But she couldn’t do anything else.
‘I’ll easily find another hotel job, and that’ll solve the accommodation problem, and if I go somewhere huge, like a city or something, there’ll be loads of choices.’
‘Think it over,’ Dom perched on the edge of the kitchen table. ‘Don’t do anything hasty. You’ve never lived anywhere else. You’d have no friends, no one who knows you –’
‘Exactly,’ Posy slammed the empty mug on to the table making bits of the Hornby jump in alarm. ‘No one to keep asking me if I’m okay, or peering at me to see if I mind, or desperate to tell me the minute Sonia goes into labour or –’
‘Point taken. Don’t shout. So, what are you going to do? Look down the sits vac? Stick a pin in the map and send away for hotel details?’
‘I’m going to pack. Now. And say goodbye to Mum and Dad and then just go.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Dom slid from the table. ‘You can’t just ride off into the sunset!’
‘Watch me,’ Posy said darkly, knocking over the greater part of a dismembered layout of Crewe Station circa 1942. ‘Just bloody watch me.’
Chapter Two
Running away from home wasn’t as easy as all that, of course.
Having no transport other than a BMW 1100 touring motorcycle – an ex-motorway patrolling beast once owned by the local constabulary, bought by Posy at auction, and immediately re-sprayed peacock blue and sugar pink – taking all her worldly possessions was proving to be a non-starter. She gazed around her tiny bedroom and wondered again just what she should leave behind.
The photographs of Ritchie had long gone, ritually incinerated around the time that Sonia had announced her pregnancy to a stunned Steeple Fritton; her wardrobe consisted solely of jeans and vests and Dom’s cast-off jumpers; her bookcase was a shrine to Carl Fogarty, Joey Dunlop and Barry Sheene; her make-up bag was far slimmer than her mother’s.
There was still far too much to cram into two panniers and a top box.
Trevor and Kenneth, sitting side by side on her bed, watching every move with worried brown eyes, thumped their tails disconsolately. Posy tried not to look at them. Leaving Steeple Fritton and all her family and friends would be bad enough – a life without Trevor and Kenneth was practically unthinkable.
‘Dom’s just told me!’ Dilys Nightingale, plump and brightly-coloured like a beach ball, hurled open Posy’s bedroom door without her customary knock. ‘You’re not serious, are you?’
Posy paused in rolling up her favourite pair of Levis. ‘Deadly. And Dom shouldn’t have said anything.’
Dilys pursed glossy tangerine lips. ‘He’s worried. He said you weren’t going to Auntie Cath’s.’
Everyone in the Nightingale family hightailed it to Auntie Cath’s in times of strife.
‘I’m not. I’m going to, to, oh . . .’ Posy screwed her eyes shut. Where in the world was a suitable place to be running away to? Not London. Steeple Fritton to London in one hit would be far too much of a culture shock. No one would believe her. She opened her eyes again. ‘Swindon.’
‘Swindon? Why on earth would you want to go to Swindon?’
Posy, who had clutched the town out of the air, really didn’t have a clue. ‘Oh, well, because it’s developing quickly, so there should be plenty of work and hotels and guest houses and things . . . And because it’s almost a city, so I’ll be anonymous. And because it’s not that far away from here, so that you can visit and –’
She stopped. Even to her, the reasons sounded pretty pathetic.
Dilys blinked greengage eyelids and nodded gently.
‘Yes, well, why don’t you sleep on it, love? You’ll probably feel differently in the morning. Sometimes it’s braver to stay put than to run away.’
‘I’m not brave and I’m not running away.’ Posy squeezed a multicoloured stripy jumper into a tight ball. ‘I’m getting a new life. And sleeping on it won’t help. I haven’t slept for months. I’m going. Tonight. Because if I don’t, then I probably never will and I’ll always be unhappy . . .’
‘But Swindon?’
Deliberately ignoring her mother’s anxious face, Posy dithered for a second over a navy blue sweater with a lot of unravelled sleeve, then discarded it. Why not Swindon? Swindon was less than a hundred miles northwest of Steeple Fritton as the crow flew – and probably only an hour away if she and the BMW took the motorway route. Why not Swindon? Why not anywhere that didn’t have memories of Ritchie’s infidelity and her broken heart imprinted on every corner?
‘Because I’m bound to find a job and . . . and no one there will look at me and think I’m a fool.’
Dilys Nightingale gathered Posy in her arms as Trevor and Kenneth tried to muscle in on the act. ‘I do understand why you want to go, but it’s going to be a whole lot different out there on your own. You’ve always lived at Sunny Dene, in the village, where you know everyone –’
‘Which is exactly what Dom said and exactly why I have to go.’ Posy sniffed into her mother’s shoulder. The blouse was rainbow striped and smelled of familiar things like cooking and miniature railway engine oil. ‘I’ll be okay. I’ve got enough money to see me through for a month at least. And, and if I can’t find a job or anything within that time then I’ll come back, but at least I’ll have tried, won’t I?’
Dilys held her at arm’s length. ‘We’ll miss you though. Especially with Dom going back to university in a couple of weeks. The place will be so empty. Both of you gone at the same time and so soon after Christmas.’
Posy groaned at the threat of maternal emotional blackmail. ‘I’ll miss you, too. But I’m twenty-five and I haven’t got a life any more.’
‘Yes you have,’ Dilys said fiercely. ‘Of course you have. Your life’s here. There’s more to life than Ritchie Dalgetty.’
‘Not to mine there isn’t.’
‘Oh, Posy . . .’ Dilys blinked the greengage lids furiously. ‘But you really don’t have to go immediately. They, er, Ritchie and Sonia, they’ll be away on their honeymoon for a fortnight.’
‘My honeymoon.’ Posy felt the tears prickle in her nose and sniffed them back. ‘Our honeymoon. Ritchie and I had . . . had . . . oh, you know, we had, Mum. Planned it. Always. Two weeks in Paris! Sonia shouldn’t be going to damn Paris!’
‘Hopefully she’ll drop off the top of the Eiffel Tower on the first night,’ Dilys said vigorously. ‘And that treacherous bastard with her. But at least reconsider leaving tonight. It’s already dark. You won’t be able to find anywhere to stay –’
‘There’ll be hotels, like I told Dom,’ Posy said with more conviction than she felt. ‘And guest houses and millions of places all desperate for my expertise. It’ll be fine.’
Dilys gave her the sort of look that mothers always give when they’re sure it’ll be anything but fine. ‘And it’ll be even finer tomorrow morning. Everything looks better in daylight. If you stay tonight I’ll cook something special.’
Posy sighed. Her mother’s culinary something specials would make angels weep. It’d probably be the last decent meal she’d have for months. It was an unfair bribe. ‘Okay, you win. But I’ll still be leaving Steeple Fritton at the crack of dawn tomorrow.’
Trevor and Kenneth buried their noses in their paws and howled.
And she had. At first light, Trevor and Kenneth had slunk into the conservatory at the sight of all the luggage and had refused to speak to her at all. Her parents and Dom had managed to speak, but made it plain by their woebegone expressions that she was doing The Wrong Thing. Her best friends, Amanda and Nikki, from whom she’d never been separated since starting infants school, wept, and even Vi Bickeridge, who had turned up out of the blue for the departure, told her helpfully that she was off on a fool’s errand.
Ignoring them all, Posy had roared away from Sunny Dene and Steeple Fritton and everything she loved and knew she’d never be happy again.
Now, almost two hours later, on a dark and dreary January Sunday morning, sitting astride the BMW
motorcycle in the car park of a service station on the westbound M4, Posy took stock. Steeple Fritton was behind her and Swindon awaited, and as long as she didn’t think about Ritchie and Sonia, she’d be fine.
Irritatingly, somewhere across the constant six-lane thrum of traffic, church bells were ringing. As church bells would be forever synonymous with weddings, and weddings with treachery and deceit, she closed both her mind and her ears. Weddings were to be no-go areas in her new life. She’d never marry now. She’d probably become some aged crone, still taking the Motor Cycle News in her nineties, wearing leathers on her withered legs and boring people rigid with details of how to differentiate between Hornbys and Bachmann Branch Lines.
Fortified by The Tasty Bite’s mega-trukka-breakfast and three cups of coffee, Posy clutched her crash helmet beneath one arm, ignored the bells, and studied the map. It seemed pretty straightforward. If she left the motorway at Junction 15, Swindon was impossible to miss. There was then nothing between her and the new life she craved but a short stretch of main road.
Well, nothing but the little ring of roundabouts, looking like an amber necklace on the map, which might prove a bit tricky, but she was sure she could cope with them when the time came.
Kick-starting the BMW into life, she tucked her curls into her crash helmet, ignoring the lusty shouts from a group of lorry drivers who had just ambled out of The Tasty Bite. As she swooped towards the slip road, Posy wondered for the umpteenth time why a smallish woman in black leather on a biggish bike, always seemed to bring out the worst in men.
Half an hour later she had more than a few sexist remarks to worry about. The map’s little amber necklace of roundabouts, so pretty on Ordnance Survey, now had her totally foxed.
She’d never seen so many mini-roundabouts in one place. And each time she’d circumnavigated half a dozen of them, another clutch appeared. Giddily, she was pretty sure that she and the BMW had done the same set at least three times.
Flicking up a gear, Posy indicated left for the ninth time, and roared away from the circular confusion towards a straight bit of road. It had houses, and a sort of dual carriageway, and didn’t look like any of the other bits of road she’d already covered. Feeling sure that this way must eventually lead to Swindon’s town centre, Posy pushed on. And on. And on.
‘Bloody hell!’ She mumbled the curse into the folds of her insulating scarf. The houses and the dual carriageway had petered out with no warning. Now all she was left with was a lot of undulating green hills to either side, a single-track road ahead, and the sprawl of Swindon vanishing behind her in the wing mirrors.
Knowing that she’d have to find somewhere to turn round and try again, she slowed down to the annoyance of a line of traffic behind her. The BMW, being chunky, was too wide for the following cars to overtake safely, and the road too narrow for her to turn. Posy accelerated, hoping that a handy farm track would appear to her left. It didn’t. Instead, the road grew more rural, the skeletal trees more dense, and the tantalizing back view glimpse of Swindon had disappeared completely.
However, there was faint hope on the horizon: a rickety signpost indicated that there was a turn-off a little way ahead on the left-hand side. Indicating, loving as always the thrust of power, Posy prepared to glide the BMW into the turning and retrace her steps.
Instantly, almost before it happened, Posy was aware of something not being quite right with the bike. As she nosed into the side road the acceleration dropped, she could feel the loss of power, and knew the motorbike was going to falter to a halt. With one gentle apologetic splutter, it did.
‘Sod, damn, sod.’
A blocked carburettor was all she needed.
Posy swung her leg across the saddle, and heaved the BMW on to its stand. It was her own fault. She’d filled up with petrol after The Tasty Bite’s breakfast, and should have run through all the other checks then instead of trying not to listen to the church bells and daydreaming. Snatching off her helmet, and removing her gloves and scarf, she scrambled for the tool roll. Casting aside her entire wardrobe, and various other paraphernalia of her previous existence, and dumping the whole lot on the scrubby roadside verge, she selected a suitable spanner.
Clearing the carb was a routine task, if messy, and one she’d done plenty of times before. And because of Sod’s Law, usually in far less pleasant conditions than these – at least it wasn’t dark, or raining, or icy, or on a busy road. Chucking her jacket on to the top box, she yanked up the sleeves of her sweater and went in for the kill.
Posy had almost completed the job when she realized she was being watched. Knowing it would be someone filled to the brim with testosterone, bursting to tell her exactly how it should be done, she didn’t even bother to look up.
‘I’ve managed, thank you. It may not be the way you’d do it, but then you’re not –’
She stopped. There was a lot of heavy breathing. Oh, great. Miles from anywhere and she’d met up with the local pervert out for his Sunday stroll. Clutching the largest spanner as a handy weapon, she took a deep breath and turned her head.
A pair of liquid brown eyes stared inquisitively at her. A pink tongue lolled over liver-freckled jowls. Muddy paws were planted four-square on the verge while a plumy tail wagged happily. Posy looked at the dog and wanted to cry. She’d never see Trevor and Kenneth again . . .
Damn Ritchie to hell. She scrubbed her fists into her eyes then remembered the oil and grease and stopped. Damn Ritchie and the whey-faced Sonia to eternal bloody hellfire! She snorted angrily. It was better to blame Ritchie and Sonia for this sudden flood of emotion. It was their fault after all.
She wasn’t homesick! Homesick? At her age? Other women had left home years earlier: other women had sailed single-handed round the world, or backpacked across Asia, or, or – well, hundreds of brave solo things. Other women of her age didn’t suddenly want to burst into tears because they were missing their parents and their brother and their dogs and the cosiness and familiarity of Steeple Fritton.
The dog, possibly a terrier crossed with something improbably large and shaggy, licked her nose sympathetically which made Posy even more emotional.
‘She won’t hurt you! She’s friendly!’ An elderly man in a beige anorak was powering across the scrubby grass towards her. ‘Sit, Persephone!’
The dog, looking cheerfully over its shoulder at its owner, sat.
Posy sniffed. ‘Persephone?’
‘The wife’s idea. No children, you know. Couldn’t. A bit of a baby-substitute thing. Loves mythology. Had to be Persephone. Didn’t work so well for her with Fido or Rover. Had Medusa and Circe previously.’ He coughed. ‘And that’s probably far more than you need to know about it.’
‘Ours are called Trevor and Kenneth, after newsreaders. Maybe all dog owners are slightly doolally.’ Posy managed a wobbly smile as she stood up and Persephone snuffled at the crash helmet, gloves and jacket in delight, inspecting everything as Posy repacked the tool roll.
‘Very possibly.’ Persephone’s owner shuffled his feet. ‘Where’s your young man, then?’
‘Uh?’ Posy blinked.
She was pretty sure that Persephone’s owner didn’t want to know the truth. Well, neither did she. Probably somewhere in the clutches of Sonia nee Tozer performing amazingly athletic sexual manoeuvres as we speak, wasn’t something you’d share with a total stranger.
‘Which young man?’
‘The driver of the motorcycle.’
‘That’s me.’ Posy fastened the Velcro on the tool roll.
‘Really? Do you mean to say that a little thing like you . . . ?’
Posy sighed. ‘It’s a very easy bike to handle once you’re used to it. Heavy but manoeuvrable. Size, in this case, doesn’t matter.’
‘Ah, right. Good Lord. And all fixed now, are you? Can’t say I’d have been much help. A complete mystery to me, mechanics. The wife deals with that sort of thing.’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’ Posy locked the pannier, then wiped her
oily hands on a piece of rag. ‘If a bit messy. It’s a routine job and better done here than on the main road. However, I have got one problem.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Sparse eyebrows raised towards a receding hairline.
‘I’ve lost Swindon.’
‘There’s a lot of people whose life’s ambition is to lose Swindon, my dear.’
Posy didn’t laugh. It was no laughing matter. ‘I wondered if you could give me some directions that don’t involve that roundabout system.’
Persephone’s owner sucked his gums, then let out a little whistle. ‘You’ve got me there. Not one of my fortes, directions. The wife does the driving, you see. Them roundabouts can be a bit of a mystery for the unwary, though.’
‘So I gathered. But there must be some way round them.’
‘Tell you what, I live just along the road here, only a few minutes’ walk. The wife will be sure to know of some short cut and you can wash your hands at the same time. No, leave the motorcycle. It’ll be quite safe. We don’t get a lot of passing traffic down here.’
Making sure that everything that was lockable had been, and carrying her leather jacket, crash helmet and gloves, Posy fell into step with the dog and her owner. The road flowed through the scrubby grassland like a meandering stream – just like home.
Persephone suddenly bounded ahead, disappeared through open double gates and scrunched away along a curving shingle drive.
‘Here we are,’ Posy’s rescuer said happily. ‘This is us.’
‘Oh, it’s lovely! It’s almost like my, er, my parents’ place . . .’ She suddenly felt desperately homesick again and swallowed the lump in her throat. It was far, far too soon in her bid for independence to be feeling like this. ‘Are you sure your wife won’t mind me barging in?’
‘I won’t mind at all.’ The front door had been opened by an elderly woman with a mass of permed grey curls. She gathered Persephone to her with much cooing, then raised her head and looked at Posy with concern. ‘Have you come a cropper or something?’
‘No, nothing like that. I’m fine. My motorbike broke down. I’m actually looking for Swindon and I got lost up the road. The roundabouts threw me a bit.’
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