Chapter 25 #2
I tap Kat on the shoulder and lean forward to whisper into her ear. ‘Is it worth checking your phone, see if it’s got any reception yet?’
She nods and pulls it out, then her face falls. ‘Not one bar. This thing is useless. Kept saying to Nate I need a new one but never got round to it.’
‘Did you tell Nate, where we were going?’
She shakes her head. ‘Not specifically, no. He knows we’re out for a walk though. But he’ll be worried we’re not back. I wish I’d told him more, but I kind of thought he’d say I shouldn’t go, and then I’d feel bad about going.’
I swallow and grab hold of my nerve. ‘Umm, hi,’ I say loudly, to get the attention of our reluctant driver.
‘Could we possibly borrow your phone? I mean, we won’t call the police or anything, if you don’t want that, but can I just call my son, so he can let the nurses know we’re okay and everything? ’
DCD brings the car to a screeching halt, slewing it into the verge and half into a bush. The caravan lurches from side to side, and now he’s really angry. He turns round and gives me that glare again. ‘No phones. No one is calling anyone. Do you want me to let you out here?’
I gaze out of the window, hoping for a lit-up house, for any signs at all of civilisation. There is nothing, just wild rural countryside, fast turning ghostly white, crystals dancing in the beam of the headlights.
‘No,’ I say, shaking my head from side to side. ‘No. Sorry, please, just take us to the next village.’
‘No more words from any of you?’
I zip my thumb and finger across my mouth.
He yanks the steering wheel to his right and floors the accelerator, the whole thing squealing as it wrenches itself out of the mangled bush. ‘Damn it.’
He manages to wrestle the thing into compliance and drives on.
Snow falls harder, drifting over the car and settling on the windows.
He turns the windscreen wipers to full and curses again.
The sound of them swishing across the glass is strangely soothing, their rhythmic scrapes and groaning squeals mingling with the warm fug in the car, settling my ragged pulse and dragging me into a fitful doze.
I jolt awake as the car comes to a rolling stop. I’m confused for a few seconds, looking around me and trying to work out where I am.
‘Damn thing’s broken down.’ DCD turns, scowling, spitting out his words. ‘Stay here while I try and get this sorted out.’
Kat digs her phone out again, but her resigned exhale tells me all I need to know.
‘Are we near the village?’ Jodie says sleepily.
‘I don’t think so,’ I say, peering out of the window at the whitewashed landscape.
All I can see are fields of snow, stretching on for ever, falling away on both sides, and skeletal trees with their winter-bared branches bending and twisting to the grey skies.
Way up ahead I think I can see something that might be a light, but it’s too far to tell.
DCD pops his bonnet and slams his door closed after him, leaving us sitting in silence, the car cooling far too quickly. There’s a slight acrid stench in the air, the engine overheated by dragging a great ancient caravan in these conditions.
‘It’s one thing after another, isn’t it,’ Kat says.
No one replies.
Jodie huddles deeper into her blanket and stares out of the window, her eyes paler than ever as they reflect the barren snowscape.
‘At least we’re indoors. At least we’re not still out there on the road,’ I say.
‘Shouldn’t’ve come in the first place,’ Violet mutters.
‘Not helpful,’ says Kat.
We wait as he clatters and clanks around out there, the car shaking back and forth, the chassis squawking in misery. We wait and we watch as our breath begins to form small clouds in the air.
‘Bit chilly in ’ere,’ Barbara says.
For some reason this tickles me, and I laugh out loud. The others look at me as though I’ve lost the plot, and I stare down at my hands.
After too many minutes I hear him shout, ‘Finally!’ and then he slams the bonnet down and wrenches his door open. ‘Right. Out, you lot.’
‘What?’ Kat says.
‘Get out. I’m late and I can’t dilly dally no longer for you lot.’
It’s not our fault your useless car broke down, I want to say.
None of us move. I watch as his face changes before us, his eyes narrowing, the door light revealing a pulsing vein in his neck as he leans in.
‘The village isn’t far,’ Kat says, though I’m not sure there is a village up ahead at all.
‘I don’t care. I’ve got to go the other way.
’ He points to a road up ahead, a tiny country lane that looks like it might lead to some desolate farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.
‘I’ve brought you this far. Besides, there’s a bus stop right there.
’ He points over to the other side of the road where there is, indeed, a bus shelter, one of those old-fashioned wooden ones with three sides enclosed.
‘You can get a bus somewhere, I’m sure one’ll be along soon. Now, piss off.’
I’m not at all sure about the bus. I’m not even sure any buses come along this lonely road anymore. With its snow covering it looks like something from an alien planet, so far from civilisation nothing and no one ever comes here. We haven’t met another car since we started out, back at the beach.
‘I’m not gonna ask you again. Get out of my car.’
‘I don’t want to get out of the car,’ Barbara says.
‘I don’t care.’ His face is turning a strange, ghostly shade of purple in the reflection of the snow in his side mirror. He bends further in and scrabbles in the glove box, plucking something out and then holding it up. It glints in the light over the rear-view mirror.
Kat draws back and shakes her head at me. ‘He’s got a knife,’ she hisses. ‘Come on.’
He stands there brandishing the knife at us as we crawl out, leaving Barbara on the passenger seat. It’s one of those multi-tool penknives; my dad had one of those back when I was a child, but I wasn’t allowed to touch it, because I was clumsy.
His hand is shaking. ‘Hurry up.’
‘What about Barbara’s chair?’ Kat says.
DCD makes a sound like a dog’s growl and pulls the caravan keys from his pocket. ‘Wait here. I’ll sort it.’
‘Don’t forget my frame,’ Violet says.
‘Shut up, you silly old cow.’
Violet shrinks against the car and doesn’t say anything else.
A few minutes later he’s still not out of there. The caravan is shaking and the air is blue with his cussing. ‘We should give him a hand,’ I say, and march back to the caravan door before any of the others can stop me.
He’s stumbling round in the caravan, shoving at the wheelchair which is wedged in the doorway. ‘Why the hell didn’t you bring a proper folding wheelchair on this little jaunt of yours?’
None of us answer. He slams his shoulder at it and then stumbles backwards over the walking frame, sprawling out on the floor behind him and hitting his head on one of the cupboards. ‘Ouch! Bleedin’ thing.’
Violet peers over the chair and into the caravan. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Get out of the way. Leave me alone.’
‘We should try and inch it out, little by little.’ I grab hold of the bar across the front and pull it and then push it back.
It’s stuck fast but as I wobble it back and forth I feel a little bit of give.
‘Okay. Look, it just needs to go back in and then come out at another angle, tipped over a bit, yeah, then bring it round the door, that’s it.
’ Kat and me edge it forwards and then back until it’s loose, then gently ease it out and lift it down onto the snow.
Violet is half in the caravan before we can stop her, bending over DCD and reaching out to shift her walker away from him. ‘I can’t get up this step,’ she says. ‘I think he’s hurt.’
He drags to his knees and shoves at the walker, almost knocking Violet flying back from the door. She falls back against Kat. ‘Steady,’ I say. ‘We should go. He’ll be fine.’
Violet shakes her head, peeks back in and stares around at the interior, eyes widened. Her hand flies to her throat. ‘Oh, my word.’
‘What?’ Jodie pushes through, trying to see around Violet.
‘He has a van full of those pad things,’ Violet hisses at us, one eye on him, still on his knees behind the upturned walker.
‘Pad things?’ I say.
‘You know. The telephones.’
I’m mystified, but Jodie jumps in. ‘You mean iPads, right?’
Violet nods furiously. ‘Yes. The pads. Stacked end to side.’
Jodie has her head in the van now, squashing herself up against Violet in the doorway. She whistles. ‘Woah.’
‘What?’ says Kat.
‘Ain’t just iPads in there. He has like a million tons of weed or something.’
We stare at Jodie for a second and then he’s up on his feet and hurling the walker at Violet, who stumbles back into Jodie, who stumbles back into me. We back away, gaping up at him.