Riding Shotgun

We regret to inform you that the mainline trains beyond Milton Keynes have been cancelled due to a points failure.

The voice delivering the bad news was an approximation of a female voice. It was the same voice that would tell you that you’d had your legs amputated or that there was something inoperable growing in your head. It was the voice that death would use if it ever tried to develop a bedside manner.

And fell well short.

“Shit!” 

“Shit!” 

The two strangers had expressed their frustration, annoyance and disappointment with the same word, at the same time and with the exact same depth of rage tinted feeling.

Their eyes met and they laughed. The laughter wasn’t exactly forced, but it was the laughter between two people who didn’t know each other and weren’t at all sure whether what they were doing was going to land well. It landed all the same though, and they were left to make of it as they would.

“Where are you headed?” she said to him.

He paused for a brief moment, remembering stranger danger and the wariness that he was supposed to deploy as a shield. Then he dropped his defences. What harm could it do? He would have told her if they were sat opposite each other on the train. Truth was that his caution was because she was even talking to him. He’d noticed her as he walked into the station. That he had noticed her was no surprise. He had eyes. She was attractive. That was how it worked, or maybe it was how he worked. He’d given up trying to work out whether it was a bad thing or not. Well, it was bad, in that he was window shopping with too little money in his bank account. His inner voice was reminding him of this and asking him why the hell she would deign to talk to a man like him, giving what little self-esteem he had a right good kicking. He felt his cheeks flush as the inner voice did its worst.

“Lancaster,” he told her.

She smiled a smile that he wished was just for him, but he knew it was not. It was a smile she used often. A smile that worked well. It worked on him, “Lancaster! Me too!” Her face darkened, “well I was.” She shrugged as if to say these things happened.

He nodded his agreement, “well…” he said, for wont of a better thing to say.

“Well,” she echoed.

He looked towards the exit. There was no point to being here now that the train station had failed in its provision of trains. This was as far as his planning had taken him thus far. Leave the station and then work out what next. He needed to be in Lancaster, absolutely must be there. He had not factored in a plan b when it came to the travel arrangements, didn’t think he needed it.

He pointed to the exit and did his own little shrug. She nodded. He walked away.

Outside he paced. He paced and he realised that he was thinking about her. She’d spoken to him and he’d walked off. This seemed par for the course. This was the limit of his ability to interact with the opposite sex. He was rubbish and he knew it.

Lancaster, he reminded himself. Under the concourse of the station was a taxi rank. He’d caught a cab out of Town once, a few years ago. He’d gone to Watford and the cabbie had charged him sixty quid. Lancaster was a million miles away compared with Watford. He’d need a mortgage to pay the cab fare. Options seemed sparse right now. Was there even a plan b?

“Hey!” she said breathlessly from behind him.

He turned towards the voice and found he was pleased to see her, more so because she was out of breath and had obviously run to catch him up.

“Hey,” he said, wishing he had more than copying her word in his armoury. He smiled in an attempt to make up for his lack of witty repartee.

She returned the smile. Hers was much better than his, “I was thinking…” she began.

“Even if we split the fare,” he said, “a cab would wipe my funds out and then some.”

She giggled, “mine too.”

“Oh,” he said, “right.”

“How about a car?” she suggested, “that could work.”

“I don’t have a car,” he told her.

“Me neither,” she replied, “but I do have a licence. You?”

“Yes,” he said, “I do at least have a licence. He patted his trouser pocket. In the pocket was his wallet and within the wallet resided his licence. 

She looked down at his pocket and patting hand and raised her eyebrows.

His cheeks went red again as he realised that he had directed her gaze towards his crotch, “my licence,” he explained.

“I’ve got mine too,” she told him, “so we could hire a car and share the driving as well as the cost?”

You want to get in a car with me? he considered voicing this thought, but remembered that you were not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth. Besides, this was a pretty good suggestion and it might not cost much more than the train ticket would have.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said.

There was a car hire place just up from the station. They probably did good business thanks to the wayward trains and regular cancellations, but they still had a car available. Not the cheapest, but that was no bad thing. The car they secured was a little bigger and better suited to motorway driving. It smelt of cleaning products but not overpoweringly so, and there weren’t any foul hidden stenches lurking beneath. 

“Shall I drive the first bit?” she asked.

He wanted to put himself forth and be the valiant and chivalrous knight that he was supposed to be, but he didn’t because he thought he’d come across as rude and bullish, so instead he nodded, “yes, but let’s change early doors, OK?”

She looked askance at this.

“You’re driving out of London, that’s the hardest bit. Shall we change at the Watford Gap?” he suggested.

She grinned, “once we leave the safety of the South?”

“Yep,” he nodded, “we can grab something to eat and drink to fortify us before we enter the Northern hinterlands.”

“That works,” she said, “we’ll have done a fair few miles by then.”

He was glad that she knew that Watford Gap wasn’t anywhere near the Watford most people knew. He was also glad that fate had thrown them together. This was an adventure and he had company. A fortuitous improvement on the train journey he had expected to undertake.

During the first part of the journey, they talked about the journey itself. The car didn’t have sat nav, so he used his phone and directed her out of London. It wasn’t difficult. The train station was on a main route through London. They headed west and then took the orbital road around to the motorway. They both made observations about bad drivers and the way the traffic lights seemed to be against them. Easy subjects to fill the silence and avoid awkwardness. 

He didn’t feel awkward though, far from it.

The conversation changed once they were on the motorway. There were no directions needed now. They both knew where they were going. One motorway, then another and there were two junctions they could take to end up in Lancaster, the second one was probably the quicker of the two.

“So why Lancaster?” he asked her.

He found talking in a car easier. There was no need for eye contact and he had a theory that taking away physical cues and body language meant that the two parties to the conversation made more of an effort to make things flow. They gave each other the benefit of the doubt and went easy on each other. He occasionally glanced across at her and then counselled himself not to, it felt like an intrusion, overstepping the mark, especially because he found her attractive.

“Work,” she told him.

“What kind of work?” he asked.

“I’m a freelance trouble shooter,” she said.

“That sounds fun,” he said.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he could hear the smile in her voice and couldn’t help looking over to see it, “how about you?”

“I…” he began, what about him? What was he doing, going to Lancaster? “it’s a strange one really.”

“How so?” she asked him.

He sighed as she tried to frame his thoughts, “when’s the last time you got a letter?”

“You mean other than bills, marketing and the usual dross that gets posted through a letter box?” she asked him.

“Yeah,” he said, “a personal letter.”

“Now you’re asking,” she said before pulling out to overtake a gaggle of lorries. 

He was pleased to find that he was comfortable with her driving too. She wasn’t hanging about, but she was smooth and confident and he didn’t feel the need to keep a watchful eye over things and hadn’t once winced or panicked. He wasn’t a nervous passenger, but he did not like those few drivers who were erratic and drove on their nerves or with anger as a co-pilot.

“Do invites count?” she asked him.

“If they have a personal note,” he said, “I think they do.”

The letter he’d received was an invite of sorts. The letter itself was intriguing and it had hooked him. His friend wanted his help and he’d written to ask him to come and visit. He’d wondered why his friend hadn’t asked anyone else. Thinking there must be someone more local. But the tone of the letter was such that it was clear that he was the man for the job and his friend did not want anyone else. He thought this might be something to do with him being a lawyer. He hoped it wasn’t a wild goose chase. A variation on a friend of a friend accosting him in the pub or at a party and opening with you’re a lawyer aren’t you? Then launching into a query that fell into a part of law that he did not specialise in. There was that aspect of it and also the expectation that he would provide ongoing legal services for free because he was a mate. That always seemed to be one way traffic that one.

She’d thought for a while and come up empty handed, “not in a long time,” she said eventually, “donkey’s years in fact!”

“You’re not old enough for it to have been donkey’s years,” he said unselfconsciously.

“You’d be surprised,” she replied, “but I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is,” he told her.

“Are you like this with all the girls?” she said, her words light and fun-filled.

“Only the ones that chauffer me to the Kingdom of the North,” he said this and then marvelled at his own words, not quite knowing where they had come from and also that he’d managed to deliver them confidently, the right way up and intact.

“I feel a bond is forming,” she said, “do you think there is a bond forming?”

He wasn’t sure whether he could detect fun in those words. Things seemed to be more serious now and his chest was tightening. His body was reacting to her and her words and all of a sudden he was sixteen and on the brink of his first ever kiss. Not the mashed together lip kisses he’d experienced before, but the open mouthed kiss that he’d both been dreading and hankering after for so long. So long that he was beginning to think he’d never have a proper kiss. The pressure to do so growing and heightened by the fact he’d felt the need to lie and tell all and sundry that he was a seasoned kisser of these past three years. The worst of it was that he still didn’t know what he should do with his tongue. He’d once overheard two girls talking about a fifth year boy who pushed his tongue right into a girl’s mouth and swirled it around like it was a wet duvet in a washing machine. That sounded awful, but no one had described the preferable alternative. Despite all that, his first kiss had been pretty good and he’d gotten into it very quickly. The preamble to it was exactly like he was feeling now. His body clearing the decks, tensing, depriving him of air and making him go light headed.

He was thinking of kissing her. That dawned on him and when it did, so did all the other things that might follow a kiss. Where had that come from? He’d only met her an hour ago and now he was incredibly turned on and wanting to do stuff that he’d never plucked up the courage to do with any of his previous girlfriends. He wanted to taste her. All of her from the tips of her toes to the nape of her neck. He might even kiss her hair. Was that a thing? It probably was. Everything was a thing these days.

“You’ve gone quiet?” she said.

He even liked her voice. Her voice did things to him that voices shouldn’t do. He was terrified that his own voice would betray him, whether that was with words or by failing abysmally. He was transported back to his teen years, his voice threatening to break as he spoke, “just thinking about that bond,” he told her.

“I wasn’t being kinky!” she protested.

“What?!” he protested.

“You’re not tying me up, OK?” she said this in something approaching a growl, “I don’t do that  on a first date. It’s a rule of mine.”

“First date?” he asked.

She glanced over to him, “would you like it to be?”

He nodded.

She smiled.

At the services they kissed, and it was like his first kiss only better. He lost himself in her and never wanted it to stop. He had to compose himself afterwards and was embarrassed at how aroused he had become.

“When we get to Lancaster…” she let the words trail off but he knew what she was suggesting. He could see it in her eyes.

He tried not to speed on their way to Lancaster. It did not help that she was resting her hand proprietorially on his thigh. The meaning of that hand was clear. It was a promise of what was to come. 

The conversation dried up as the heat of expectation inside the car built.

“I have a room,” she said as they left the motorway and entered the city.

The journey had dragged and yet they arrived in Lancaster sooner than he’d expected. They drove to her hotel. The process of checking in was protracted and awkward. They could not hide their desperation to get the key card and head upstairs, the receptionist could see them both squirming and it delayed matters further.

They fell into the room and into each other. There was nothing else. They lost themselves and explored each other and their pleasure until they were exhausted. They fell asleep in each other’s arms and woke the same way. Kissing each other awake and taking their time.

“I should go,” he told her.

“Me too,” she agreed.

“Here’s my number,” he said writing it down on the back of one of his business cards, “I’d like…” 

“Me too,” she smiled, and she kissed him on the cheek before they parted.

He walked to his friend’s house. It wasn’t far. He’d left the car keys with her. She’d signed for it after all. At the door, he pressed the bell. There was no sound, but he waited so he wouldn’t be rudely impatient. Having left it a suitable amount of time, he went to knock. The door moved as he did so. He pushed it open and stepped inside.

Something made him think twice about announcing his presence. He sensed that there was someone in the house. He walked along the hallway having a care to be quiet. There was movement in the living room, so he stepped through to see whether his friend was there.

He was. 

Everything froze and it was all he could do to look up from the prone figure of his friend, to the other occupant of the room. 

She was holding a gun. A whisp of smoke wafted up from the barrel. He thought of cigar smoke and realised that he was going into denial. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. 

But it was, and this was just typical of his rotten luck.

“You…” he said to her.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, and he could see that she was. He could see it in her eyes. He could read her in a way he’d never read another human being.

She was the one.

His one.

At least he’d found her. Many people never got that.

His chest was tightening and he was feeling lightheaded. This was another first.

He nodded towards her and smiled sadly, “I…” 

“Me too,” she agreed.

“Never felt this way about anyone,” he told her.

“Me neither,” she told him, “I’ve never done anything like last night.”

“It was special,” he told her.

“The best,” she agreed.

“Could I…” he began.

She shot him. Right through the heart. He didn’t die instantly, he had a moment longer to see her shaking her head and the first of her tears. He clutched at his broken heart with one hand, his other reached out to her. She dropped her gun and went to him, taking that outstretched hand after he’d fallen to the floor. He was dead by then, but that didn’t make a difference to her. She held his hand and wept for the only man she would ever love.