As Alastair pulled away from the kerb and drove towards the motorway, the rain lashed against the window.

‘I bet you’re glad to be out of that,’ he said, counting on the weather as a stimulus for small talk. He knew it was pathetic, but the only reason he’d picked up a hitchhiker was for the conversation. Today, more than ever, he couldn’t stand to be alone with his thoughts.

Shuffling down in the passenger seat, the girl folded her arms across her chest and rested her knees against the glovebox.

‘You mind not talking?’ she asked, though it didn’t sound like a question. ‘Not being funny, but my head’s killing. I had a right skin full last night.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

From the corner of his eye he watched as she took a walkman held together with masking tape from her rucksack. A moment later came the tinny dush, dush, dush of leaked music from the ill-fitting headphones. He wondered how that could possibly help her headache, but though it was on the tip of his tongue to ask her to turn it down, he was afraid that doing so might cause offence. Instead he switched on the radio and heard a woman with a cracked voice say, ‘I want a peaceful death. You’d put a dog down if it was suffering. Why not a person?’

Changing the station he heard the chilling chorus of Simply Red’s ‘Fairground’ and quickly turned back to talk of assisted death.

*

The girl woke with a start when they hit a traffic jam.

‘Why have we stopped?’ she asked loudly, her headphones still in. She looked at Alastair with narrowed eyes. ‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s a traffic jam.’ He nodded to the line of cars ahead and switched off the engine. ‘How’s your head?’

She took out her headphones. ‘Bit better.’

‘Would you like some water? There’s a bottle in the glovebox. I think there’s some aspirin too.’

She looked at him as if he’d suggested she get in the boot. Naked. ‘As is I’m going to accept a drink from a man I don’t know.’

‘You just got in the car with one.’

‘That’s different.’

Is it? He wanted to ask. How exactly? But he loathed
confrontation at the best of times, let alone with a stranger for whom the word ‘prickly’ seemed to have been invented.

Taking a packet of Silk Cut from the pocket of her camouflage jacket, the girl balanced a cigarette between
her lips and lit it with a Zippo adorned with a picture of a pink dragon.

‘Um, I’d rather you didn’t smoke,’ Alastair said,
turning his wedding ring as he always did when nervous.

‘I’ll open the window.’

‘I’m kind of asthmatic.’

‘I just said I’d open the window, didn’t I?’

He cleared his throat to object again when his mobile rang.

‘’That’s Amore’?’ the girl asked of the personalised tone, wrinkling her nose as if there was dog mess in the footwell. ‘That’s so tacky.’ When Alastair didn’t answer and the song looped, she groaned. ‘Answer it! Put me out of my misery.’

Taking the phone from the cradle, Alastair switched it off and felt a cool sense of relief wash through him. Why hadn’t he just done so earlier?

‘Oh, I see,’ the girl said. ‘I get it.’ She put out her cigarette with spit-dampened fingers and slipped the butt into her pocket. ‘Was that the wife or the other woman?’

‘What?’ Alastair frowned. The way things were going it had better when this girl was asleep, or, better still, at the side of the motorway. ‘I’m not having an affair.’

She turned and regarded the two suitcases on the backseat.

‘You worm,’ she said, looking back at him. ‘You’re leaving her. You utter, spineless worm.’

‘Would you mind not insulting me in my own car?’

‘I’ll say what I like, thank you. Haven’t you heard of freedom of speech?’

Alastair sighed. Enough was enough. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘Maybe you should get a lift with someone-,’

‘You’re kicking me out for having an opinion?’

‘It’s my car.’

‘Look, if you’re having an affair, that’s fine, that’s none of my business, but you shouldn’t have picked me up if you weren’t going to take me all the way. That’s false avertising.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Look, if you’re having an affair-,’

‘I’m not having an affair-,’

She held up her hand to cut him off. ‘Like I said, it’s none of my business. Let’s just forget I mentioned it, okay?’

‘Fine.’

‘Anyway,’ she said a moment later, ‘one in three married men have affairs, so it’s not just you.’

*

He and Samantha had been at the breakfast table when the truth came out. Though it had been a domestic scene like any other, he knew there was something unsaid between them. And so he broke the silence with words that could have been either of theirs: ‘I need to talk to you.’

The truth could make or break a marriage, he realized later as he bagged up his side of the wardrobe. But either way it would never be the same again.

*

When the music blasting from her walkman suddenly stopped, the girl asked, ‘Any batteries?’

Alastair shook his head. ‘Sorry.’

‘Any sign of moving?’

‘Not yet.’

‘We’re going to be here for ages, aren’t we?’

‘I sincerely hope not.’

Unfastening her seatbelt, she pulled off her boots and sat cross-legged in the seat, her back against the passenger door.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Alastair asked.

She looked around the car for a moment then said, ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with T.’

*

Alastair finally gave in and asked what she’d spied that wasn’t ‘traffic’, ‘tarmac’, ‘tree’, ‘trees’, ‘tyres’ or ‘tie-dye’ (the brown and green pattern on her ‘t-shirt’).

‘You want me to tell you?’ she asked. ‘Shall I tell you?’

‘Please.’ He couldn’t care less what the answer was anymore; he just wanted an end to what felt like T for Torture. ‘Please, just tell me.’

She clapped her hands. ‘Tension,’ she said. ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with T: tension.’

‘You can’t spy tension,’ he said through gritted teeth.

She laughed. ‘Haven’t you looked in a mirror? Your face
has been a picture of tension since I got in this car. You’re like this.’ She frowned and pursed her lips together so tightly that they lost all colour.

‘I’ve a lot on my mind,’ Alastair said.

‘Want to talk about it?’

‘Not really.’

‘I’m a good listener.’

‘I’m not a good talker.’

‘Fair play.’

*

They’d not moved for three quarters of an hour when the girl asked, ‘What are you doing in London anyway?’

‘Just taking a break.’

‘On your own?’

‘You’re on your own.’

‘I’m not married.’

‘It’s complicated,’ Alastair said.

Reaching past her to the glovebox, he took out the emergency bar of Kendal Mint Cake that he kept for occasions such as these. Well, traffic jams and breakdowns to be more specific. He’d never envisaged being held prisoner in his own car by someone who seemed intent on testing the boundaries of his sanity.

Breaking a piece off, he passed the bar to the girl who took it from him and handled it as a pawnbroker might a diamond that he suspected fake.

‘It’s not poisoned,’ Alastair said, wondering how such an item ranked so highly on her spectrum of danger.

She gave it back. ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’

Though he wasn’t hungry, Alastair broke off another piece, then another.

‘You seem very suspicious for someone who got into the car with a man she doesn’t know,’ he said, turning his wedding ring. ‘Weren’t you scared? I could have been anyone.’

‘So could I have been.’

That hadn’t even occurred to him. ‘I suppose so.’

She tucked her pink hair behind her multiply pierced ears. ‘Do you want the truth?’

He nodded, but wasn’t sure that he did. There’d been enough truths today.

‘When you pulled over and I looked in the car, I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. Doing this kind of thing, hitchhiking, you get to be intuitive about people. You get a feel of who they are in a split second. And you make a decision based on that.’

‘You’ve never got it wrong?’

‘Once or twice when I was younger, but you learn, don’t you?’

‘I’d hope so.’

She looked him in the eye until he glanced away. ‘It’s her that’s having an affair, isn’t it?’

He felt his face flush red. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said.

*

The traffic started to move and Alastair turned back to the wheel, glancing down at his hands to see that his knuckles were white. When the car in front stopped, he pressed his foot on the brake pedal and realised that he was trembling. What on earth was wrong with him?

‘It’s some bloke that she used to work with,’ he said suddenly. ‘I saw them together three weeks ago, but it wasn’t till this morning that I told her I knew. She said it was over, that she regretted it and that she’d never do anything like that again. She said she didn’t love him and I should stay for us to talk things through. But I couldn’t even look at her without imagining them together. I just had to get out. I-,’

‘Do you love her?’

‘She’s my wife.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

He looked out of the window and saw an elderly couple in the next car.

‘I still love her,’ he said.

‘Then maybe it’s not broken for good. But you’ll never know if she’s in Bristol and you’re in London. The longer you leave it, the harder it’ll be.’

‘What would you do?’

She drummed her fingers on her lips. ‘If it was someone I really loved, I’d see how I could fix things. People make mistakes.’

‘I don’t think I’ll forget what she’s done.’

‘You don’t need to forget, but you need to forgive. Do you love her enough to do that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Could you try?’

‘I suppose.’

She smiled. ‘You seem like a nice guy. I hope things work out for you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But that doesn’t mean I want to go back to Bristol.’

When he laughed, the lump in his throat disappeared. ‘I’ll drop you in town.’

‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘Maybe not, but I want to.’

*

The girl lifted her rucksack onto her lap as he pulled into a bus stop.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said. ‘Sorry if I was a bit crabby when I got in. Hangover.’

‘That’s okay.’

She bit her lip. ‘Actually, can I ask a favour?’ Alastair nodded. ‘Can I take a bit of that mint thing with me? I’m starving.’

‘Of course.’ He opened the glovebox and gave her the remaining half bar.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. And thank you.’

‘What for?’

He shrugged. ‘Will you be okay from here?’

‘I could ask you the same thing.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Me too,’ she said, opening the door and stepping onto
the busy pavement.

Alastair watched as she joined the sea of people, glancing over her shoulder to wave goodbye. He waved back and waited until she disappeared into the distance before he pulled away from the kerb and headed towards the motorway.

Who’d have thought he’d be going back already?

*

Samantha was at the front room window when he pulled up outside the house.

As he stepped out of the car, she rushed to him and wrapped her arms tight around his tense body, the sweet smell of her perfume welcomingly familiar.

‘You’re back,’ she whispered, and he felt her warm tears against his cheek.

A moment passed before he pulled away and said, ‘It’ll never happen again.’

She cupped his face in her warm hands. ‘Never.’

‘Then, yes,’ he said. ‘I’m back.’