Extract: (Sorry, but even children can access this website! Therefore, this extract is small, but still PG-rated!).
The white hands on the dashboard clock showed it was already twenty minutes to nine. Laurella cursed silently and pressed her foot harder on the accelerator after rejoining the A12.
Damn! she thought. I'll catch the rush hour through Ipswich. That's all I need.
Her shoulders, arms and legs ached where she was leaning forwards and gripping the wheel, almost hanging from it. The frustration of the long delay caused by the overturned lorry immediately before
the Orwell bridge was still fresh in her mind, although it was only the last in a long series of incidents this week.
The whole weekend had been one huge argument, the constant exchange of bitter words and acid personal remarks. She wondered whether Jarvis was right. Perhaps they were both too set in their
ways for their striving personalities to gel, as he had remarked. The six-year difference between their ages could have been sixty. He was beginning to look and act like someone middle-aged, not
thirty-two.
A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth when she recalled how he had handed over the keys to his almost new Mercedes when her aging Metro refused to start yesterday morning.
"Don't you dare scratch it or it'll be the last thing you do," he had told her gruffly. "Don't be back late, either."
His generous gift had been totally unexpected. She suddenly felt guilty about calling him a selfish bastard, although he had deserved it. That was another change in their relationship. During the last few
weeks, their attitude towards each other had deteriorated markedly. Their arguments and periods of silence were becoming longer.
This part of the job should have been straightforward, allowing her to be home last night. Her timetable had gone the same way all good plans go. The Managing Director had kept her hanging around
until finally appearing at four o'clock yesterday afternoon, and then her boss had ordered her to complete the on-site part of the audit by lunchtime today.
"Because the Managing Director has to fly to the Seychelles. On business," she scoffed. "Bullshit!". The MD and her own boss were old university pals, forever scratching each other's backs.
She glanced at the clock again, calculating time, distance and speed in her mind. She still had too far to go. Arriving home on time was now impossible.
The dull throbbing pain in her head, she guessed, was entirely due to having worked through the night without sleep just so she could return the car by nine this morning. Blinking felt like half Lowestoft
beach was beneath her eyelids as they scraped grittily across her eyes. The morning sun was too bright and did little to help when it blindingly reflected from car windscreens and mirrors.
Jarvis will throw a fit, she thought. He hates babysitting at the best of times, let alone when he's waiting to go to an important meeting.
Her phone call to him last night to say she had to stay in Colchester overnight had left the receiver feeling like a block of ice. If the factory didn't work twenty-four hours per day, if the staff had been
more helpful, if the MD hadn't kept her waiting for the last pieces of information and if Jarvis had attempted to find the fault on her own car, then she would have returned home last night and resumed her
work this morning, as she had every morning for over a week. Too many ifs.
The image of the lorry lying on its side on the embankment returned. At least the driver was unhurt, she thought. Alive and kicking, as they say, and the shredded tyre had been the unfortunate item
receiving the attentions of his boot. What did annoy her were the rubber-necking drivers who braked to have a better look.
"Ogres. They see one accident and almost cause another. Pity they don't slow down for animals." Although she understood the necessity for bigger and faster roads to keep the oil revenue flooding into
the Government's coffers, it hurt her to see the effects on other life. Like the pair of dead foxes she had seen a kilometre past the bridge. They had died as they had lived - together, side by side.
She slowed the car for the first roundabout south of Ipswich and still negotiated it too fast. After the long drive up the dual carriageway she always felt the car was crawling around the bypass only to
find the roundabouts proving her wrong. She coasted up to the next one closely pressed by a growing amount of traffic, their drivers all eager to get to work on time after having left home five minutes late.
A car pulled into the next roundabout from her left, right in front of her, and she angrily flashed her headlights. Barely a heartbeat later she realised that her intolerance was unfounded. The grille of a
lorry filled the rear-view mirror, keeping only a metre between them. Impatient drivers and fast-moving traffic filled both lanes and she found herself gripping the wheel more tightly. Her stomach rumbled
and she wished herself ten miles up the road where it would be clearer.
Next time I'll bring a stack of meditation tapes with me, she thought.
The driver of the car in front, eager a moment ago to pull out in front of her, now plodded along leaving a wide gap between himself and the car ahead. One of those silly stickers on the rear window
masked the driver's head: 'Jugglers do it with three balls'. Everything was innuendo these days.
Searing flashes of reflected light made her squint to see past the dappled shade of the trees. The car ahead moved into the next roundabout and she leaned further forwards, peering to her right to check
the road was clear enough to follow. A noise exploded in her brain and she found herself pressed against the steering wheel.
No, she thought, hardly believing what her mind was trying to tell her after it came out of its temporary numbness, similar to having fainted. She kept her eyes closed a moment longer before raising her
head to look around. The red light on the dash showed the car had stalled. Her eyes continued swivelling until she saw the car in front. It was too close.
Surely it's a dream. I couldn't have hit him. I saw him driving away. Dammit! |
