back."

Jill lets the car carry them a good few yards before she bothers asking "Why's that?"

"Not now. When I've phoned about the shop and my car. I'll need to be with it when they come to fix the engine."

Jill refrains from treading hard on the accelerator to outdistance the proposal. "It can wait till you get home, surely."

"And how do you expect me to get back from there?"

Jill is expecting nothing to do with it, and if it were possible she would care even less, but says "Can't you get whoever you call to pick you up at home? Use your charm or be helpless. I'm sure you're good at one of those."

Connie turns her face towards her yet again, and Jill grows clammy with refusing to look at the wad of flesh Connie is poking at her. The wheel seems to p.r.i.c.kle as she grips it so as not to lash out. She's hoping for both their sakes that she can dislodge Connie's gaze by saying "Anyway, I thought you'd want to go home first so you can catch up on your sleep."

After a pause Connie faces the suffocated glow they're following. "Maybe I won't be able to sleep for thinking. That's how I get sometimes."

"It's only a car, Connie. It won't be going anywhere."

"I suppose you think I'm acting as if it's my child."

"Well, since you ask--was "I didn't, and I really will need to get back to it."

"Not in my car, I'm sorry. Not now we've come all this way."

"All what way? I keep feeling we've gone nowhere whatsoever."

As Jill begins to steer around the latest protracted bend, 361 she blames Connie for giving her the senseless notion that all the curves of the lane are about to add up to a circle that will return the car to Fenny Meadows. She's convincing herself that some of them will cancel out the others when Connie murmurs "Did you say you wanted to hang onto your job?"

"I'd like to. I haven't got just myself to feed."

"Then maybe you'd better think of doing what I asked. I haven't stopped being a manager yet."

The yearning to drive off the road shivers like electricity through Jill. She's aware of nothing but her foot poised on the accelerator and her hands preparing to swing the wheel. She doesn't immediately register how Connie's tone changes, or her words. "Who's that? Is it Ross?"

Is she trying to divert Jill from her plan? Fog surges to cover where Connie was peering, but Jill doesn't believe there was anything to see except the bony black-clawed tangles of the hedge. Even when Connie leans towards the windscreen, this looks like an attempt to make Jill forget what was threatened, too late. Then the stretch of hedge resurfaces, twig after dripping twig, and Jill sees that a dim figure is indeed crouched in a hollow of it. "That isn't Ross," says Connie.

The edge of a headlamp beam finds the lowered head, which seems wet enough to have been rescued from drowning, and inflates it twice its size with shadow. The figure squirms as if to shake off the light and then lurches to its feet, blinking violently and yawning. If Jill hadn't recognised who it is by now she would know the yawn for Gavin's. He tears his right sleeve free of the hedge and stumbles in front of the car.

Jill wrenches at the handbrake while tramping on the brake pedal just in time not to overbalance him or worse. As he limps stiffly around the Nova she lowers her window. "Gavin, you nearly--was "What time is it?" He leans one hand on the roof and knuckles his eyes redder still. "Is it over?" 362 "What?"

"Have you finished working at the shop?"

That sounds like a revival of Connie's threat, but she keeps it quiet. "Don't stand there, Gavin," she says instead. "Get in."

He fumbles open the rear door and takes some care over bending himself to fit the seat. Jill shuts her window well in advance of his slamming his door. "Have you been out here ever since you phoned?" She means this to express sympathy, but it sounds inanely obvious.

"Feels like longer. Were you looking for me?"

"Mostly for a phone. I don't suppose your mobile could have come alive again."

He fishes it out and holds it towards the faint glow through the windscreen. When he thumbs a key, it fails to light up. Indeed, for a moment it appears to turn as grey as their breaths are being rendered by the fog that followed him into the car. "Didn't think so," he yawns. "Wasn't the box any use?"

"Which box?" Connie's impatient to learn.

"I found one, don't ask me when. If I'd phoned I'd have had no change for the bus, and anyway there wasn't much reason to."

Jill's instincts deny this, but before she can grasp why, Connie demands "Whereabouts was it?"

"Somewhere along here. Didn't you pa.s.s it? I thought I've been heading for the main road."

Jill thinks hostility is making Connie look so dull she would call it brainless. "Don't say you drove us past a phone," Connie says.

"I won't. You'd more chance of noticing with less to do. There's bound to be phones on the main road when we get there. I've told you I won't go back."

That's meant to challenge Connie to repeat her threat in front of Gavin. Jill's frustrated when he interrupts the confrontation by asking "Why do you need a phone?" 363 "Woody's got himself stuck in his office," says Connie, "and Anyes has in the lift."

"You're making it sound like their fault," Jill objects.

"Well, it isn't. I'd say it's anyone's that lets them stay stuck any longer than they have to be, wouldn't you, Gavin?"

Jill would like to think his yawn indicates he's bored with the question. "We're phoning from the main road," she says, releasing the handbrake.

He has a yawn for her too. She doesn't know how many of those she can stand. She's tempted to increase her speed to outrun some of them, but the sluggishly retreating fog entangled in the hedges looks more ominous than ever. She searches her murky brain for some way to enliven him instead, and succeeds in dredging up the memory she was trying to retrieve before. "What were you going to tell me if we hadn't lost you, Gavin?"

"It doesn't seem like much now. Woody didn't think it was."