Chapter 23
She was about forty-five miles into the journey and had crossed the border from Cornwall into Devon when the knocking sound started.
This wasn’t the kind of sign she wanted.
She hated anything to do with cars and, even though it might not have been very ‘modern young woman’ of her, she was always happy for her dad to step in and sort out those kinds of problems. The trouble was, he was still over two hundred miles away.
So, she did the only thing she could think of and turned up the radio, hoping the sound might stop as quickly as it had started, and trying her best in the meantime to drown it out.
That worked for all of about two miles when the knocking began to get louder still.
There was no ignoring it now, no matter how loud the music was.
She might be clueless about cars, but she knew this wasn’t good.
‘For God’s sake.’ Smacking the palm of her hand against the steering wheel, Hope willed the car to limp along to the next village before the banging turned into something catastrophic.
Come on, come on, we can do it. She repeated the mantra, leaning forward in her seat as if urging the car on might make a difference.
‘Thank God for that.’ As the sign welcomed her into the village and neon lights flashed to thank her for respecting the thirty-mile-an-hour speed limit, she gave a mirthless laugh.
The engine sounded like it could drop out of the bottom of her car at any second, so going any faster than a snail’s pace hadn’t felt like an option.
She just hoped there’d be a pub or somewhere else she could stop, to wait until roadside recovery arrived.
She didn’t want to wait for them, she wanted to close the miles between her and her family as quickly as she could, but she knew she’d be an absolute fool to keep going.
When she rounded the next bend, scanning the side of the road for somewhere to stop, she suddenly saw it; a mini miracle.
The car repair workshop on one side of a petrol station forecourt felt like a mirage and she blinked a couple of times just to make sure she’d read the sign right.
Maybe the knocking sound would turn out to be nothing much at all; a loose fitting on the exhaust that would be a quick fix before she was back on the road again.
She really hoped so and if it meant she could avoid waiting ages for the breakdown service, she’d be thrilled.
She just wanted to go home, that was all.
The decision to leave had already been painful enough and she needed to be with people who smiled when they saw her, not ran out of the door because they wished she didn’t exist.
Pulling to a halt on the forecourt, Hope jumped out of the car, heading straight into the workshop and walking up to a man who was sitting on a well-used swivel chair. He was wearing dark green overalls, liberally streaked with what looked more like grease than oil.
‘Oh hi, I’ve got a bit of a problem with my car and I wondered if you—’
‘I heard you coming from about a mile off.’ The man, who had a pronounced Devonshire accent, laughed, making his stomach jiggle. One of the poppers on his overalls had burst open, thankfully revealing nothing more than a glimpse of grey T-shirt.
‘Do you think it’s something you can fix? I’m on my way home to Tenby and I don’t like the idea of getting onto the motorway without knowing for sure that it’s okay. I’ve got roadside recovery, but I don’t fancy hanging around for them for hours, either.’
‘I couldn’t really say whether I can fix it without having a look at it, my love.
’ He was friendly enough, but his response still irritated Hope.
She needed to get going again as soon as she could.
She was miles from home with no idea how to get there if the fault with her car was too serious to be fixed straight away.
As she thought about how on earth she was going to cover the miles between here and home, she realised with a start that it was the distance back to Port Agnes she was calculating, not the remainder of her journey to Tenby.
It was just because that was the shorter of the two options, it had to be.
Even as she tried to convince herself of that, she knew it wasn’t true.
Hope had already decided she couldn’t stay in Port Agnes and that it could never be her home now, but the pull to go back didn’t seem to be any respecter of logic.
She couldn’t risk hanging around here and waiting for a recovery truck, it would give her far too much time to change her mind.
She squared her shoulders and looked at the mechanic again, adopting the most business-like tone she could manage.
She didn’t want what ifs and guesswork, she wanted to get to Tenby.
‘Okay, so would you be able to have a look, please?’
‘No problem, just give me ten minutes. I’m waiting for a call about a part I’ve ordered for one of my regular customers, but after that I can take a quick look and we can take it from there.
It’s only an hour until I normally close up, but if it’s a quick fix, I should be able to get it sorted.
You can wait in here if you like.’ He gestured towards another old office chair, stacked high with copies of Auto Express magazine.
Hope was warming to him more now, especially as he’d indicated that he might be able to get her back on the road.
She didn’t want to sit in the cramped little corner of the workshop that clearly served as his office, though.
It would make the wait for his verdict worse.
She wanted to get a bit of air and let her family know what was going on.
‘Thank you, but I’m just going to go outside and call my parents, so they know I’ll be delayed. I don’t want them to start worrying.’
‘Okay, my love. I’ll come and find you when I’ve dealt with the call from the suppliers.’
‘That’s great, thanks so much again.’ As Hope stepped out of the open-fronted workshop, she took a couple of big gulps of air; glad to be out of the stuffy atmosphere.
The mechanic had seemed pretty hopeful about the possibility of sorting the problem, but if it turned out not to be a quick fix, she needed a plan B.
Grabbing her phone out of her car, she turned it back on, having switched it off when she left the hospital.
She hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone who might try to make her change her mind about leaving, because she’d been terrified they might succeed.
As soon as she turned the phone back on, she saw eight missed calls from Louie and a WhatsApp message too.
Louie
Esther and Joe are on the way to find you. I tried calling, asking you to wait so they could talk to you. No one wants you to leave and I don’t think you do either. Please can you call me when you get this xx
She blinked a few times, trying to make sense of what it meant, but she couldn’t.
Esther, of all people, couldn’t really want her to stay.
Hope had seen the look on her face on the day she’d gone to talk to them about what Laura had told her.
It had crushed Esther to discover that Joe had fathered a child with someone else, just as Hope had feared it would.
If she was saying that she wanted Hope to stay, it was out of love for Joe, but that sacrifice would continue to cost her.
So, no, Hope wouldn’t call Louie and she certainly wouldn’t wait for Esther and Joe to turn up.
She was going to have to leave straight away, knocking sound or no knocking sound, and hope for the best. Dashing back inside the workshop, she almost bumped back into the mechanic as he was coming out.
‘Right, the part’s all sorted, so let’s take a look at this car of yours.’
‘I’m sorry, I think I’m just going to have to get going and hope the car makes it back to Tenby.’
‘No, no, no.’ The man’s tone brooked no argument. ‘My daughter’s about your age and if someone let her get on the motorway with a car sounding like yours, I’d want to get hold of them by the neck. I’m sure your dad would feel the same.’
‘It’s just… I’ve got to get home. I can’t wait; I really can’t.’
‘At least let me take a look, so we know it’s nothing dangerous and then if I can fix it quickly, you can decide if you really want to risk it.’ He gave her a level look. ‘But I strongly recommend that you don’t.’
‘Thank you.’ Hope’s mind was racing, wondering if there was anything she could do to stop Esther and Joe finding her.
She was on the route that any sat nav would suggest. Her car was mint green, and the garage workshop could be seen from the road.
Maybe Esther and Joe would drive past without spotting her car, but what then?
Were they planning to follow her all the way to Tenby?
No, she needed to cut this off at the pass, so she typed a WhatsApp message back to Louie.
Hope
Please can you tell Esther and Joe not to come. I’ve made my mind up and everything’s sorted for me to go home to Tenby. They’d just be wasting their time. I’ll message when I get there. Take care xx
After that, she called her dad, who told her that her recovery service had ‘get you home’ cover, if the car wasn’t fixable on the roadside. He reassured her that she’d done the right thing and told her to call him when she knew what the issue was.
All she wanted now was for the mechanic to say the car was sorted and that she could head back onto the road, but there was still no verdict yet.
She couldn’t seem to stop herself from pacing up and down the forecourt as she waited, and maybe there was something deep down in her subconscious telling her to do that, because she wanted Esther and Joe to find her.
After all, if she’d been sitting in the office area of the workshop as the mechanic had invited her to do, she wouldn’t have been on the forecourt when Esther and Joe drove past in the moments after she’d ended the call to her dad.