Stonemouth

‘You awright, hen?’ two male voices say almost at once.

Oh, Jesus, it’s them. Her brothers. They’re out looking for me. I could die here.

‘I’m fine. I’m just driving.’

‘How are ye no answerin yer phone?’

‘Where to though but?’

‘Just driving,’ she says, after a tiny pause, her voice deep, calming.

‘Have you seen that cunt?’ one of them says.

‘Norrie, fuck’s sake!’ The other one.

‘Well, fuckin hell!’ says the first one. It’s Norrie, obviously, and Murdo, I think. It doesn’t matter.

‘Anyway.’

‘… What?’

‘What’s that?’

‘That’s my jacket.’

‘… says it’s her jacket.’

‘And you two?’ she asks.

‘What?’

‘Eh?’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Told you! Lookin for that fuckin two-timing bastart.’

‘Aye, hen, you don’t want to know what we’re going to—’

‘Go home,’ she tells them.

‘Eh?’

‘Naw! You go home. You go back home to Mum an Da, where they’re waitin fur ye, worryin.’

‘Aye, worryin.’

‘I just want to drive around a bit, guys, okay? It’s just what I need to do right now. I’ll be fine. Everything’s cool.’

‘… Eh? Aye. Aye, right. Shift over, hen, I’ll drive—’

I hear a car door opening, then another, there’s a sharp clang and the Mini shakes; feels like one door hit another.

‘Aw, El! Come oan!’

‘Ye’ll chip the paint! Whit are ye doin?’

The Mini trembles again. ‘Stoap

that! Will ye just—’

‘Go home. Tell Mum and Dad I’ll be back in an hour. Now just leave me, okay?’

The door shuts, the window whines, I’m thrown forward, then to the side, then back, all in a roar of engine and a brief screech of tyres. There’s a wild swerve and another chirp from the tyres as we shimmy down the road.

Maybe half a minute later the jacket’s pulled away. The lights overhead are strobing past.

‘Safe to surface,’ I hear her say. She sounds calm, even amused. I bring my head up in time to have it banged off the window as we make the turn into Station Road, fast. ‘Sorry,’ she says.

‘It’s okay.’

‘Put your belt on.’

‘We’re nearly there,’ I tell her, nodding at the road ahead as we accelerate between the lines of trees, darkness all around beyond the flickering proscenium formed by the Mini’s lights bracketing the trunks and the leaf-heavy boughs.

She just shrugs. She glances in the rear-view mirror, then frowns and looks back for longer. Suddenly she reaches out, turning off all the lights. The view of the great tall trees rushing past goes instantly, terrifyingly black. She takes her foot off the gas, lets the car slow on engine braking. We were doing motorway speeds up this narrow, tree-lined two-lane when she killed the lights. My mouth, already parched, goes drier still. I start fumbling for my seat belt, unable to tear my gaze away from the rushing darkness outside. Ellie’s a shadow now. I think I can see her leaning forward over the wheel, staring hard into the distance through the Mini’s close, upright screen, and glancing once, twice, into the rear-view.

Then I hear her release a breath. Her hand goes to the column stalk that controls the lights, but then she brings it back to hold the wheel again and the lights stay off. She looks to the side. ‘Moon,’ she says wryly. ‘Just enough.’ It’s almost as though she’s talking to herself, as though I’m not here, already gone. ‘Actually,’ she murmurs, ‘this is pretty cool.’

I look at her in the darkness as we make another turn. There’s more and more light as we approach the station, the faint silver of the moon outshone by the dim yellow-orange glow of a couple of sodium-vapour floods, all that’s left to illuminate the deserted station at this late hour.

‘You sure the train’ll stop?’

‘It’ll stop,’ she tells me. ‘Freight; big yellow pipes. Be near the back.’

My throat tries to close up. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whisper.

At first I think she doesn’t hear me. Then, as we draw to a decorous, perfectly controlled stop by the station entrance, she glances at me and says, ‘I know.’

There’s a look in her eyes that says everything else besides and beyond that cursory ‘I know,’ and I can’t bear any of it.

She keeps looking at me. I don’t try to kiss her or hug her or even take her hand.

‘You could come with me,’ I blurt out, and for an instant too brief to measure this seems like a brainwave, like an inspiration of genius.

She gives a single small explosive laugh, the kind that surprises the person laughing even as it happens; it bursts from her mouth and she has to wipe her lips. She shakes her head, I see her jaw moving as though she’s chewing something, and then she says, quietly, ‘Just get out, Stewart.’

I open the door and climb out. ‘Thanks,’ I tell her.

‘Take care, Stewart,’ she says. She waits a moment, then nods. ‘You’ll need to close the door.’

I swing it gently shut. The car moves smartly away, whirls and sets off down the road back to town, still showing no lights. I watch it until it disappears, then I watch where I think it must be until the lights come back on, nearly a kilometre away, almost at the road junction.