‘I totally get that,’ I say, ‘but I’m just wondering whether we should go a little faster, so that we cover a bit more ground while the going’s good?’
I see Emma glance down at the dashboard and she says, ‘Oh, yes, sorry.’ She then puts her foot down and we reach the heady heights of fifty-five miles an hour.
I do a surreptitious calculation on my phone. We could still just about get back in two days going at this speed; we’ll just need to do maybe ten to twelve hours’ driving a day. Which I’m guessing Emma will be happy with because it isn’t like we have anything else to do along the journey.
Half an hour later, I’m beginning to feel okayish about this trip. We haven’t exhausted the eighties greatest hits yet and we have several other decades to go through plus themed lists; we can absolutely listen to music the entire way and not really talk, other than polite necessities, and then we can go our separate ways. I won’t have missed much in London and it’s nice to have seen Emma and confirmed that she seems fine, and so all good from my perspective; I hope that everything’s good from hers too.
The skies have been growing gradually greyer over the past few minutes and it’s started to spit. I have to fight with myself not to mention that Emma hasn’t yet turned her windscreen wipers on, but I shouldn’t interfere; some people obviously find the wipers more distracting than the raindrops.
As the rain picks up, I do find it hard not to wonder when she’s going to put the wipers on, though. I mean, I can barely see anything through the waves of water sliding down the windscreen so she must have equally poor visibility. This cannot be safe.
‘So annoying,’ Emma mutters, just as I’m about to suggest (maybe beg if I’m honest) that she turn the wipers on. ‘It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop. How far until the next exit? Is that a sign? What does it say?’
‘I don’t know because I can’t see out of the window because of all the rain. Maybe the wipers would help?’
‘They don’t work. Well,itdoesn’t. There’s only one left. We need to turn off.’
The rain’s pelting down now, like someone’s chucking swimming-pool-sized buckets over us from above, and visibility is poor to non-existent.
To her credit, Emma’s slowed to a complete crawl. To her discredit…
‘What were youthinking?’ I find myself shouting. ‘How long have they been broken?’
She mumbles something.
‘What?’
‘I didn’t think it would rain,’ she says, still mumbling. ‘I do check the weather forecast very regularly.’
‘Italy isn’t the desert, though?’
‘Summer, though?’
I apply huge willpower and don’t shout any of the many other obvious things that spring to mind, because I don’t want to take any of her attention away from the road.
Because of the direction of the rain, we can actually both see out of our side windows and fortunately we come to an exit within a minute or two. Emma’s still not catching my eye at all and I’m still struggling not to bereallyannoyed. She coulddiedriving like that.Andthis is going to hold us up for who knows how long.
After a few minutes of crawling along narrow, windy roads where we can’t safely park, we come to a clearing off to the left, which looks like a car park nestled amongst some trees.
Emma parks us in there and we both look around.
There’s a canopy of trees above us, so thick that it’s fairly dry underneath. I get out to take a better look and to make sure thatI don’t shout at her about what was shethinking: you can’t go on a motorway trip with non-working windscreen wipers.
There’s a big board on the opposite side of the clearing. I don’t speak Italian at all but I think it’s showing some walking trails and naming some of the plants along the way. I pull my phone out. No signal. Okay, so no way of seeing where we are, what the rain forecast is, or where the nearest windscreen-wiper-fixing garage might be. Right.
Emma emerges from the van, stretching her arms and legs.
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’ She does actually sound pretty contrite. But then she continues, ‘I always check the weather forecast a lot, obviously, and honestly this was a big surprise. We were probably due a break, though, so no bad thing.’
I stare at her. Does shemeanwhat she just said?
I should not engage. I should walk round the clearing, maybe walk down the lane to see if I can get a signal. I should not ask her what the actual hell she is talking about.
I really shouldn’t.
But, ‘Sorry, what?’ I hear myself say. ‘The weather forecast isn’t infallible, is it? You’re very lucky not to have had a crash before now. Plus, it’s quite soon for a break. We’re going to go into a third day of travel at this rate. Do we not need to find a garage as quickly as we can and then get ourselves straight back on the road?’
‘Obviously Iamgoing to get the wipers fixed because obviously yes, it is dangerous but I thought since it wasn’t going to rain at all while we’re in Italy I might find a garage in France because I speak French and I don’t speak Italian. And also I don’t want to disappoint you but we’re definitely going to go into a third day of travel. I would say a fourth or even fifth. It’s a really long way.’
