My initial reaction was to put Lucky down and leave him on the road, get to the services, then get a car to come back and get him.
But, for once, I was completely honest with myself and admitted that if I left him here I wouldn’t be coming back for him. He chose that moment (wisely) to open his eyes and try to lick my face, which he was pathetically unable to summon up the strength to do, and that only made it cuter.
I staggered off the motorway into the services complex with Lucky half thrown over my shoulder, my jacket and clothes soaked through and my Ugg boots a tattered mess dragging from my feet.
I have never been so happy to see a Days Inn Motel in my life.
The reception doors were open and the foyer was full of rain, rubbish and leaves, but they had electricity, which meant they might have heating and hot water.
I was grinning like an idiot.
The room doors were controlled by computer key card.
I stopped grinning.
I went to the first floor of rooms, put Lucky down, and tried each of the room doors. They were all locked.
In frustration I kicked the door of the nearest room as hard as I could.
It caved in with hardly any protest and swung back.
My mouth fell open. Either being the last person alive had given me super-powers or the security in the hotel was not good at all.
I couldn’t give a shit which it was.
The room was mercilessly empty, with a big clean double bed, fresh towels, and a shower that spouted out sweet, scalding water.
I picked up Lucky and put him down in the bath at the end opposite the shower. Then I stripped and stepped creakily under the water, my aching muscles and bones crying out at being made to step up and over.
The last, however many, hours finally caught up with me as I stood in the boiling water and cried. Not tears of sadness but of joy at the simple euphoria of finally being warm and wet from water that was not freezing rain. I washed and shampooed myself and did the same for Lucky. He protested at first but after a while he couldn’t deny the joy of warm water, and he rolled onto his back so I could gently soap his frighteningly thin, furry belly.
I patted him for the first time and he grinned back.
I dried us both in the huge white towels, put a couple of blankets on the floor for Lucky, and then climbed into the clean, warm bed with a sigh of happiness.
As I was drifting off to sleep I realised I hadn’t taken my nightly ‘medicine’ but I was too warm and comfy to care.
A while later Lucky climbed awkwardly onto the bed and lay next to me.
I didn’t push him off.
I was woken by Lucky licking my cheek. I was shivering and slimy with sweat.
I had turned the heating on full blast and the room was as hot as Hades, so I wasn’t shivering because I was cold.
I had a brief moment of shock that I could be detoxing so quickly. But this was soon overridden by nausea, my pounding head, and the fact that my eye had developed a constant twitch.
I castigated myself for forgetting to take my pills yet again and vowed to be more regimented with my routine in the future. Then I popped my pills and lay back on the bed waiting for them to take effect.
I had a brief moment of clarity where I realised I should probably be more worried that it now seemed I was a fully-fledged drug addict than upset that I didn’t have a strict enough drug-taking routine, but by the time the Tramadol were working their magic I was more concerned that I was now lying in soaking sheets and that I might imminently die of thirst and hunger.
My clothes were still drenched from the day before and the Days Inn doesn’t stretch to bath robes, so I wrapped myself in a big blanket from the cupboard and ran barefoot across the car park to the food court, with Lucky shambling after me.
Thank you Watford Gap Services, you literally saved my life.
All the shops were open. I raided WHSmith, drinking three bottles of water and gorging on crisps and chocolate. I was worried about what to feed Lucky, but found some Dairylea Lunchables in the fridge that were still in date and he seemed happy with the ham from them.
Next, I kitted myself out with clean clothes from Cotton Traders. No knickers and only Crocs for shoes, but, after the day before, I wasn’t planning on ever walking again and I reasoned that no one was alive to tell me off for going commando.
There were frozen burgers, baps and chips in McDonald’s, and my mouth watered at the thought of them, but I had no idea how to work the cooking equipment so would most likely have burnt the place down trying to make my feast.
Further exploring uncovered a restaurant with a freezer-load of meals and a microwave. I ate mac ’n’ cheese, lasagne, fish pie, and was just starting on a shepherd’s pie when I was forced to admit defeat before I vomited. I put the pie on the floor and after some exploratory sniffing Lucky wolfed it down and whined at me until I got him another.
Clothed, dry, warm, and full, I wandered over to the huge windows that looked out across the car park and motorway.
It was getting dark again.
The motorway was empty and there were only five cars in the car park that I could see. Wind had blown rubbish and leaves and small branches around and one of the trees was half fallen and blocking the exit.
But it wasn’t this that made it feel particularly post-apocalyptic.
It was the stillness.
I was in a place that was usually bright and inhabited 24/7, someone always awake, always moving.
The car park was still. The motorway was still. I was still, and even Lucky was lying still beside me.
Everything had stopped.
And it would never start again.
Ever.
My fight for survival was over. I felt a wave of depression washing over me.
Let’s face it, no one ever wrote poetry about the Watford Gap Service Station when it was alive, fully functioning and inhabited, so I was hardly going to see the joy in it now that it was figuratively dead.
I took Lucky back to the room and went straight to bed.
My sheets were still soaked, but I was too exhausted to change them so I just lay on top of the bed, wrapped myself in another blanket, and cried myself to sleep with a distressed Lucky whining along.
I woke early the next morning with a renewed sense of purpose.
I had charged my phone the day before and the clock told me it was 6am, so I had plenty of daylight ahead of me.
I knew what I had to do.
It felt like an icy hand was holding my heart, but I knew I was making the right decision.
I had to kill myself.
I have felt that icy hand holding my heart before.
Just once.
James and I had been living together for about a year and, although we were still just about clinging onto the honeymoon period of our relationship, real life was already beginning to push its way into our happiness bubble.
James had been promoted at work, but his new job meant more hours, more stress, and fewer evenings at home with me. I had been in my new role for a few months but was beginning to wonder why I had agreed to take a job that meant I was home more when that time at home was increasingly spent by myself.
We’d had a couple of fights, nothing huge, just scraps about who should do the hoovering, whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher, who should go shopping after work now that James was coming home later. I soon found the answer to most of those questions was me.
That New Year’s Eve we went to a fancy party organised by James’s work, held in some posh restaurant with far-reaching views of the Thames and midnight fireworks. James had raised his eyebrows at my red, full-skirted 1950s cocktail dress, stating that most of the other women would be in little black numbers. I’d made an effort and thought I looked pretty, so was a bit disappointed he didn’t even say I looked nice.
He was right. The room was full of tight, black dresses, a few sequins here and there, the odd jumpsuit. I was awkward, wanted to go home and
change. James put his arm round my waist, said it was too late now, I could wear black next time.
I was soon distracted; free food, free booze, great music, it was a brilliant night. My red dress worries were forgotten.
Post-midnight, and the DJ was doing an excellent job, building the tempo, dropping in a few classics every now and again. Hardly anyone was on the dance floor. I was itching to dance; I was drunk, the music was good and I felt sorry for the DJ up there in his booth all alone with no one to appreciate him. Then he played Ten City ‘That’s the Way Love Is’ and I was up and grabbing James’s hand, dragging him onto the dance floor before he had time to protest.
For the first minute or so I was too drunk and happy to notice I was, unfortunately, the only one dancing. James was standing practically still, his face a stony mask of anger and shame. I stopped my joyous bopping abruptly to find a large majority of the room watching our unfolding dance floor drama.
Instantly sober, my heart plummeted. I grabbed James’s unyielding hand and led him from the dance floor, smiling as though it had all been a merry joke.
I could feel the rage coming off of him in waves.
Back at the table he gripped the top of my arm slightly too hard.
‘Don’t ever fucking do that to me again.’
He stood up and went to the bar.
He didn’t come back.
And that was when I first felt it. An icy hand holding my heart.
For the first time I realised this wasn’t a given. We weren’t set in stone. I could upset James. I could lose him.
I never danced with James again.
Not even on our wedding day.
So, icy hand on my heart or not, the decision was made.
If the only people left were the dead, then I would join them.
But, before I took that final step to end it all I first had to be completely sure, or as sure as it was possible to be, that I really was the last person alive.
So, I was going on a road trip.
I was going to drive to a remote part of Scotland and find a remote farmhouse and see if 6DM really had wiped out the rest of the human race.
If it had, I would kill myself.
While I was still sane enough to do it.
January 12th 2024
A strange sense of calm came over me as I breakfasted on mac ’n’ cheese and planned my road trip.
My disastrous motorway breakdown had taught me a lesson. I wasn’t going to get stuck like that again. If I was going to the wilds of Scotland I was going prepared. So, I needed to go shopping and Northampton was the closest place to do it, even if it did mean doubling back to get there.
As the sun started to rise, I went out to look at the vehicles in the car park.
I looked in the first HGV. There was a human-shaped mound covered with a blanket lying across the front seats. Lined up on the dashboard was a series of photos: a woman in her early forties smiling happily, three laughing kids on the beach, a family laughing on a picnic blanket, a school photo of the same three children. In front of each photo was a small bunch of (now dead) wild flowers. A simple display of love that made tears prickle in my eyes once more. I walked away quickly.
I decide to discount the rest of the HGVs – I wouldn’t know how to drive them anyway.
I investigated the five cars instead.
Three of them were empty of occupants and keys.
The fourth had a very badly decomposing, extremely large man wedged into the front seat. There was blood and vomit on the windows and dashboard, and the smell was discernible even outside the car. I decided that moving him had to be a very, very last resort.
The fifth had a family in it.
Dad in the driver’s seat with the mum in the back cuddling a toddler and an eight- or nine-year-old. They were all lightly purple, and the dad was starting to turn black around the edges, but none of them showed any signs that they were suffering from 6DM. They were just sitting there. No blankets or toys for the kids. Just like they had stopped for a wee and then thought, ‘Fuck it, this is as good a place as any. Let’s die here.’
With the kids.
At first, I was so shocked I just stood and stared.
Then I was angry. Really angry.
Here.
In the service station car park.
The Natural History Museum I can understand, but who the fuck drives their kids to a motorway service station to die? Maybe they were on their way to see someone? Maybe the car ran out of petrol and there was no more to fill it up with? But surely they could have got a room in the motel? Been in bed together, warm and cosy? And if he had petrol, why not drive elsewhere? A river? Even over the other side of the fucking car park to look at some trees.
The more I thought about it the angrier I got.
I stomped about the car park muttering to myself. I came back to the car and thumped my hands on the window. I tried to push and shake the car. I was filled with physical rage.
In the end I opened the car door and punched the dad in the face. He was on the verge of rotting and my fist pushed far deeper into his flesh than I like to think about after the event. I quickly shut the door again and staggered back, falling and landing on my arse.
I was breathing deeply and still muttering, my rage not yet completely spent.
Lucky, sitting a few paces back, whined.
I think he was beginning to realise I may not be the all-knowing rescuer that he thought I was.
I left the cars where they were. I couldn’t face the fat man or the family.
I wandered to the petrol station, but there was nothing there.
There was, however, the beginnings of a building site next door where they had been doing groundwork for a building that would never now be built.
There was a small CAT digger with the keys in the ignition.
It started first time and drove exactly like a car.
I put an extremely indignant Lucky into the digger bucket bit and we left the service station for Northampton at a roaring 5 mph.
Lucky was whining and shaking and I don’t think he liked me very much at that point, but, for the first time in a very long while, I found I didn’t particularly care what someone else thought of me.
When did I start caring so much what other people thought of me in my life before 6DM?
I want to say it was when James and I got together and especially after the New Year’s Eve incident, but I don’t think I can blame this one on James.
I know I wasn’t that bothered when I was in my early twenties. No one was looking at me when I was working for the music paper – not when I was reporting on or interviewing bands far more exciting and glamorous than me. And of course there was no workplace dress-code at Shipping and Ports: Global.
Xav never cared what I looked like. Don’t make the mistake of trying to stereotype him because he was gay. Xav was no more interested in hair and make-up than the average bloke (although he did have a rather unhealthy obsession with Tom Ford clothing and aftershave; and a rather unhealthy obsession with Tom Ford himself). My friendship with Xav was filled with dingy pubs or basement raves, music, gigging and festivals and five-hour debates about which was the best Springsteen album, but there were no makeovers or pillow fights.
I mean, I liked to look nice, wash my hair and put a pretty dress on, make an effort if we were going to a party. But I’d never had a blow-dry, had my nails done, got a spray tan, or gone to the MAC counter at Selfridges for a makeover. I think those are the sorts of things you do with friends who are girls, friends who have hair as long as yours.
But then I got a proper job in a proper office with proper women who owned more than one pair of high-heeled shoes. They looked amazing. I wanted to look amazing.
I wanted to look like the women in black at James’s work events. I wanted to make James proud of me.
I was ripe, ready, and raring for a change. I wanted to become a woman.
Ginny was more than happy to help.
The ensuing makeover could have been ripped straight out of a 90s teen romcom with Ginny as my Fairy Godmother of style. She took me for a manicure (‘you’re not working on the docks any more’). She took me for a wax (‘Jesus Christ, you can see that muff from space!’). She took me to a fancy salon that charged four times my normal hairdresser’s price to cut and highlight my hair. It was worth the money.
Ginny was the first woman I properly went out to do ‘girl-things’ with. And it was brilliant and exhilarating and completely unlike anything I had done before. It was the new and exciting rush of moving in with James all over again, except this was better because this wasn’t just a new relationship – this was a new me. A better me.
Ginny took me shopping and helped me choose new clothes, we had facials and got HD eyebrows. We went to cocktail bars and to nightclubs where the walls weren’t sticky and people actually talked to each other rather than looking at the stage.
For the first time in my life I felt like a proper woman, and it was fun. Dressing up and doing my hair and make-up was fun, and being acknowledged for dressing up and doing my hair and make-up was fun.
Ginny was fun.
She was loud and adventurous and opinionated and, while I increasingly craved the approval of others, Ginny couldn’t care less what people thought of her. She was brave and bold enough for the two of us so, when I was with her, I could happily let her take charge, safe in the knowledge that we would always end up somewhere interesting and doing something exciting.
Plus, she really loved to dance.
For the first time in years, when Xav called, I was too busy to see him.
When we did finally meet, he stared at me.
‘You look different.’
I smiled and tossed my newly highlighted hair.
‘It doesn’t suit you,’ he said.
It took three hours to get from the service station back to Northampton’s residential area, and another hour to get a car and find the sort of store I needed.
I had never been to Go Outdoors before, but the name seemed to suggest that it might be what I was looking for.
Last One at the Party Page 13
