to ninety along this stretch, what might happen? Might I lose control, spin over the central reservation? Would I care? Might it just be the easiest way out?
I felt that less now. I took fewer risks on the road, although that was mostly because I was afraid of causing death or injury to somebody else. Somebody who, unlike me, was a hundred percent sure that they wanted to live.
I honestly hadn’t set out to drive to Gillingsbury. I’d just decided that I needed a change of scenery, I wanted to get out of the house, and I had my Daniel Bedingfield CD to listen to. The bottom of the M3 was only a couple of miles from where we lived, and I often drove down there—if you went against the traffic, the road was rarely busy, and the scenery wasn’t bad, either. It was miles to the first junction, which I liked. No option but to keep going.
By the time I reached Fleet, I remembered—consciously, at least - that the M3 was the route to Gillingsbury. My mood had lifted a little: I’d had plenty of rejections in my acting career, and this was just another one—but the thought of visiting Max’s town grabbed me under the armpits and hauled me right out of my sough of despond. Aunt Lil’s words rang in my ears: ‘You could just… suss it out. ’ It was the first time I’d taken those words seriously. The idea really had seemed preposterous when she’d said it, so casually, but I found myself getting more and more excited at the thought of maybe meeting Max’s father. How sad and empty was my life, I thought to myself; that this was so thrilling to me?
The first sign to Gillingsbury took me off the motorway and onto the A303. Salisbury 24, Gillingsbury 17, it said, and my left foot tapped with excitement against the floor of the car. There was a storm brewing to one side of me; the sky had turned an amazing lowering sort of yellow, and everything seemed so clear—I could see individual leaves on trees fifty feet away, and felt as if I was looking into the eyes of the reclining cows in the fields.
It only took about an hour. The town of Gillingsbury lay in a valley, and as I approached it, I thought: Max is down there somewhere, with a part of me having rooted and blossomed inside of him, helping make him well again. The yearning to meet him was so strong that it was literally a hunger—my stomach rumbled with anticipation.
I stopped at a petrol station on the outskirts and asked directions from the man in the glass booth. It was easy, he said, handing me change for the two chocolate bars I’d purchased in the hope that they would take my mind off the nerves and the hollow longing fluttering inside me: halfway around the ringroad, then first left. It was another five minutes’ drive to the college, by which time all the chocolate was gone.
With a cloying heavy sweetness on my tongue and coating my teeth, I parked the car and got out, marching far more confidently than I felt towards the main reception.
Gillingsbury Community College looked like most modern colleges seemed to, as if the architect’s brief had been to make the building look as anonymous and nondescript as possible. I couldn’t pick out a single notable feature of it; it was more like a multi-storey carpark than a seat of learning. Yet somehow this reassured me: I was just an ordinary person going into an ordinary building. I had as much right as anyone else to be there: as much right as that elderly woman with fat arms bulging out of short sleeves over there, or that group of Middle-Eastern looking men sitting smoking on a wall, nudging each other and gazing at my… Damn! I glanced down at my clothes. Having not planned this impromptu expedition, I wasn’t best equipped for it. I was wearing saggy black jersey trousers and a very small, very tight sleeveless fuchsia t-shirt, with no bra. I slung my bag over my shoulders—luckily it had a long handle—so that its strap covered one of my nipples, and self-consciously fiddled with my ear so that
I felt that less now. I took fewer risks on the road, although that was mostly because I was afraid of causing death or injury to somebody else. Somebody who, unlike me, was a hundred percent sure that they wanted to live.
I honestly hadn’t set out to drive to Gillingsbury. I’d just decided that I needed a change of scenery, I wanted to get out of the house, and I had my Daniel Bedingfield CD to listen to. The bottom of the M3 was only a couple of miles from where we lived, and I often drove down there—if you went against the traffic, the road was rarely busy, and the scenery wasn’t bad, either. It was miles to the first junction, which I liked. No option but to keep going.
By the time I reached Fleet, I remembered—consciously, at least - that the M3 was the route to Gillingsbury. My mood had lifted a little: I’d had plenty of rejections in my acting career, and this was just another one—but the thought of visiting Max’s town grabbed me under the armpits and hauled me right out of my sough of despond. Aunt Lil’s words rang in my ears: ‘You could just… suss it out. ’ It was the first time I’d taken those words seriously. The idea really had seemed preposterous when she’d said it, so casually, but I found myself getting more and more excited at the thought of maybe meeting Max’s father. How sad and empty was my life, I thought to myself; that this was so thrilling to me?
The first sign to Gillingsbury took me off the motorway and onto the A303. Salisbury 24, Gillingsbury 17, it said, and my left foot tapped with excitement against the floor of the car. There was a storm brewing to one side of me; the sky had turned an amazing lowering sort of yellow, and everything seemed so clear—I could see individual leaves on trees fifty feet away, and felt as if I was looking into the eyes of the reclining cows in the fields.
It only took about an hour. The town of Gillingsbury lay in a valley, and as I approached it, I thought: Max is down there somewhere, with a part of me having rooted and blossomed inside of him, helping make him well again. The yearning to meet him was so strong that it was literally a hunger—my stomach rumbled with anticipation.
I stopped at a petrol station on the outskirts and asked directions from the man in the glass booth. It was easy, he said, handing me change for the two chocolate bars I’d purchased in the hope that they would take my mind off the nerves and the hollow longing fluttering inside me: halfway around the ringroad, then first left. It was another five minutes’ drive to the college, by which time all the chocolate was gone.
With a cloying heavy sweetness on my tongue and coating my teeth, I parked the car and got out, marching far more confidently than I felt towards the main reception.
Gillingsbury Community College looked like most modern colleges seemed to, as if the architect’s brief had been to make the building look as anonymous and nondescript as possible. I couldn’t pick out a single notable feature of it; it was more like a multi-storey carpark than a seat of learning. Yet somehow this reassured me: I was just an ordinary person going into an ordinary building. I had as much right as anyone else to be there: as much right as that elderly woman with fat arms bulging out of short sleeves over there, or that group of Middle-Eastern looking men sitting smoking on a wall, nudging each other and gazing at my… Damn! I glanced down at my clothes. Having not planned this impromptu expedition, I wasn’t best equipped for it. I was wearing saggy black jersey trousers and a very small, very tight sleeveless fuchsia t-shirt, with no bra. I slung my bag over my shoulders—luckily it had a long handle—so that its strap covered one of my nipples, and self-consciously fiddled with my ear so that
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