The traffic stutters to a standstill. An electric window hisses up and stops with a soft thud. Two months have passed since George fell out with the homeless man, and the weather has turned. Cool damp May and June have been replaced by searingly hot July. It’s thirty degrees outside, so it has to be hell inside George’s ailing car.
He would have liked to keep the window open longer, but he worries about the pollution. To completely seal himself off from the outside world, he presses the air-recycling button. Nothing can get in, nothing can get out. The heat steadily builds. His mind slips back to the previous summer when the Mondeo’s air con had functioned perfectly. He wipes his brow with a shirtsleeve and places his clammy hand back on the wheel. Both hands on the wheel whenever possible. No sense in taking chances.
The car in front moves. George transfers his right foot from the brake pedal to the accelerator, applying gentle pressure while simultaneously releasing the clutch with his left foot. He notes with satisfaction the symmetry of both feet moving in opposite directions and yet achieving the same goal – to propel his car smoothly forwards.
Ahead, the road narrows as two lanes become one. As usual, some drivers leave it until the last second to move in from the outside lane. In his wing mirror, he sees a white car barrelling along at speed. George instinctively knows the driver will attempt to push in, so he closes the gap on the Toyota in front. He hasn’t left a safe distance behind it, but the situation is under control. He knows his reaction time to an emergency is fast. Given the opportunity, he’d willingly submit himself to rigorous scientific evaluation to prove his lightning reflexes to the world at large.
As the white car draws alongside, he can’t help glancing over at the driver. Briefly, they make eye contact. With the single lane section now immediately ahead, and realising there’s nowhere for him to go, White Car Man brakes hard and pushes in close behind George. The blare of a horn, at first staccato, then sustained. Headlights flash in George’s rear-view mirror. He lets a small smile escape and makes a mental note of the number plate. He has a gift for memorising trivia, having once read a book called 10 Ways to Remember S**t that Matters. Not that he thinks the driver’s dangerous actions are trivial.
Further on, a cyclist partially blocks the lane. Flicking on the right indicator with his middle finger, and with the minimum of movement of the steering wheel, George weaves around the obstruction. A perfect course correction is how he’d describe it. He doubts White Car Man would have achieved the manoeuvre so precisely. He’s still there, though, less than a car’s length from George’s bumper.
George touches the throttle to create some extra space between them. White Car Man closes the gap. George shakes his head, sucks in some hot humid air and exhales it slowly. His eyes swivel up to the mirror again. Ten metres behind, a contorted face stares back.
The traffic starts to flow more smoothly. George selects fourth gear and the revs drop to two thousand two hundred, the point at which he knows the engine runs most efficiently. A digital readout of his current fuel consumption on the dashboard confirms this. He presses a button on the end of the left stalk three times to check the status of the fuel tank. Eighty-seven miles. He’d have to be careful. No unnecessary journeys. There’d been a hike in oil prices and the cost of fuel had risen sharply. His savings would keep him going for a while, but he’d need to find a job soon.
As he approaches his seventh decade, who knew how long that would take? Middle-age and middle-management meant, at best, middling prospects. On the night of his
redundancy, sitting alone in his suburban home watching a re-run of The Good Life and mouthing its dialogue for the umpteenth time, he’d acknowledged his own life had reached yet another critical fork in the road.
Now, as he progresses towards the town centre, he wonders if he needs to go back to corporate work at all? Surely there must be other options? I gave my best years to that company and now I’m free. Freedom. Even thinking the word feels radical. Dangerous, even. A squirt of adrenaline into his bloodstream nudges his heart into a higher gear. With White Car Man temporarily forgotten, he allows himself to revel in some possibilities.
Sell up, perhaps, and take an early retirement in…? He runs through a list of countries where a low cost of living would give him a comfortable lifestyle. Spain? Full of Brits like – he glances in the rear-view again – like him, the idiot in the car behind. And he curses the driver for breaking this pleasurable daydream. He refocuses. Maybe Asia? You can eat out for a pound in Thailand, a colleague once told him. Even less, said another, joining the conversation. Great food, friendly people and, he added with a wink, the chance to pick up a new wife.
As George contemplates the pros and cons of such an opportunity, a vivid blaze of red jolts him back into the real world. The Toyota has slowed almost to a halt. The brake lights fill more and more of his vision, and for a moment his brain concocts an illusion in which the Toyota appears to be reversing towards him. As the closing distance between the two cars decreases exponentially, the illusion vanishes. Even as he stamps on the brakes, he predicts a collision looks likely. He’s all too aware you can’t argue with basic science.
Eight metres … Four metres … Two metres … George stops breathing. He feels weightless. His mind empties. Eyes squeeze shut. Hands brace against the steering wheel.
