He put his case on the front passenger seat of the Merdemobile. The boot wasn’t opening anymore. He hoped there wasn’t anything useful in there. A Mauritian-English dictionary? Snake anti-venom? A lemur snare? Probably not. Just a badminton racquet and some seashells that had been there when he bought it, the relic, perhaps of some disastrous family holiday in Llandudno, or Cleethorpes. Where in God’s name was Cleethorpes? He still wasn’t remotely tired, though he could feel the redness prickling in his eyes. Not even the tedium of the motorway dulled his thoughts, as he raced at a clattering fifty miles an hour.
Cleethorpes. Wherever it was, it was a long way from Mauritius, a long way from Alice. They were on the beach now under a palm tree. No, the veranda of one of those grass-roofed beach hut things. They were drinking long drinks, and talking the talk. And then she took his hand and led him into the darkness of the hut. She was taking off her bikini. But it was so dark, he couldn’t see. He reached for the light, but there wasn’t one. Fuck, the Heathrow exit. Shit. A horn blasted behind, beside, ahead, as he swerved, his bald, flattening tyres gripping feebly at the tarmac. Safe. On target. Remember, he told himself, stay alive. Being dead would never get him to Mauritius, unless Mauritius was heaven.
Amazingly he was almost there. Quarter past seven. Plenty of time. He drove past the model of Concorde, ugly evil-looking thing that it was. Which terminal? Did he know that? Yes he knew that. Parking – long stay or short stay? He knew that too. It was time to say goodbye to the Merdemobile. It was certainly worth less than the cost of parking it, even for a month, should he decide to return, sick relative nursed back to health. Maybe not very community-spirited just to dump it. Would they think it contained a bomb? He’d write a note, explaining that no explosives were carried.
He found a place in the short term car park, and left without getting a ticket. He was running now, and became a little confused, missing the direct route to the concourse. He found that he came out close to the main entrance, where taxis pulled up and delivered their passengers. His head was fizzing and pulsing, and his eyes were stretched and sore. He had to slip between the lines of taxis, and other cars weaving around them, dropping people.
And there …. Could it be possible? Was that Alice by the big glass doors? His Alice, waiting for him.
Alice was even more astonished to see Andrew, dressed in a flimsy cotton suit in the freezing wind. She had just got out of her taxi and was waiting for a porter when she saw him. His hair was sticking out all over the place, and he was squinting into the wind. She found herself smiling like an idiot. He had come to wave her away, even though she had forbidden it to the three of them last night. How lovely, how wonderful. She would miss him so much. She stood up. But he was carrying a tatty old suitcase. What did it mean? Her heart began to beat with excitement at the mad folly of it. If, that is, he was doing what she thought he might be doing. The fool. The lovely fool. Perhaps only an insane gesture such as this could have tipped her feelings in the way she now felt them tipping. With each long stride he took she felt her heart overflow. She wanted him to be near her, wanted to feel his silly, silly arms around her.
She wasn’t looking for the car. Strangely it was Andrew who noticed it first: some function, perhaps, of his excruciating heightened senses. He saw Alice smile at him, saw her somehow mysteriously open to him, something she accomplished with the tiniest imaginable movement.
But then he knew that it was coming, and he knew that it was, in a way that he could never understand on this side of the veil separating life and death, just and right. He turned to face it. It was a sleek, low, anonymous thing, metallic grey or green. He couldn’t blame the driver; he knew that it was his fault, that he had stepped out from an invisible place, coming like an apparition into the path of this thing. Strange, so strange how time slowed: strange only because it seemed the confirmation of the cliché. He tried to replay his life, but he couldn’t remember any of it. He looked back at Alice. She saw the look in his eyes. It was a look she had seen before. And then she looked towards the car coming, slowly so slowly.
He had heard the story of the Dead Boy so many times now, and though he hated his memory, and knew that the courage had been false courage, he felt that he must emulate it. He fought the urge, the pointless urge, to throw his arms and the case before him, as if one could simply ward off the car that killed you. He opened to the car as Alice had opened to him, and his only concession was to close his eyes the moment before the impact.
The impact.
The impact.
He opened his eyes again.
Ah.
That exhaustion-fuelled hallucination of slow motion was no hallucination. The car was still coming, crawling round the gentle curve of the roadway in front of the entrance. It rolled to a stop ten feet before Andrew and a head leaned out of the window.
‘Out the fucking way, mate: two in here with a plane to catch.’
Andrew jumped onto the pavement, almost knocking Alice over as she ran to him. He threw down his bag. The kiss, when it came, was the most nervous, inept, nose-bashing, teeth-clashing of his life, but he drank deep, and Alice put her tongue in his mouth, and then astonished him by grabbing his buttocks and pulling him into her.
‘I’m coming with you,’ he said, gulping for breath.
‘You’ll … never … get … a … ticket … you … idiot.’
‘I will.’
‘You won’t. It was a miracle I got mine. Kiss me some more.’
‘I need to get a ticket.’
‘Kiss me some more.’
‘I’m kissing you.’
‘Kiss me some more.’
‘I’m kissing you.’
‘Kiss me some more.’
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Susan Opie at HarperCollins and Stephanie Cabot at William Morris for their labour pains.
Thanks also to two sets of grandparents: Patrick and Margaret McGowan and John and Paddy Campbell.
Finally, thanks to Anthony, who held the hand that held the pen.
About the Author
REBECCA CAMPBELL was born in London in 1967. She went to the London School of Economics and then spent a miserable year in a Japanese merchant bank, failing to impress anyone. After studying design at the London College of Fashion, she joined her mother, who started the fashion company Paddy Campbell. Rebecca and Paddy still design all the collections. Rebecca’s first novel, The Favours and Fortunes of Katie Castle, was published to great acclaim in 2002.
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers
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Copyright © Rebecca Campbell 2003
Rebecca Campbell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
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Source ISBN: 9780007118144
Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007439782
Version: 2014-01-07
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