‘We were very lucky that there was an exit so soon.’
‘We’re fine, though?’ She shrugs, with a palms-up hand gesture.
‘I mean, you might well not have been. We have no way of knowing whatmighthave happened. God. Whatelsehave you been doing while you’re away?’
My mind’s boggling at how much danger she could have been putting herself in if she’s this… I mean, the word is reckless.
‘You sound like Samira,’ she grumbles.
Samira. I haven’t thought of her in a while. I’m transported straight back to the last time I saw her, me and several others – people I’d just met, I think – standing on the bar in a pub in Mile End doing shots shortly before getting kicked out by the landlord. Then Emma talked him into not calling the police and she shoved me into a cab, where I think I started singing, and she talked the driver into agreeing to take us home, despite my very obvious extreme drunkenness.
Weirdly, the look on Emma’s face now is not dissimilar to the one she wore then: a mix of defiance and disappointment. Disappointment inme. I brush away the thought that, if she wants a travel companion who’s willing to doanything, knowing the old me she might have imagined that I would be ideal. I am no longer the old me, and the new me is certainly not that reckless.
‘So we—’ I realise that I’m not leaving her until she has the van properly sorted at a garage ‘—need to get the wipersandthe lights sorted before we go anywhere.’
‘ObviouslyI was going to. I was planning to go in France – the south of France, as soon as I crossed the border – because as I told you I speak French and I do not speak Italian, but now I’m obviously going to get the wipers done tomorrow morning and I will obviously get the lights done at the same time.’
Unlike when we were young, it will make no difference to the rest of my life if I piss her off, so I say, ‘You really need to be more careful.’
‘Well, luckily,’ she says, a little snippily, ‘at the moment I seem to have you here to ensure that.’
‘Thatislucky,’ I agree. Not for me, though. This whole situation is one of the least lucky things that’s happened for a long time. At this rate, I’m going to be so worried about Emma that I’m going to end up sticking with her for the whole of the rest of the journey, however long it takes.
She glares at me and opens her mouth and then closes it again and then visibly takes a deep breath. ‘So, dinner?’
She leaves the room and sets off at a very good pace along the corridor, before slowing down and waiting for me.
‘Remembered I’m your husband this evening?’ I ask.
‘Yup.’ She isn’t laughing.
I nod.
And then we walk next to each other, in uncompanionable silence, along the corridor.
6
EMMA
‘Anal shit,’ I mutter.
There’s something really, really,reallyannoying about someone who in the past repeatedly told you how much he loved you – adored you – but did give the strong impression of wishing you weren’t quite so sensible (I was always the voice of reason when he was doinginsanethings) telling you that you need to be more careful.
I mean.
I’m sure it’s illegal to drive a long way without working windscreen wipers and back lights but it can’t be illegal to drive for a little bit, just after it’s happened, because then people whose windscreen wipers have literallyjustbroken could end up with criminal records, so clearly there’s a grace period.
And who’s to know when the wipers actually broke?
And obviously I am not stupid enough to drive in the rain with no wipers or in the dark with no lights.
I don’t like driving in the dark at all, if I’m honest, so I just don’t.
And the whole travelling-around-Europe-by-myself thing? It’s the twenty-first century and I have my own vehicle and I amnot stupid. It’sfine. I have not had a single dodgy experience the whole way. Well, maybe one or two. But essentially none. Well, close to none.
‘Sorry, what?’ Callum says.
‘I said you’re an anal shit.’ I enunciate very clearly this time.
