Chapter 3
3
CALLUM
Emma turns the key right and left in the ignition as the engine sputters and… does not start.
I watch her tut at the van – as if it’s a living creature rather than an inanimate object – as she continues to turn the key.
I’m pretty sure she was thinking about asking me why I no longer have a driving licence. I’m very glad she didn’t; that is not a conversation I want to have with her.
It doesn’t seem as though the engine’s going to start.
I’m almost mesmerised by her slim hands on the key. When the engine fails to catch yet again, the whoops expression on her face tempts me to smile despite myself and I wonder whether I might be a lot better off if the van doesn’t start after all. I do not need to revisit the way I felt when we split. Maybe staying in Rome until flights are back on is the lesser of two evils.
Yep, maybe I should just get out now and walk away. The engine thing must be a sign. Revisiting the past is rarely a good thing; it certainly wouldn’t be in this case.
I could walk. I could hitchhike . Why didn’t I think of that before? Why didn’t Janet think of that? Is she losing her touch?
I open my mouth to say thank you so much but actually goodbye just as the engine finally gets going and we lurch up and down.
‘Oops, the handbrake. Every time.’ Emma releases it and sends a half-smile in my direction as we lurch again, but forwards this time. And then we’re driving down the street, narrowly avoiding bins and bollards on either side, and I guess my decision’s made.
And, no, really that’s fine. We split up twelve years ago. We’re both adults now. I’m a completely different person from the one I was then. Emma’s obviously lived a lot of life since then too. We – I – can do this.
My mind veers back to the driving licence thing, and I decide that I need some distraction, because I really don’t want to go there.
‘Music,’ I say firmly.
‘Music?’ Emma’s keeping her eyes on the road, which I have to say I’m pleased about, because the van seems quite tricky to manoeuvre and we’re still in what seems to be a maze of narrow streets overhung with tallish, terraced houses, washing hanging from balconies, the occasional fruit and veg stall that we come far too close to, and people hurrying about the beginnings of their days.
‘What would you like to listen to? Favourite radio station?’
‘The radio doesn’t totally work,’ she reminds me. She stops and clunks the van into reverse because the corner we’re trying to get round is very tight. She leans to look in the side mirror on my side.
‘Would you like me to move that for you so you can see it without straining?’
‘No,’ she almost shrieks as I reach for the handle to roll the window down. (This van looks like it dates from decades before electric windows kicked in.) I raise my eyebrows and she says, ‘Sorry, that might have sounded like an over-reaction but please don’t touch that mirror. It falls off sometimes and it’s a nightmare to get it fixed.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Not a surprise given the unreliable engine and not-totally-working radio.
‘Honestly, it’s actually a great van,’ Emma says as she reverses again because we still aren’t round the corner.
Something I know about her that I doubt will have changed: however much she doesn’t want to talk or she’s upset or whatever, she can’t help herself, she still chats. Like I can tell she’s about to do now, despite clearly not being too happy to be sharing this journey with me.
‘It’s the bones of the vehicle that count, not the fancy extras,’ she continues.
‘That is true,’ I agree politely. ‘I’ve seen a lot of Top Gear . My nephews love it. You can cross entire inhospitable deserts and tundras in vehicles like this.’
I was going to say worse than this but I realise that that probably isn’t true.
‘Exactly.’ Emma finally has the van round the corner and we’re back to dodging bollards, people and the occasional stray dog.
I look at Google Maps again, keen to get out of the city and properly on our way as quickly as possible.
‘Left here,’ I say.
Emma keeps going straight.
‘I can’t go in there,’ she says. ‘Limited traffic zone.’
I look up from the phone. ‘This is a dead end, though.’
‘Yep.’ She’s already embarked on turning round.
‘Bloody hell ,’ she says as she finally gets the van all the way round after an eleven (maybe thirteen) point turn. ‘That was a tiny turning space.’
I look over my shoulder at the not-that-small space and maybe I snigger slightly.
‘Sorry, would you like to do it?’ she grumbles. ‘Or can you not actually drive due to lack of licence? And weren’t you the person who directed us into the dead end in the first place?’
‘Both very fair points,’ I acknowledge, her mention of the driving licence reminding me that nothing about today is funny.
She shoots me a small I-got-you-back smile and I find myself swallowing because it gets me in a way that I don’t want to think about.
‘How’s the map reading going?’ Apparently she hasn’t noticed that her smile made me feel… I don’t know, weird.
I blink and then collect myself and look at Google Maps again.
‘Yeah, no reception here,’ I say. ‘This has no idea where we are.’
‘Okay, I’m going to keep driving until it finds us.’
The ensuing driving around and fruitless where-are-we-going discussion are good in the sense that they’re a distraction from where I think my thoughts might have been going.
Eventually we’re in a street with slightly lower buildings and a better signal.
‘We’re literally one road away from where we started.’ I point at the phone. ‘And we’ve been going for forty minutes.’
We have to turn left into a very narrow road with very tall buildings because it’s no right turn, and we’re back to no reception.
‘Google Maps has us again,’ I finally say after more seemingly aimless driving around. ‘Right, left, second right and we’ll be onto a main road.’
‘Perfect,’ she says while I think about how much more time we’ve wasted. I’m really hoping we’re going to be sticking to motorways and main roads for the rest of the trip, otherwise at this rate we’ll be going into a third day on the road.
Fifteen minutes later, we’re still queuing to turn into the enormous line of traffic on the main road.
‘It’s obviously full rush hour now,’ Emma says, not sounding remotely upset. ‘I quite like traffic jams,’ she adds – more of the chat she cannot help herself starting.
‘What? Who likes a traffic jam?’ Turns out I can’t help engaging.
‘They’ve very low stress,’ she explains.
‘In what way?’
‘You aren’t going to have a crash when you’re in a jam, are you? And you don’t have to worry about changing lane and doing roundabouts and stuff.’
‘But you’re only in your car because you want to go somewhere. And once you get going you’re still going to having to do the lane changing and roundabouts.’
‘In the moment , though, it’s nice. You can just watch the world go by.’
‘More fun doing that in a café with coffee and cake, though?’ I suddenly register the more salient point of what she said. ‘Are you…? Do you…?’
I don’t want to be rude but how novice a driver do you have to be to find roundabouts so stressful that you’d rather sit in a traffic jam? Hasn’t she just been on a big road trip?
‘When did you pass your test?’
‘In April, a couple of weeks before I left for this holiday.’
Wow. It’s July. So she’s been driving for three months. That is… not long. Although, obviously, she’s got a lot of miles under her belt now, and the van’s bodywork looks great so she’s clearly had no mishaps to date.
So all good. I’m very lucky to have this lift and we will obviously get back to London in one piece.
‘Oh my goodness, what’s he doing?’ Emma points to where a man’s just driven from behind us down the wrong side of the road, thus blocking entry to where we need to go, and is trying to turn out into the traffic. The driver next to him opens his door wide, scraping the other man’s car, and they both get out and start yelling and gesticulating. A couple of other drivers get out of their cars and join them, followed by a couple more, and soon it’s total chaos. They move round the corner onto the main road, where more drivers join in.
Emma leans forward, her forearms on the steering wheel, her eyes dancing, looking like she just needs popcorn and she’s all set for as long as the show lasts.
I’m a lot less happy about being stuck here, but somehow, as she laughs and then rolls down her window to talk in extremely minimal but surprisingly effective Italian to a woman standing next to the van, I find myself almost enjoying the whole thing.
And then Emma says, ‘Are you coming?’ and gets out and walks off down the road.
I do not want to join her. This is ridiculous. It’s getting hot, there are fumes everywhere, this is a work day, for God’s sake. I don’t want to get involved in mass road rage in a not-that-nice neighbourhood of Rome. Except Emma’s now in the middle of it. Literally: she’s standing in the middle of the group, now gesticulating at least as much as everyone else.
I really don’t want to but I’m going to have to join her. I can’t just leave her in the middle of a huge multi-person argument.
I’m back with the speed-walking (my shoes are feeling a lot better now, at least) and am next to Emma very quickly, just in time for her to say, ‘ Alora, en el coche ,’ while she points at the man blocking the street. I think that’s Spanish, not Italian, and the man’s face is thunderous, but clearly something about her manner works because to my, and – from the dropped jaws around me – everyone else’s astonishment, he grumbles himself back into his car and begins to reverse, people scattering out of his way.
‘Nice,’ I say to Emma as we walk back to the car.
‘That was nothing compared to my day job,’ she tells me, and I realise that I have no idea what she does for a living. Twenty-four-year-old me wouldn’t have believed that I’d have no idea what path Emma’s life would take.
I nearly ask and then I hesitate, because I do not want to get involved at all. I don’t want to know what she does. I don’t want to know anything about her. I just want to get back to London and go back to not seeing her again and hardly ever thinking about her any more.
I do want to know, though, I realise, and again almost ask. But then I remember that I was supposed to be keeping my distance from her during this journey and I feel like we’ve already been talking too much.
So instead of asking what she does, I say, ‘Well you’ve done a great job here. The queue’s actually moving.’
Which is true, so we hustle ourselves fast back into the van and crawl forward until we manage to turn right. For a woman who hasn’t been driving that long, Emma has great skill in regular lane-swapping to take advantage of ebbs and flows in the levels of traffic, and we’re making a lot better progress than everyone else.
‘I thought you loved a traffic jam because you don’t like lane changing?’ I can’t help but ask.
‘Yep.’ She’s looking intently between her rear-view and side mirrors and does another sudden lane switch. ‘This requires too much concentration. It’s very unrelaxing.’
I decide not to point out that we could just sit in our own lane like you’re supposed to, because from my perspective the more distance we cover, the better.
‘So, music,’ I say, because it’s kind of weird to sit in total silence but we definitely shouldn’t talk too much. ‘What would you like?’ And then I add, ‘If you would like music,’ because I don’t want to impose. Maybe she likes driving in silence.
‘I have a…’ she begins. Then she stops for a second, before finishing with, ‘I’m really very easy. Whatever you like.’
I wonder what she was going to say and then realise that maybe she was about to tell me that she has a playlist for journeys and then realised that she doesn’t want to share that with me. I get it. I wouldn’t want to share mine with her either. Too personal. You’re giving away a lot about yourself with your playlist.
Silence, though. Music would be better.
‘What about starting with some eighties greatest hits?’ I suggest. She always used to love eighties nights.
‘I can never say no to eighties music.’
‘I know.’ That was awkward; why I am referring to the past? ‘Let me search.’
And soon we have eighties greatest hits blaring out of my phone and this is good. Emma could be anyone, just a woman I happen to be sitting in a van with listening to ‘Last Christmas’ in the middle of July.
About four songs in, Emma starts singing along. If she’s anything like she used to be, I’m surprised it’s taken this long; she always used to sing to everything. She never learns the actual words, just sings la .
I find myself joining in, with the actual words, because I know the actual words.
‘Oh my God,’ I suddenly say, halfway through Emma blasting out la at full volume to ‘Karma Chameleon’, a song that all people everywhere surely know the words to. ‘Remember when you did the miaow thing?’
She read something that said if you sing miaow when you don’t know the words no one can tell and it works way better than la . It was not true.
I should not have reminded her. She immediately switches from la to miaow , before cackling with laughter.
‘No, please no,’ I say.
We carry on with the la-ing from her and the actual words from me as we make our way out of Rome and onto the motorway. Singing-wise, we’re a match made in heaven or a match made in hell, depending on how you look at it, because she has the tune and I have the words.
I can’t help looking over at the speedometer fairly regularly. We’re getting overtaken by literally everyone. And that is because we are driving at about forty-three miles an hour.
‘I think the speed limit’s probably at least 110 kilometres per hour.’ I google as I speak. ‘Actually, it’s 130 on the motorway and it looks like it’s 150 sometimes. That’s fast .’ I google again. ‘That’s 93 miles an hour.’ I look back at the speedometer. I don’t want to be rude but… ‘So if you liked, we could go faster,’ I suggest.
‘I don’t love driving that fast,’ Emma tells me, tapping the steering wheel in time to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. ‘It’s stressful.’
I nod. It’s her decision, obviously. And I don’t fancy going hell for leather in a vehicle this rickety, so fair enough. Equally, though, I’m pretty sure we’d be safe going at, say, sixty miles an hour, and we’d get back a lot faster. Google Maps isn’t basing its estimates on people going at half the speed limit, is it?
‘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, it doesn’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 you thinking ?’ 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 be really annoyed. She could die driving like that. And this 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 that I don’t shout at her about what was she thinking : 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 she mean what 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 I am going 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.’
‘It’s not that long?’ I query, incredulous. ‘Google Maps says sixteen hours’ driving.’
‘I can’t drive that far in one day.’
‘I…’ I don’t know where to start. I look at her beautiful, still-so-familiar, but also now in many ways quite unfamiliar features. I don’t know whether I want to shout at her or shout at myself or just walk away.
For the time being, I decide that shouting is a bad idea.
‘I’m going to go and see if I can get a signal on my phone,’ I tell her.
‘Okay. I have an umbrella. Let me find it for you.’
‘I’m good, thanks.’
As I walk out of the clearing and down the lane, I wonder whether I should just keep on walking, right back out of her life.