by Fiona Harper
The voice in his head had a hard edge of sarcasm. How thoughtful of you.
There she went again. Making sure everyone else was OK—especially Adele. God forbid anyone should ever think she was less than perfect. All this treacly stuff about being better for his family was tosh. Adele just didn’t want to be the bad guy in this scenario and she was pleased as punch she could walk out on their marriage without a pang of guilt.
And all the time she was bolstering her own defences, she was twisting the knife one more time into his unguarded flesh.
She just carried on chattering as if she’d had the greatest revelation ever.
‘We were good friends once, before we started going out, weren’t we?’
He nodded.
‘Well, we can have that again, can’t we?’
Why did she have to end every sentence in a question that required a yes or no answer from him? He didn’t want to be pushed into agreeing with her. Couldn’t she just leave him be?
He answered because he had to. ‘It worked once.’
‘Exactly. Just friends.’
He sneered. Just as well she was changing gear so they could edge forward once again and she didn’t see it. ‘Friends it is.’
Only he’d never wanted to be just friends with Adele. That had been her idea. From the moment they’d been introduced at a dinner party held by a mutual friend he’d known she was different. Special. He’d been captivated by her quick mind, her drive, the prim exterior with just a hint of something else simmering underneath.
He’d agreed to exactly the same thing the first time she’d turned him down.
Friends it is.
He’d been lying then and he was lying now.
It had taken time to crack her tough outer shell and get her to agree to a proper date. When he’d kissed her at the end of the evening all his fantasies about her had been proved right. Adele was a passionate and deeply sexy woman. She just liked to hide it well.
Soon he’d realised he hadn’t beaten down the last of her defences. Under that exterior was another shell and another. And, in the centre, one so hard he now thought it might never crack.
She had never truly shared herself with him. There was always an elusive piece of herself she held back. It didn’t matter he knew that it stemmed from her childhood when her mother had left her behind, aged eight, so she could travel the world with her high-flying father.
Eight. It was an awfully young age to harden oneself into a tough little ball.
Adele had dealt with it the only way she knew how. She drove herself to be successful in business to get her father’s attention. Little else worked—he’d seen that for himself. And she’d become fiercely independent, never letting anyone close enough to damage her in the same way again.
He knew all of that. And it didn’t help one bit.
Until now he’d foolishly thought, with enough time, he’d be able to soften the hard place inside her and see her unfurl. But now he had to admit it might never happen. The odds were a million to one and he was starting to question his own dogged loyalty.
He wanted a soul mate, a partner. And, as much as he loved Adele, he was starting to question if she was capable of that kind of intimacy.
‘Finally!’ Adele yelled, snapping him back to reality. ‘I can see the slip-road. Another minute or two and we’ll be on our way. You’ll have to give me directions. I’ve never been here before, so without you I’m totally lost.’
‘Sure.’ If only she could hear herself.
He’d wanted Adele to trust him with the rest of her life and she’d whittled it down to just one hour.
‘This doesn’t look good.’
Adele leaned forward and tried to peer at the clouds overhead. Nick had suggested they swap places once they’d got off the motorway, arguing it would be easier for him to navigate as he drove rather than barking instructions at her.
She had been overjoyed at the thought of giving her left leg a rest.
Besides, the scenery round here was stunning. She was quite happy drinking in the views of the ancient mountains and deep valleys that made this area such a tourist hot spot in the summer months. Draped in white, it just looked magical. Off the main road, the snow was much deeper, with drifts reaching a couple of feet up against the farm gates and hedgerows.
But it was as she was staring upwards at the ragged hilltops that she noticed the iron-grey clouds. And then the flakes that started whirling high in the sky and slowly spiralling down.
‘Do you think we ought to turn back and go into Kendal?’ she asked. ‘We only passed through about fifteen minutes ago.’
Nick shook his head. ‘It’s not falling too fast at the moment and, with any luck, we’ll be back on the motorway before it gets too bad.’
She pulled her gloves on a little tighter. Somehow the action made her feel more protected. And it certainly did help to make sure her fingers were as warm as they could be. The overstretched heater in her little car was only just bringing the temperature up to a bearable level.
The wipers speeded up another notch as Nick flicked the switch. Snow was hurling itself at the glass now and they were struggling to bat it aside.
‘Are you sure you know where you’re going?’
‘Adele! Can you not just trust me for once? I’ve been here at least three times before.’
‘So you recognise where we are now, do you?’
‘Yes,’ he answered without hesitation, then stopped to take in the surrounding area. ‘Well, no…not exactly, now you mention it. The snow makes it all very different. But we’re on the right road and if we don’t get in a panic, everything will be fine.’
‘No one’s panicking.’
‘I don’t even have to look at you to know that every muscle in your body is starting to clench.’
‘Rubbish!’
Still, she circled her ankle slightly, trying to ease the cramp that was threatening to engulf her left calf. But that was nothing to do with Nick. She was just stiff from the traffic jam.
Nick shot a look across at her and the movement of her foot caught his attention.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! Look, I’ll turn the blasted sat nav on if you’re that worried. All she wants to do is get us back on the motorway and she won’t take no for an answer.’ He leaned forward and pressed the button. ‘Happy?’
The stupid thing binged into life, all chirpy and self-satisfied.
‘Continue straight for three-point-seven miles.’
Nick gave a smug smile and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, See? We were going the right way after all.
She folded her arms across her chest. ‘Do what you like. I didn’t ask you to put it on.’
‘But you’re happier now it is, aren’t you?’
‘No.’
She didn’t want to be, which was almost the same thing, wasn’t it? She stretched her legs and discovered the cramp in her calf had mysteriously vanished.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘IN FIVE hundred feet, turn right.’
Nick made a noise of surprise and gave the satellite navigation system a hefty flick with his index finger.
‘Leave it alone, Nick. Its goal in life is to get us back on the motorway. You said so yourself.’
He gave her an incredulous look. Her only response was a little shrug, as if to say what?
Nick shook his head. He should’ve guessed the women would gang up on him.
‘It’s probably a more direct route. You did say you’ve only been here three times before, didn’t you?’
‘Yes…’
‘So what’s the problem? Do as you’re told for once.’
Nick said nothing and indicated right. He was lucky he didn’t snap the flimsy plastic lever right off.
‘With any luck we’ll get back on the motorway a little quicker,’ she said, looking out of the window. ‘This snow is easing off, but I’ll still be glad when we’re off the back roads.’
He slowed to take the corner. The road se
emed even quieter than the one they had been travelling on, but the satellites could obviously see through the clouds and snow and knew where they were heading.
Ten minutes later and it seemed they’d gone so far past the back of beyond they surely were about to drop off the edge of the world. Even the ever-present sheep were absent. He scoured the landscape for any clue they were nearing the motorway and, hopefully, civilisation again.
‘Are you sure this is the right way, Nick?’
Nick felt himself bristle. Why did she always have to question him? Why could she not just trust him on one small thing? It didn’t help that he knew she was like this with everyone. He wanted her to be different with him, to relax her rigid need for control and have faith in him for once.
‘To be honest, no. But I’m sitting here like a good boy with my hands on the steering wheel and doing as I’m told, all right?’
‘Fine. Not saying a word. Drive on.’
She shivered and rubbed herself with her gloved hands. The heater was not having much of an impact against the freezing temperatures.
They drove in silence but he refused to let himself feel uneasy. What had been a good-sized single carriageway had narrowed so a couple of cars could pass each other, but if a tractor or a van appeared it would be a squeeze. Then it became a single track with passing places and the lack of traffic meant the snow was deeper than just a dusting. At least the last few flakes of snow had dwindled and it wasn’t getting any worse.
He kept his eyes on the road, even as he sensed Adele looking across at him. Doing as I’m told, for once. He tried to radiate it through every pore. Thankfully, she decided not to go there and pressed her mouth closed again.
He knew her resolve was pushed to breaking point as the snow thickened and they rumbled along the track. The car bumped to a halt as the road seemed almost to vanish and they were left staring at an opening in the dry-stone wall where a gate was wedged open and the track continued.
She looked at him, eyebrows raised. He wasn’t having any of it. She’d issued him a challenge and he was going to prove to her she could trust him, if only in this one small thing. She’d always moaned he couldn’t stick to anything.
He tapped the screen of the sat nav, drawing her attention to the red line showing their route was still straight ahead, then crunched the car into gear, still holding her gaze. He only took his eyes away when he needed to negotiate the narrow gap in the wall.
At first, it was fine. They drove across a flat expanse of field, but before long the ridges in the ground marking the track blurred into the snow and there was no telling exactly where they should be heading. He slowed to a stop.
He closed his eyes and waited for the sigh he knew was coming. Adele always let out a great shuddering breath before she started with the recriminations. In fact, sometimes the sigh was enough on its own. In the months before they’d separated he’d heard it plenty of times.
Maybe he should have realised that, in some small way, she’d given up on him when she’d stopped voicing her frustrations. Stupidly, he’d thought some of the things that always bothered her had stopped being such an issue, thought that perhaps finally she got it.
Couldn’t she have understood that he’d been working himself so hard so that they’d have a better future together? And for a while it had looked as if it were going to pay off. Now he’d worked on one of Tim’s films he could pick and choose his projects. He’d be able to spend more time at home, less time disappearing at a moment’s notice. When the baby arrived, they would have been able to slow down a bit.
But, true to form, things had not gone according to plan. How, when teenage girls seemed to fall pregnant at the drop of a hat, had it taken more than ten months for him and Adele to get nowhere? It seemed the more you wanted a baby, the harder it was to actually create one.
And now there was no guarantee there would ever be a baby. And, if she had her way, there wouldn’t be an Adele either—at least not for him.
‘Nick?’
There was a soft quality to her voice that jerked him back to the present.
‘I think I can see a light up ahead. It might be another car. That could be the main road.’
The snowy landscape was now a pale lavender. The sun was almost ready to set behind the hills and, if they didn’t get a move-on, they’d be stuck with very little hint of a road in the pitch blackness. Still, he held off stepping on the accelerator.
Adele punched him on the arm and pointed. ‘There it is again!’
Sure enough, he saw a flicker of a light up ahead and off to the right. It might be a car; it might not. Even if it were a house, at least they could ask directions. The light wavered and disappeared for a second or so, then reappeared a little way away. Whatever it was, it was moving—and that was good news. Forward seemed the only sensible choice at the moment.
He put the car into gear and started off slowly and, as they neared the brow of the hill, he noticed an open gate on the other side of the field and steered straight towards it. Adele’s little car squeezed easily between the gateposts and he relaxed a little once through them.
The road was better defined here, but it was getting darker by the second. He switched the headlights onto half-beam and checked the sat nav by tapping the corner of the display so it repeated its last set of instructions.
‘In one thousand feet, continue to the left.’
Adele sat up straighter next to him. ‘What does that mean? Continue forward or turn left?’
He shrugged. ‘Probably just a fork in the road—probably a farm track—and it’s telling us our road is the one to the left.’
‘Oh.’ She relaxed back into her seat and rubbed her hands together.
‘Of course, it could also mean a sharp bend in the road. Sometimes it gets confused.’
‘I thought it was infallible.’
‘No, my darling wife. That would be you.’
He saw Adele’s hands fly up into the air out of the corner of his eye. ‘I can’t believe you won’t let that old argument lie. I’m as capable as the next person of admitting I’m wrong.’
Nick snorted. Adele’s memory was occasionally rather selective. How about the time she’d ranted and raved at the online supermarket when the shopping hadn’t turned up? They’d apologised and pointed out that she’d entered the wrong postcode, which had confused their system. But oh, no, that can’t have been it. Adele was adamant she knew her own postcode and that it had to be a glitch with their computers. Never mind the fact he’d caught her making the same mistake a few weeks later when filling out a form.
But that was small stuff he’d tried hard not to sweat about and he wasn’t going to start it now. And if it had all been minor mistakes like that, perhaps it wouldn’t have irritated him so much, but he guessed that if Adele couldn’t admit to forgetting her postcode, she certainly wasn’t going to own up to sabotaging her own marriage.
No, no. Perfect Adele would never do such a thing.
He was angry with her—for always putting up a glossy front and never letting him see the real woman underneath—and also angry with himself. Now he could see the sometimes-scared, sometimes-vulnerable Adele she tried so hard to hide, he had a worrying urge to protect her. And all he would get if he tried to do just that would be a kick in the face, and that made him cross all over again.
So he concentrated on the snowy road and alternated between frustration and compassion. Finally he could stand the whirling thoughts no longer. He had to break the cycle somehow.
‘So, you’re not infallible, huh? Does that mean you are going to admit you had a part in ending our marriage, or is that all down to yours truly?’
He was ashamed at the bitter edge to his words. He’d never talked to her like this before, but no matter how he’d tried to soften his tone, it came out harsh and belligerent.
She said nothing for a few seconds. He couldn’t look across and check her expression as he couldn’t risk taking his eyes off the snow-covered trac
k, even for a split-second. The snow was darkening to a bluish-grey in the failing light and there was less contrast between it and the rough grass that poked through and marked the edges of the track.
She sighed, long and hard.
‘OK, I admit it. I still think you dumped a major decision on me too suddenly, but I didn’t help matters by digging my heels in…’
He waited, partly because he could tell she had more to say and partly because he was too shocked to form any words of his own.
‘And I should have returned your calls after you left,’ she added. ‘Or, at the very least, I should have answered them. I just…’
This time he wasn’t so patient. ‘Just…what?’
Her voice was so quiet he had to strain to hear it above the hum of the engine. ‘I just…couldn’t.’
That was the best explanation she could give? Unbelievable. He knew that he should be triumphant with her admission that she wasn’t the only one to have made bad choices, but suddenly it wasn’t enough.
Soft flakes started to fall on the windscreen again and he smiled darkly to himself. He’d always said it would be a cold day in hell before Adele acknowledged she was wrong about anything and the weather seemed oddly fitting.
He needed more. He needed to know why she had found it so easy to let go of their marriage—of him—when she held on to everything else in her life with an iron grip.
‘Why couldn’t you, Adele? What stopped you?’
He knew the answer. Pride. But he wanted to hear her say it. Just this once.
He heard her intake of breath as she opened her mouth to answer, but she was cut off by a metallic voice barking instructions:
‘Continue left.’
He was very tempted to echo Adele’s earlier outburst at the blasted thing and tell it to shut up, but every ounce of his attention was suddenly required in making sense of the scene in front of him.
There was no fork in the road, no farm track to avoid. There wasn’t even a road in front of him. Just swirling flakes lit up by the headlights against a grey background of air and space.
