Pallets

The sky, the colour of pewter, had been spitting a drizzling rain for a few minutes.

“Ah shit. Just my luck.”

She pulled the collar of her denim jacket to her neck and wiped her eyes on her cuffs as the lights started to streak. A thousand identical grey cars streamed past. Streetlights and car headlights washing into a tie-dye blur. Blinking, she held out an arm, raised a thumb. The slipstreams of passing trucks repeatedly sucked her to join them, their wheels whistling past on the damp oily tarmac. She planted her trainers against the blasts of rain-soaked air, pasted a fake smile onto her lips and hunched her shoulders against the cold.

“Oh, come on, must be one frigging lorry going to Sheffield.”

The boy had left later than he had planned, pulling himself slowly away from his grandparents overly warm fire, refusing yet another cup of tea. He accepted the packet of Everton mints with an embarrassed smile.

“You always liked those.”

The light was fading as he headed toward the M1 and he was already sleepy. Not a good start to an eight hour drive.

A sudden panic gripped him as he hit the slip road. Was this the right road? He touched the brakes and desperately scanned the road ahead for signs. It was OK. He relaxed back into the leather. As he slowed he saw the girl. A wet waif staggering against the slipstreams of the trucks ahead. He checked the mirror and pulled up hard, just ahead of her. Wound the near side window down, letting a cold swirl of wet air into the warm car.

Her head appeared, white and panting from the short run. She lifted a small hand and wiped drips of rain from her eyebrows.

“Duckmanton?” She asked.

“Sorry, I don’t know it.” He scanned the car’s interior as if looking for clues. Then, as if he had found one, announced, “I’m going to Edinburgh.”

“Services, M1, just short of Sheffield.”

“Oh OK! Yes, I can take you there, hop in.”

He tossed his jacket into the back and swept up the sweet wrappers scattered across the passenger’s seat into his hand, dropping them into the well.

There was a split second of calculation before she opened the door and climbed in. She caught a hint of new car smell which lingered despite the aggressive aircon and a pine air freshener swaying on the rear view mirror.

He thumbed the window closed, indicated and pulled out, accelerating hard to move into the flow of traffic. Then he checked her out. She was small, skinny, pale and had a pinched hard look for a girl her age, but he thought she was kind of cute. What age was she? She could be anything between fifteen and twenty, it was hard to tell. A lot of eye shadow, he guessed young. Seventeen? She was dark and had long hair which she was trying to dry with a tee shirt from her small rucksack.

“Sorry, I’m making yer car wet, cats and dogs out there.”

“Oh it’s OK, It’ll dry.” He turned the Aircon fans up a bit and warm air roared at their faces. “So what takes you to Duck… er… Up the M1?”

“Duckmanton. Me stupid brother. He got caught nicking something from the shop there. Police called us just after tea, said someone got to collect ‘im. Its scary when you’re thirteen. I was shitting me’self first time they lifted me.”

“He’s thirteen? What was he doing there, how did he get there?”

“Trying to visit his dad I guess. His dad’s in Leeds.”

“Couldn’t your dad or one of your parents collect him?”

“Nah.”

She didn’t offer to talk about it. He sensed it was not a happy family tale.

“I’m heading to Edinburgh, new role, promotion. I work for a big drinks company.”

“Sales?” she asked, looking out the window, into darkness.

“No, Logistics, manage all their pallets. Purchasing, storage, transport, disposal. More impressive than it sounds.”

He caught the reflection of her amused smile but ignored it.

“We get big tins of cooking oil on plastic pallets.” She offered, perhaps making an effort to redeem her dismissal of him.

“Yes, wood ones have fasteners that can damage tins. They pose a puncture hazard. I imagine a huge punctured can of cooking oil would cause a costly clean-up and quite a delay.”

“You use plastic ones then?” she asked, almost sounding interested.

“Horses for courses. Wooden take more weight and they’re a lot cheaper. So not going to use a plastic if it’s going overseas and not coming back. But wood’s not good for fire regulations. And not so easy to handle in a warehouse. It’s complicated.”

“Has to be worked out by a big clever boy.”

He prickled at the sarcasm. “I did Business at UCL. Got into their graduate scheme,” he told her, proudly.

“Lucky you,” He wasn’t sure if this was sarcastic too.

“I worked hard for it.”

She turned toward him and in a kindly voice told him, “Posh parent, posh school, tutors, bet you did some posh sport, fencing or some sort of crap.”

“Sailing, not really posh.”

She laughed. “Wasn’t ever much doubt you’d do alright then, was there. You’ll always do OK. University, posh job, posh pretty wife, two kids. They’ll do sailing too. Ballet for the girl.”

“Did you do ballet?”

She laughed again. “Must’ve been sick that day. Me mum worked in the school canteen; I work in the school canteen. It’s how it works.”

“There was a lot of pressure, I worked hard.”

“Well yea, your lot get to be anxious and my lot gets humiliated. You’re all desperate to win, we all know you think we’re failures. Most of us do too. But it’s just like the lotto init.” She said it in a matter of fact way, like she was describing the rules of a simple game.

“What do you mean, you get humiliated?”

“We failed, must be our fault, stupid and lazy, right?”

“You think people look down on someone without a degree?”

“Yea, you only got to watch TV ain’t you. Working class dads are all useless idiots. Brexit leavers, trump voters. Homer Simpson, duh. The girls are all dumb sluts or useless mothers with a poor grip on contraception. White trailer trash.”

“I don’t think I look down on people. Is there even a working class anymore?”

“Men who work with their hands and get dirty, course there is and course you look down on ‘em. Everyone looks down their nose at plumbers and laugh at their plumbers buts, an factory workers, an people who dig the road and sweep it. The women who collect yer plates in the canteen. But you want yer car and yer motorway and you’re happy enough when yer sink blocks up with fucking okra or couscous or some other shit you eat and you need some poor bloke to suck the crap out of it.”

“Well, it would help if they weren’t so racist; Plumbers, taxi drivers. So often, they all seem such bigots.”

“Look, me dad goes to the pub with his mate Abdul, an I ‘ad a black boyfriend last year, but it’s obvious, when you’re failing, when you’re struggling to keep your wife and feed yer kids an’ you get worse off every fucking year, anyone who cuts the queue ain’t gonna be popular are they. That’s why we’re pissed off about immigrants and refugees. That, what’s it called, ‘affirmative action’, it’s a joke. It’s just another way of saying queue jumping. An’ were English ain’t we, we like a good queue and we get mardy if someone pushes in. Blacks or Arabs or  women or whoever it is. No affirmative action around my way. We’re white, s'posed to be privileged. What a joke.”

He wanted to say something but knew it would sound condescending or pompous. He turned her world view over in his mind. He was sure she was wrong but didn’t know how to kindly put her right. He tried to remember what he knew about the economic advantages of immigration. A few minutes later he turned to look at her and she was asleep.

He glanced at her face. She was pretty. Her face looked sweet when she was relaxed. He glanced at her thighs too. He liked the way they looked under tight wet denim. She had a boyfriend last year, does she have one now?

She didn’t look very comfortable.

He knew the chair reclined till it was almost flat; The salesman had shown him. He reached across and carefully wound the chairback down a little. It shuddered and jolted. She jumped awake, eyes wide, startled like a small animal ready to fight with claws and teeth.

“Sorry, thought you’d be more comfortable, didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I’m fine.” She said neutrally, relaxed back into the seat and closed her eyes.

He drove on. Watched his speed. Unwrapped and sucked mints. Tinkered with the aircon controls. Glanced at her thighs. Tried to tell what her breasts were like, but under her jacket it was hard to see. Small he guessed. She was cute though.

After a couple of hours he started to yawn. He picked up another mint but dropped it back into the wrapper nest in the centre console. At the next services he pulled off the motorway and softly braked into a spot next to the cafe. She woke, ready to fight again.

“Where are we?” she mumbled, blinking her eyes open.

“Services, I need coffee.”

“I’ll wait here.” She said, settling back into the seat.

“Erm, look, sorry, but I don’t really know you so well yet and…”

“Yea, I get it.” She climbed out of the car, collecting her tee and rucksack and headed toward the exit.

“Hey, wait, I can buy you a coffee. I’m just getting a takeaway. I can take you the rest of the way. You’ll never get another lift this time of night.”

She looked toward the exit. It was quiet. A wide expanse of wet tarmac reflecting splashes of orange light through a damp mist. She shrugged. “OK, I’ll wait here.”

“Don’t you want coffee?”

She looked at him for a long moment and then relented. “Tea, two sugars.”

“You coming?” he asked, heading inside.

“I’ll wait here.”

She perched on the metal barrier which bordered the car park, pulling her still damp collar tight to her neck. It was freezing cold, but the rain had mostly stopped. She wiped her nose with her cuff and sniffed, catching hints of chip oil and diesel. There was a quiet roar of traffic drifting up through the scrubby trees which edged the motorway. The ventilation pumps next to the café mumbled an erratic, throbbing complaint.

The café was grubby, cups and discarded wrappers were scattered across the floor. The tables were littered with takeaway cups, used sachets and pools of sticky liquid. A girl in a colourful hijab disinterestedly wiped a table over by the windows, but she had clearly lost the battle for hygiene and the will to win it. The girls at the counter - overweight spotty girls with blue-white skin and bleached hair, wearing cheap white  trainers -  chatted loudly in midland accents.

“What d’yer wont?”

“An americano and a tea, please.”

She asked something. He leaned in, with a quizzical expression, “Sorry?”

Her friend told him, “She said do you want milk.”

“Not in the coffee, but yes, two sugars and milk in the tea, please.”

“In or out?” she asked as her friend observed, teasing, “Polite int he.”

“To take away.” He said, adding an embarrassed “please.”

“Sugar’s over there.”

He stood awkwardly waiting and they returned to their conversation, a boyfriend drama of a girl called Karen from a popular soap opera.

“She’s a right cow if yer ask me. Deserved all she got.”

“Ohh, no,” her friend protested, “she fell in love. Just bad luck the baby wasn’t Martin’s. I mean, I’d fall fer a one nighter with Kush, wouldn’t you?”

“Yea course, just give us a chance, cept I wouldn’t let ‘im put one in me.”

She was looking straight at him and embarrassed, he moved away, collected sugar sachets and examined road maps of Midlothian. He was relieved when the drinks were ready and he could escape.

Outside, he handed her the tea and dug for his key. The car hummed to life and back in its warmth, she sniffed the tea suspiciously.

“No knockout drops and hardly any poison.” He joked, against the roar of the aircon clearing the windscreen.

“It happens,” she replied with no hint of humour, taking a tentative sip.

They sat in silence. He drove, she looked out of the window into the darkness. Now she wasn’t sleeping he felt a pressure to talk to her.

“Should make good time to Duckmanton.”

“Yea.”

“How will you get back.”

“Coach from Sheffield.”

“So how come you didn’t get the coach there?”

“They’re not like taxis.”

“Yes, of course.” He felt idiotic.

“Needed to watch the pennies too, you know.” He felt sure she was being kind, trying to make him feel less stupid.

“Yes, of course.”

A few more miles shot past.

“So how come you work in a canteen, you seem smart.”

“I am smart.”

“So why not do a course or go to university?”

“There’s nothing wrong with working in a canteen. I’m never gonna do well cos I go to university. All of your friends will do OK, even if they’re as thick as short planks. Where I come from maybe one in a hundred get to university and end up in posh jobs. An’ they’ll be miserable cos they won’t know who they are. Their friends from home will recon them snooty, stuck up, and they’ll never quite fit into where they end up. They’re set up to fail. Poor people do poor jobs, rich people do rich jobs, it don’t change an’ it got nothing to do with if you’re smart or thick as pig shit.”

“Isn’t that what the Labour party is for?

“The labour party,” she scoffed, “is just more posh kids.”

“You want a revolution then or something?”

“Don’t be daft. Miners tried that, me dad says Thatcher bought in the army and crushed the poor bastards. An’ your lot are never goin’ to go for smashing a system they think they can get to the top of. An’ you got us beneath you to look down on. Remind you how well you’re doin’.”

“I don’t look down on you.”

“Not going to ask me to meet mummy though, are you? ‘Fucking lovely trifle, Mrs posh kid’s Mum.’”

“You’d only say that to wind her up, to get a reaction. She’d probably laugh. Anyway, I’m not posh.”

“It’s ok being a nice posh kid you know. I mean you’re not my type but I bet the posh girls like you.”

"I do alright," he lied. He had lusted after beautiful, smiling, razor sharp Amira for the whole of his last year. She hadn't looked at him. He wanted to tell the girl, but he knew she’d laugh at him.  “What’s your type then?”

“Not you. I’m wood, you’re plastic. You can enjoy lookin’ at me thighs but you’re not gonna get yer hands on em.”

“I didn’t. I wasn’t.“

“Right.” She glanced with raised eyebrows, but then smiled. “You’d hate my type. You’d call him a yob. Pub Friday night. Football every Saturday. Well-muscled, from work, not a poncey gym. Probably votes Reform. I’m never going to be yer next girlfriend.” She smiled, as if she liked him, but maybe felt a little sorry for him. “Sorry. You’re moving to Edinburgh anyway ain’t you.”

They sank into silence for a while. She gazed out into the darkness. He watched the road. Tried not to look at her thighs.

He counted down Duckmanton. Next services fourteen miles. Next services two miles. A6192 Markham Vale, huge white letters on blue. He missed the roundabout exit, span round twice before he peeled off for Duckmanton services. Purred past the electric charging stations toward Starbucks and MacDonalds and Spar. He cruised around the parking area, looking for a police sign, but not finding one, pulled in next to the services entrance.

“Closest I can get you. I think. I don’t know where the police station is, can’t see any signs.”

“It’s on the south side, over the bridge I s’pect.” She collected her phone and rucksack and before she closed the door, looked at him and said “Ta.”

“Thanks for the company, Will you be alright? Do you want me to come with you?”

“No.” She shook her head, amused.

“Why don’t I give you my number.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, in case you need help or something.”

“Look, I know you want to be the good guy. Rescue me or something, but I don’t need it. I have shit to deal with but it’s my shit an’ I can handle it.”

“OK. Well, good luck then.”

“Yea.” She swung the door closed.

He watched until she disappeared behind the sliding doors. He picked up the takeaway cup she’d left in the holder. It was still almost full. He carried it to the overflowing, squat, white bin, looked at the dark, purple-red lipstick smeared around the lip and worked it into the top of the days waste ; Covering it with a handful of sweet wrappers which the wind instantly swirled across the carpark.

Then, walking back to the car, he found the sugar sachets in his pocket.

“Fuck!”