want to see me, and we’ll be alone for the first time, without the safety of streets and public places to cover us.
I swing the car into a petrol station and do something I haven’t done for years: I buy cigarettes. I drive ten yards off the forecourt, make a U-turn and go back in to buy a lighter, and mints for later, to disguise the smell of the cigarettes.
I pull over, two or three streets away from your house, musing on the fact that the last time I was here I didn’t know how to drive.
(‘When you’re old enough,’ you used to say, while my hand idled on the handbrake, ‘I’ll teach you.’)
Company cars are funny things. Even the phrase summons images that aren’t entirely positive and don’t match up with the way I thought my life would be. Mine is a ‘pool car’; there are a fleet of them, all lined up, all the same, outside the offices. They let me choose the colour. I didn’t care, but I knew that Karen, who started at around the same time as me, wanted the silver one, which of course made me want it just for devilment. We’d stood in the car park, looking at the identical grilles, headlights, bonnets. There were three we could choose from: silver, red, black. Karen’s eyes were hungry. She wore fake fingernails and a pout, except when smiling too widely, maniacally, at the boss.
He was playing fair; I started at the firm two days earlier (only because, as she repeatedly pointed out, Karen had had a holiday in Marbella which she couldn’t possibly cancel) so I could choose first.
‘Or we could draw straws,’ he was saying.
I shrugged.
‘I’ll take the black one,’ I said. Karen looked as though she would hug me, if it didn’t entail the risk of smudging her make-up. She took the keys triumphantly, like a prize.
But all I could see was a car in a row with a dozen others. I wasn’t being ungrateful; it was clean, and functional. But it wouldn’t feel like mine.
I love those corny magazine articles: ‘What does your car say about you?’ Mine says I’m a cog in a machine.
I always look enviously at people in old bangers that they’ve lovingly brought back to life. I love seeing things hanging from rear-view mirrors, even though Dave thinks it’s ‘tacky’. I notice these things. Air fresheners, often; fluffy dice (which is probably what Karen has in her silver Mondeo, now); once, a rosary. Once a photograph. People just want to personalise their space, I tell Dave. I love that.
I turn off the radio, light a cigarette, hang my arm out of the window. I look at the ‘No Smoking’ sticker on the dashboard; all pool cars have them. It gives the impression of being in a taxi: being in transitory, borrowed space, governed by someone else’s rules. Dog walkers pass by. A man helps a much older woman (his mother? Grandmother, even?) down the steps of the church opposite. A lilac tree overhanging the pavement sends a rush of scent into my car; I feel decadent, polluting it with nicotine. I eye passersby boldly, as though anticipating a challenge, but none of them look at me. There is nothing extraordinary, to them, about a thirty-year-old woman pulled over on a suburban street, smoking.
You answer the door with a glass in your hand and a tea towel thrown over your shoulder. You’re wearing shorts and a linen shirt.
‘His name was Peter,’ I say. ‘The one who broke my heart. Or nearly did. If you must know.’
You raise an eyebrow.
‘You didn’t say you were coming. I might not be alone.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes.’
I brush by you, holding out the cigarettes like a backstage pass. You laugh and I feel heat from your smile.
Lying on your sofa, leaning into you, your hands resting on my shoulders, I tell the story.
Peter was what they call a ladies’ man. Or a man’s man – they amount to the same thing. He was smooth. The first thing I said to him was, ‘If you ever call me a lady again, I’ll give you a black eye.’
He came from a different world to the one I
I swing the car into a petrol station and do something I haven’t done for years: I buy cigarettes. I drive ten yards off the forecourt, make a U-turn and go back in to buy a lighter, and mints for later, to disguise the smell of the cigarettes.
I pull over, two or three streets away from your house, musing on the fact that the last time I was here I didn’t know how to drive.
(‘When you’re old enough,’ you used to say, while my hand idled on the handbrake, ‘I’ll teach you.’)
Company cars are funny things. Even the phrase summons images that aren’t entirely positive and don’t match up with the way I thought my life would be. Mine is a ‘pool car’; there are a fleet of them, all lined up, all the same, outside the offices. They let me choose the colour. I didn’t care, but I knew that Karen, who started at around the same time as me, wanted the silver one, which of course made me want it just for devilment. We’d stood in the car park, looking at the identical grilles, headlights, bonnets. There were three we could choose from: silver, red, black. Karen’s eyes were hungry. She wore fake fingernails and a pout, except when smiling too widely, maniacally, at the boss.
He was playing fair; I started at the firm two days earlier (only because, as she repeatedly pointed out, Karen had had a holiday in Marbella which she couldn’t possibly cancel) so I could choose first.
‘Or we could draw straws,’ he was saying.
I shrugged.
‘I’ll take the black one,’ I said. Karen looked as though she would hug me, if it didn’t entail the risk of smudging her make-up. She took the keys triumphantly, like a prize.
But all I could see was a car in a row with a dozen others. I wasn’t being ungrateful; it was clean, and functional. But it wouldn’t feel like mine.
I love those corny magazine articles: ‘What does your car say about you?’ Mine says I’m a cog in a machine.
I always look enviously at people in old bangers that they’ve lovingly brought back to life. I love seeing things hanging from rear-view mirrors, even though Dave thinks it’s ‘tacky’. I notice these things. Air fresheners, often; fluffy dice (which is probably what Karen has in her silver Mondeo, now); once, a rosary. Once a photograph. People just want to personalise their space, I tell Dave. I love that.
I turn off the radio, light a cigarette, hang my arm out of the window. I look at the ‘No Smoking’ sticker on the dashboard; all pool cars have them. It gives the impression of being in a taxi: being in transitory, borrowed space, governed by someone else’s rules. Dog walkers pass by. A man helps a much older woman (his mother? Grandmother, even?) down the steps of the church opposite. A lilac tree overhanging the pavement sends a rush of scent into my car; I feel decadent, polluting it with nicotine. I eye passersby boldly, as though anticipating a challenge, but none of them look at me. There is nothing extraordinary, to them, about a thirty-year-old woman pulled over on a suburban street, smoking.
You answer the door with a glass in your hand and a tea towel thrown over your shoulder. You’re wearing shorts and a linen shirt.
‘His name was Peter,’ I say. ‘The one who broke my heart. Or nearly did. If you must know.’
You raise an eyebrow.
‘You didn’t say you were coming. I might not be alone.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes.’
I brush by you, holding out the cigarettes like a backstage pass. You laugh and I feel heat from your smile.
Lying on your sofa, leaning into you, your hands resting on my shoulders, I tell the story.
Peter was what they call a ladies’ man. Or a man’s man – they amount to the same thing. He was smooth. The first thing I said to him was, ‘If you ever call me a lady again, I’ll give you a black eye.’
He came from a different world to the one I
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