Hitchhiker

"She said what?"

I nudge the gear stick up to fifth and the car levels out into a smooth rhythm, sweeping over the whispering black road.

"She said 'I've met someone else'. Just like that. Flat, unemotional.

I shrugged, my eyes dimly focused on the red brake lights half a kilometre up the road, smudged against my windscreen like a Childs drawing. Two red daubs of vermilion, moving, living under the sweep my wipers.

"just like that?" my companion continues his voice helpfully incredulous. He puts the right inflection in his voice, the one he expects I will like to hear. I can feel him looking me up and down, sympathetically, yes, but nervously. He doesn’t really like the way this conversation is turning, but he is beholden to me.

I shrug again, and flash him a quick sad smile. The expected response, I hope. Not the response I had to the phone call last night, but he doesn’t want to see that. Not while I'm driving. Not that pause. That pause that grew and filled the monstrous quiet of the humming airspace between her and I last night. A gaping hole that threatens to envelope me, even now, just recalling it, until she moved the handset against her chin, and I could see the lock of blonde hair fall over her right hand as she holds the small white handset of her phone. A yellow chink of sunlight sprites in the void, then sweeps back over her ear. Her other hand would be smoothing the fabric of her pyjama'd left thigh, like she did when she was thinking, waiting.

Lying prone on my couch, the comedy programme I had been watching before she rang flickers in the corner of the room, sucked dry of humour. The room’s atmosphere has changed.

"Jesus man, I'm sorry" my companion says, a little uncomfortably. Stock response from someone removed, who is slowing wishing he wasn't here. At least, that's how I think I'd feel in his place.

"We're youze going out for long, like?"

Ahead, the tail lights flash and grow closer. I dab the brakes and feel the right wheel tug as it ploughs through standing water, for a moment resisting, then releasing. I turn and smile briefly, reassuringly to my passenger

"Not long" I say.

A distant sound, like a door being softly closed comes down the line. I hear her hair brush the mouth piece as she turns to face whoever has entered her study, and that bright yellow sprite flashes again. Her desk chair almost touches the door when she leans back, so that she must be almost touching her visitor. I imagine her sad blue eyes meeting someone else’s. That minute contraction of her eyelids as she dose to signal "not now, not a good time". That signal she'd give when I'd walk in while she was consoling a friend over a breakup.

My voice, when it returns, is separate from me, my lips not seeming to move.

"Who?"

I don't want to know. I know he's there, and I'm here, a country, a ferry, a flight away, and I don't want to hear his name. I want her to say his name, just to make her feel bad, but I don't want to hear it, because it will make it real. Putting a name on it will remove my image of her, sitting, feet up on the chair, one arm clutched around her knees, feet tucked up, the other, with it's hand on the receiver, still, for the moment, holding me.

Her voice, when it comes, is fine, soft, and well spoken. She never abbreviates.

"I don't think that matters do you?"

"I don't think that matters" I had said that to her 3 years ago, one night as she lay her head on my shoulder and cried for her lost marriage, and her lost years. "It doesn’t matter, because I'm here now"

I put the wipers back on to clear the rain that smudges the dark night on my windscreen. It's getting heavier now, rendering my view of the night ahead as unclear as my thoughts. Cars sweep by on the other carriageway, headlights like tracers pointing my way back home, out of this steamy wet night. I flick on my fogs and turn up the air con just for something to break my thoughts, dispel this loud around me.

"Happened to me once"

His voice surprises me. I'd almost forgotten I wasn't alone here. He speaks with affected absent-mindedness, and I smile inwardly. This was the tack I'd probably have taken too: Empathy. He flicks through my iPod sitting in it's carriage on the centre console, its dim light lighting up his young unshaven student visage.

"Elliot Smith! Legend! Can I stick this on?"

I glance at him, at the same time unravelled by is change of subject, and glad of it, nodding acceptance. 'Junk Bond trader' fills the speakers and I turn it down a notch, not willing, just yet, for it to completely take over.

"What happened?" he says, after a moment, sensing the lull in the conversation.

He doesn’t need to hear the full story, and I don't need to go into it.

"Text message mate"

"Wagon" he responds, turning his attention back to the iPod, his interest taken up again by my playlists.

Ahead, the tail lights grow dimmer, roosters of water sparkling red behind cars sweeping by going the other way. No horizon, except for the dull amber glow above the city before me in the distance, looming over a million other conversations.

"I'm sorry. It just happened"

Silence. The watery trickle from my fish tank in the corner of my sitting room. Yellow Goldfish gazing into space, suspended in the dull water that’s long in need of changing, just hanging there, still life.

I'm numb. I haven't moved a muscle in 3 years as I cup this phone to my ear. It's what bereavement might feel like. I'm dimly aware as she breaks the silence. She clears her throat, and I see her, clearly, as if she's hear in front of me, pursing her small, full lips. The tip of her nose dips when she does that. A little crease forms around the edges of her mouth, where I've kissed her as she's cried as the salty tears fill the little rivulets they create. I've just put a cup of tea before her, and she strokes my bare arm in thanks as she consoles a friend over the phone. The tips of her fingers are as soft as petals, and tingle like silk against my skin. She clears her throat like that when she's ready to finish the conversation. The scent of apples from her hair. The tea in front of her now, brought in by someone else, Yorkshire teabags with the bag left in.

"You won't come over, will you?"

My companion is singing now. Elliot Smith's 'LA'. I want to hear Van Morrisons' "Astral Weeks" all of a sudden. The album I had on as I drove out her drive for the last time 3 months ago. I'm glad he's here so that I don't have to.

"So where are you headed?" he interjects, with welcome levity. I can understand his attempt to steer the conversation away from where it had been. Ahead, an overhead motorway sign is illuminated, blue and white, advertising left for the ferry terminal, and straight on for the city. Wind buffets the car, as a smaller information screen flashes the information that all ferries are cancelled due to high winds.

"No idea mate. No idea"

He looks at me for a minute, then reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulls out a packet of Marlboro lights and offers me one. I smile, and nod, and he lights one for me.

"Where do you want me to drop you off?"

"Anywhere in the city is grand man. Just going for a pint. Advise you to do the same"

I snort, take the lit cigarette from him, notch up Elliot a notch or two, and drive on past the exit for the ferry terminal and head for the city.