I put the car back in neutral. I don’t feel scared at all. Water runs down the windscreen in waves, and the cars behind us beep and flash as they pass, but I very calmly check my mirrors, turn on the ignition, then into first gear and away. I even find the wipers as I slip through second gear and into third.
Zoey’s face is alive with panic. ‘You’re mad. Let me drive!’
‘You’re not insured.’
‘Neither are you!’
The storm’s louder now, with no space between thunder and lightning. Other cars have put their lights on, even though it’s daytime. I can’t seem to find ours though.
‘Please!’ Zoey shouts. ‘Please pull over!’
‘A car’s a safe place to be. Cars have rubber tyres.’
‘Slow down!’ she yells. ‘We’re going to have an accident. Have you never heard of stopping distances?’
No. Instead, I’ve discovered a fifth gear I didn’t even know existed. We’re really speeding along now and the sky is alight with proper forked lightning. I’ve never seen it close up before. When Dad took us to Spain, there was an electric storm over the sea, which we watched from the balcony of the hotel. But it didn’t feel real, more like something arranged for the tourists. This one’s right above us and is completely fantastic.
Zoey doesn’t think so though. She’s cowering in her seat. ‘Cars are made of metal!’ she shrieks. ‘We could get hit any second! Pull over!’ I feel sorry for her, but she’s wrong about the lightning.
She stabs at the window with a frantic finger. ‘There’s a garage, look. Pull in there, or I’m going to throw myself out the door.’
I fancy some chocolate anyway, so I pull in. We’re going a bit fast, but I manage to find the brake. We slide dramatically across the forecourt and come to a stop surrounded by petrol pumps and fluorescent lights. Zoey closes her eyes. Funny how I’d rather be out on the road with mine wide open.
‘I don’t know what your game is,’ she hisses, ‘but you nearly killed both of us.’
She opens her door, gets out, slams it shut and marches off to the shop. For a moment I think of leaving without her, but before I can think about it properly, she stomps back again and opens my door. She smells different, cold and fresh. She yanks a wet tail of hair from her mouth.
‘I haven’t got any money. I need cigarettes.’
I pass her my bag. I feel very happy suddenly. ‘Can you get me some chocolate while you’re there?’
‘After I’ve had a cigarette,’ she says, ‘I’m going to the toilet. When I get back, you’re going to let me drive.’
She slams the door shut and walks back across the forecourt. It’s still raining heavily and she cowers under it, winces at the sky as thunder rumbles again. I’ve never seen her afraid before and I feel a sudden rush of love for her. She can’t handle it like I can. She’s not used to it. The whole world could roar and it wouldn’t freak me out. I want an avalanche at the next junction. I want black rain to fall and a plague of locusts to buzz out of the glove compartment. Poor Zoey. I can see her now in the garage, innocently buying sweets and fags. I’ll let her drive, but only because I choose to. She can’t control me any more. I’m beyond her.
Twenty-two
Four twenty and the sea is grey. So is the sky, although the sky is slightly lighter and not moving so fast. The sea makes me dizzy – something about the never-ending movement and how no one could stop it even if they wanted to.
‘It’s crazy being here,’ Zoey says. ‘How did I let you persuade me?’
We’re sitting on a bench on the sea front. The place is practically deserted. Far away across the sand a dog barks at the waves. Its owner is the tiniest dot on the horizon.
‘I used to come here on holiday every summer,’ I tell her. ‘Before Mum left. Before I got sick. We used to stay at the Crosskeys Hotel. Every morning we’d get up, have breakfast and spend the day on the beach. Every single day for two weeks.’
‘Fun, fun, fun!’ Zoey says, and she slumps down on the bench and pulls her coat closer across her chest.
‘We didn’t even go up to the hotel for lunch. Dad made sandwiches, and we’d buy packets of Angel Delight for pudding. He’d mix it with milk on the beach in a Tupperware dish. The sound of the fork whisking against a bowl was so weird amongst the noise of the seagulls and the waves.’
Zoey looks at me long and hard. ‘Did you forget to take some kind of important medication today?’
‘No!’ I grab her arm, pull her up. ‘Come on, I’ll show you the hotel we used to stay in.’
We walk along the promenade. Below us, the sand is covered in cuttlefish. They’re heavy and scarred as if they’ve been flung against each other with every tide. I make a joke about picking them up and selling them to a pet shop for the budgies, but really it’s strange. I don’t remember that happening when I used to come here.
‘Maybe it’s an autumn thing,’ Zoey says. ‘Or pollution. The whole crazy planet’s dying. You should think yourself lucky you’re getting out of here.’
Zoey says she needs to pee, and she goes down the steps onto the beach and crouches there. I can’t quite believe she’s doing this. There’s hardly anyone about, but usually she’d really care about somebody seeing her. Her pee gushes a hole in the sand and disappears, steaming. She looks very primeval as she hitches herself up and makes her way back to me.
We stand for a bit looking at the sea together. It rushes, whitens, retreats.
‘I’m glad you’re my friend, Zoey,’ I say, and I take her hand in mine and hold it tight.
We walk along to the harbour. I almost tell her about Adam and the motorbike ride and what happened on the hill, but it feels too difficult, and really I don’t want to talk about it. I get lost in remembering this place instead. Everything’s so familiar – the souvenir hut with its buckets and spades and racks of postcards, the whitewashed walls of the ice-cream parlour and the giant pink cone glinting outside. I’m even able to find the alley near the harbour that’s a short cut through to the hotel.
‘It looks different,’ I tell her. ‘It used to be bigger.’
‘But it’s the right place?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Great, so can we go back to the car now?’
I open the gate, walk up the little path. ‘I wonder if they’ll let me look at the room we used to stay in.’
‘Christ!’ mutters Zoey, and she plonks herself on the wall to wait.
A middle-aged woman opens the door. She looks kind and fat and is wearing an apron. I don’t remember her. ‘Yes?’
I tell her that I used to come here as a child, that we had the family room every summer for two weeks.
‘And are you looking for a room for tonight?’ she asks.
Which hadn’t actually crossed my mind, but suddenly sounds like a wonderful idea. ‘Can we have the same one?’
Zoey comes marching up the path behind me, grabs my arm and spins me round. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Booking a room.’
‘I can’t stay here, I’ve got college tomorrow.’
‘You’ve always got college,’ I tell her. ‘And you’ve got lots more tomorrows.’
I think this sounds rather eloquent and it certainly seems to shut Zoey up. She slouches back to the wall and sits there gazing at the sky.
I turn back to the woman. ‘Sorry about that,’ I say. I like her. She isn’t at all suspicious. Perhaps I look fifty today, and she thinks Zoey’s my terrible teenage daughter.
‘There’s a four-poster bed in there now,’ she says, ‘but it’s still en-suite.’
‘Good. We’ll take it.’
We follow her upstairs. Her bottom is huge and sways as she walks. I wonder what it would be like having her for a mother.
‘Here we go,’ she says as she opens the door. ‘We’ve completely re-decorated, so it probably looks different.’
It does. The four-poster bed dominates the room. It’s high and old-fashioned and draped with velvet.