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Ellie slanted a look at her passenger. He clung on to the handle above the car door, sweat glistening on his forehead, the blood having soaked through the towels she’d wrapped round his other hand in scarlet blotches.
‘I don’t care if you bleed to death,’ she replied, trying to remain calm – he was a big guy, hopefully he had a few pints to spare. ‘What I do care about is you bleeding all over my rental car.’ She eased her foot off the accelerator to take the next hairpin bend in the A30. ‘I’ve got to drop it off in Salisbury in a couple of days and I don’t want to pay a fine, or have to spend hours cleaning it.’
‘If you were worried about your stupid hire car why did you insist on driving me to A and E?’
‘Because I stupidly care if you lose your stupid hand.’
‘I’m not going to lose my hand.’
‘Not on my watch you won’t.’ She braked at the roundabout on the outskirts of Gratesbury and heard him curse. She wrestled the unfamiliar stick shift into first gear. ‘Did you seriously think you were going to carry on playing dodgeball with a rotary blade with half a hand?’
She jammed her foot on the accelerator when she spotted a gap ahead of an articulated lorry.
‘Jesus!’ He slapped his uninjured hand down on the dash. ‘Who taught you to drive?’
‘Stop changing the subject.’ She took the second exit signposted Gratesbury.
She had checked on her mobile before they set off that the minor injuries unit was still there and open at weekends in the market town. Art’s breath caught as she zipped past a tractor with at least an inch to spare on the road that took them past the town’s church and secondary school.
‘What subject would you rather talk about?’ he said drily. ‘How much longer we have to live with you at the wheel?’
They headed up the town’s main street, which was furnished with a collection of charity shops, pound shops and chintzy tourist-friendly tearooms. The narrow pavements that headed up a steep hill were mostly deserted. Apparently Sunday opening hours still hadn’t made it to Gratesbury.
‘Now who’s being Princess Drama?’ she said, taking the side street at the top of the hill past the Somerfield supermarket.
They drove past a collection of old detached stone houses, their high garden walls lovingly decorated with trailing lobelia.
She’d once moaned incessantly about the lack of any fashion options for women under sixty in Gratesbury or the chances of getting a soy vanilla Frappuccino because they didn’t even have a Seattle Coffee Company café, which were all the rage in London, when her mother had brought her here during that summer. But in retrospect, weekend trips to the town had been a quaint and pleasant way to spend the afternoon – and the Women’s Institute market had done a phenomenal lemon drizzle cake.
The road narrowed ahead and seemed to be coming to a dead end. ‘Where is this place?’ she asked, wondering why she hadn’t spotted the sign.
Art stilled beside her. A brief glance confirmed his face had gone deathly white. Sweat dripped down his temple to furrow through the stubble on his jaw. It was a sunny day, and pleasantly warm, but not that warm.
She wondered how many more pints he could afford to lose, because the metallic smell had begun to permeate the whole car.
‘No idea,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been to it before.’
He closed his eyes and pressed his head into the headrest, the tight grimace signalling how much pain he must be in.
She almost felt bad about the Princess Drama crack. The man was nothing if not stoic.
She slowed the car, and finally spotted a blue sign emblazoned with the NHS insignia. ‘At last, found it.’
He shifted beside her as she drove into an almost empty car park. The one-story utilitarian building had a glass front and an ambulance bay with a paramedics van parked in it.
‘I hope it’s actually open,’ she said.
Still no comment.
‘Do you want to wait here while I investigate?’ she asked, concerned he might be about to pass out for real.
‘Sure.’
The bloody towel covering his injured hand had started to seep onto his T-shirt.
She got out of the car and sprinted across the lot, propelled by panic.
Art Dalton might be a pain in the arse, but she really would prefer it if he didn’t die in her rental car. Not only would that be a difficult one to explain to the car hire company, but she had a sneaking feeling her mum would be devastated.
