The traffic moves slowly. I inch forward and now the traffic reports are of solid jams further ahead. By three o’clock I have just reached the outskirts of Penzance. This is a nightmare, made worse by my engine beginning to steam. In my hurry, I forgot to check the water levels. Something else Hellie is always nagging me about – this car has a propensity for overheating if stuck in traffic too long. I switch off the engine to cool it down – the cars ahead aren’t moving, anyway – and try to think. I glance down at the map. They say Dartmoor is safe, but that’s still over eighty miles away. I’ve driven four miles in two hours. At this rate, I’m never going to make it. That can’t be right. It can’t be possible that I won’t get out of this alive, that I’ll not get to see Hellie and her family ever again. I pull out my map to see if I can find an alternative route. But the radio announcer is reporting pile ups at Bodmin and Redruth and gridlock on every road going north. There are no alternatives, this is my only way out.
I put my head on the steering wheel and howl. I’ve had long and happy life; in a previous era sixty-seven would have been considered a good innings, but I’m not ready to die yet. I still have too much to do. I am booked on a tour of Greece and Italy in the summer. I have signed up for a Masters in Theology in the Autumn. Hellie is pregnant. It cannot be possible that I will miss out on all that. But … there are too many cars, the road is too packed. If we don’t get a move on, nobody in this jam is going to make it. None of us. By tomorrow morning we might have reached Truro – and it won’t be far enough. Even if we could outrun the wave, the constant rain this summer means that the water table is so high the whole county will be awash with water. A line from the Bible comes to me: ‘The water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered.’ So God, you gave Noah fair warning – why not us? And don’t tell me a wild theory about a possible volcanic collapse was a divine message. Not on the basis of that flimsy evidence. Why didn’t you give us more? Why didn’t you allow us enough time to build ourselves an ark? Why are we left behind to drown?
I cannot stand any more news, so I switch to the CD player. Immediately the sound of French monks singing Vespers in plain chant calms me.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen.
I stare at the crowded road ahead. It may be my only chance of escape but I’m beginning to believe it’s no chance at all. I am hot and tired and I can’t stay in this car for much longer: I need some air. I passed the turn to Dowetha Cove a mile or so back. Perhaps if I go down to the sea, spend a bit of time by the water’s edge, the fresh air will revive and renew me. Perhaps by then the traffic will have died down and I can try again. I am not giving up yet, I tell myself, I am just taking a breather. I turn the car round, passing the long queue of drivers heading towards Penzance. Ahead of me flecks of golden sunlight light up the blue sea, calming my spirits. I text Hellie, traffic slow, but on my way. I don’t want to worry her yet. I just need to get out of the car for a bit, breathe some sea air and then I can be on my way again.
I hate it when Yan is right. He’s always so smug about it. Even in these circumstances, if we meet again, I bet he’ll be smug. Because he always is. It’s infuriating.
I was so sure he was wrong three hours ago when I turned up on his doorstep, telling him we had to go, NOW. He just replied in a maddeningly patient voice that due to the number of cars on the road, the average speed of traffic, bottlenecks and likelihood of crashes we wouldn’t be going anywhere. He smiled like a patronising professor, putting me right on the glaring errors of my pathetic dissertation and was totally immune to my increasingly panicked pleas that he leave with me. I couldn’t understand how he could stand there, so resigned to the fate I was certain we would be able to escape. I know he’s always had a fatalistic streak, but this deliberate refusal to move seemed stupid beyond belief. Though I begged and begged, he wouldn’t budge. In the end, I had to give up on him and go it alone. I hated leaving him, but if he was going to be such a stubborn bastard there wasn’t much I could do about it.
I was still sure once I was on the open road. Though it was busy, the traffic kept moving initially, while sunshine, green fields and glittering sea lifted my spirits. Poor Yan I thought, as I raced towards Penzance. Poor Yan. I put the radio on, singing along to Uptown Funk to push my fears away, as I pretended that this was just an ordinary summer’s day and I was heading north to see friends. It worked for a while, but my optimism was short-lived. The road stayed clear for only a few miles. As signs to Penzance began to appear, suddenly cars were coming from every direction. Red brake lights flashed up in front of me. Drivers beeped their horns, yelling obscenities at each other as I found myself at the end of a long queue of traffic and came to a grinding halt. I wound the window down, pushed my seat back, grabbed a sandwich and told myself it was a small setback. It wasn’t time to panic yet. I switched on the radio to hear the tune that has tormented for too many months …
Never Leave Me, Never Leave Me
Believe me when I say to you.
Love me, darling, love me, darling,
Cos I’ll never, ever be leaving you.
Lisa’s first big hit as she transitioned from dreamy ballad singer to techno pop artist, the song that told me that she was gone for good. The song she wrote for the man she said had broken her heart, that she dropped from our set because, she said, she didn’t need to think of him any more. The minute I heard her new version, the version she had released without telling me – same lyrics, same basic melody, but surrounded by a thudding beat and a swirl of technical effects – I knew it was the goodbye she hadn’t got round to saying to my face.
Oh Lisa … It had been weeks since I’d allowed myself to think of her. Having wallowed in a miasma of self-pity for the six months that followed her departure, I had been trying to put her behind me. I’d almost been successful, too. It was only when I caught a news article, or heard her on the radio like this, that the familiar sickness returned, the longing for the woman I could no longer have.
Lisa, Lisa, Lisa … I loved the way her red hair fell in front of her face and she had to flick it aside. I loved her talent and the force of her ambition that drove her to make the most of her gifts. I loved the way she could single me out in a room with a look that said I was hers, she was mine. The whole time we were together, she made everything right. I thought she was all I ever needed, which made her absence, when it came, so unbearable. And even after all these months, hearing her voice was painful. It made me wonder whether she had seen the news, whether she was thinking of me at all. Whether somewhere her stomach was lurching like mine as she realized that I was in danger. I took out my phone. Despite my attempts to eradicate her from my life, I’d not managed to delete her number yet. I’d stopped the late night calls pleading for her return, but I hadn’t quite had the strength to let her go all together. I scrolled through my contacts to find her smiling face, the last picture I took, one day on the beach just before she left. I pressed dial – and then stopped immediately. What was I thinking? There was nothing she could do to help and I shouldn’t ask. Even if she did respond, it would only be out of pity. I don’t need pity now. Actually, thinking about it, pity would be the worst. I put the phone away, relieved to see the car ahead was moving forward. I followed suit. We crawled around the outskirts of Penzance as I raised the clutch, pressed the accelerator, shifted