Sarah’s eyes flickered to the mirror in the sun visor; only moments earlier she’d been putting on lipstick, so the visor was down, despite the fact that the sun was not strong enough to warrant the protection.
“It’s nothing.” As soon as he said this, Robert tasted the lie. It was like a particularly strong spice on his tongue; unpleasant and lingering.
“Just speed up and he’ll soon get bored,” said Sarah, not sounding too convinced by her own rationale.
“What’s up, Dad?” Molly’s voice was still thick with tiredness from the early morning start; she must have taken out her omnipresent earphones, perhaps sensing the tension inside the car.
“It’s okay, Moll. We’re almost there.” Robert craned his neck to smile at the girl. She shrugged, stuck the earphones back in, and went vacant, like any other fourteen-year-old on a long, dull car journey.
Beside her, Connor did not even look up from his PSP. His eyes were wide yet lacking any kind of lustre beyond that reflected from the handheld console. It was a look that often reminded Robert of movie zombies, or the roadkill he sometimes saw flattened on the road.
The sound of a horn blaring pulled his attention back toward the road, then the mirror. The fat man was gesticulating, waving his stubby fingers in a sideways motion.
“He wants me to pull over,” he said, not taking his eyes off the man.
“Fuck him,” said Sarah. “Fuck. Him. He doesn’t own the road.”
Robert tore his gaze away from the mirror and stared at his wife. Sometimes she surprised him by reacting like this. Back in the city, before…before what had happened, she had been calm and collected, timid even. But now, after everything she had gone through, Sarah occasionally slipped into another mode, becoming someone Robert only thought he knew. A different version of his wife: an upgrade.
Robert’s foot pressed down onto the accelerator; in the rearview mirror, the man and his four-wheel-drive receded slightly, slipping back into the dust rising from the road like a light mist. Then he caught himself, and lifted his foot off the pedal. Adrenaline was coursing through his system, but instead of energising him it simply made him shake. Something hard and warm rose in his throat. Robert wanted to puke.
He turned the steering wheel and pulled the Volvo into a passing point, allowing the other vehicle to overtake. The horn blared a second time; the fat man turned to look at Robert. He was smiling. He had won the battle with ease.
“I’m sorry.” His hands were shaking on the wheel.
“For what?” asked Sarah. But she knew; oh yes, she knew. His weakness was there for all to see, and not for the first time.
Sarah reached out and turned on the radio; an old Beatles tune was just ending. She sat and waited for Robert to compose himself, listening to the DJ as he introduced a guest, some psychology professor who was plugging his new book.
Robert began to breathe more easily. He indicated, and pulled back out into the road. He could still see the dust created by the speeding fat man, and to him it looked like some kind of monster from a cheesy B-movie.
He listened to the talking heads on the radio, trying to rid himself of whatever nameless horror was stirring inside his heart, and to take his mind off the memories bubbling slowly to the surface—grim, bitter recollections of their final weeks in the city.
“In today’s all-consuming culture of corruption there is nowhere left to hide. Our homes have already been invaded by this insidious enemy that seeks to twist our minds and poison our hearts through the unmonitored Internet, television, magazines, and music our families ingest on a daily basis.”
The pompous professor was giving a brief synopsis of his book, some cheapjack volume of popular psychology. Robert changed the channel, and was relieved when he found an old, familiar refrain: Nina Simone singing about the “Backlash Blues.”
But for some reason he could not get the words from the radio out of his mind. They were haunting him, or taunting him. He could not be sure which.
Our homes have already been invaded by this insidious enemy that seeks to twist our minds and poison our hearts.
Jesus, why was that staying with him? The phrase was stuck in his brain, like an insect trapped in a jar, constantly beating itself against the glass until it went insane. He knew it was linked to the bad times they’d all gone through, but he also knew he should not allow those memories to hold such power over him.
Robert stared at the road ahead. He was alone, so horribly, terribly alone, despite the presence of his family inside the car. The moment soon passed, but it left behind an emotional residue—a stain—he could not remove however hard he tried.
Even among loved ones, he thought, we are entirely on our own.
“So,” he said, mainly to shift his own dark mood. “Are we all looking forward to getting back to the new house? Settling in, unpacking properly this time, and starting things again?” He wished he had kept quiet. The words he had used, and the way he’d said them, were linked directly to the memories he was trying to keep down.
“Yeah,” said Molly. “It should be fun. Apart from the new school.” She made a puking noise. Beside her, Connor laughed, finally looking up from his game.
“Oh, come on, you two. Dad’s done us proud with this place. I know we didn’t get the chance to get settled in before the trip, but now we can make our mark on the house, make it a real home. There’s still a long time left of the summer holidays, and we can forget about school until then. In the meantime, let’s all just dive into this new adventure and start being a family again.” Despite her surface optimism, Robert knew Sarah’s eyes betrayed how she really felt. She was clearly afraid: of the new life they were planning, of the strange territory represented by the new house and the countryside…of everything.
“Yes, that’s what we want to hear: some positivity.” His own voice held a note of trepidation. Why couldn’t they all just admit they were scared and be done with it? Was it so difficult to open yourself up and show your weaknesses, even to the ones closest to you?
They all went quiet, as if in recognition of their unspoken fears, and Robert stared through the windscreen as if he had never seen a road before. The trees moved slowly, their tops shifting like nodding heads in a slight breeze, and leaves clutched like fingers at the air. Daylight pierced the spaces between those leaves, creating bright spots in the dark treetops. He saw a rabbit racing along the verge, head down, ears pinned back, and he smiled sadly as it veered off into a clump of bushes. The sun hung in the sky as if it were painted on; its glare was unbearable when he looked directly at it, but when viewed askance the yellow blob seemed to become more solid.
Sarah’s hand strayed to touch his knee. Her long fingers clasped him, lightly but with enough pressure to let him know she meant it.
It’s going to be all right, he thought. Everything will be fine.
Before long the battered road sign for the small town of Battle came into view. It was scraped and scratched; someone had daubed meaningless black lines across it in either paint or marker pen. Battle was more like a village than a town, with a few shops, two pubs and a sub-post office counter at the rear of a newsagent. It was exactly the kind of place they needed to heal their wounds; a quiet, almost lazy backwater where everyone knew everyone else’s business but nobody really bothered to interfere.
More importantly, it was a million miles away from the city—if not figuratively, then at least metaphorically. Things moved slower in the country; the people cared little about your past, and even less about your present. He and his family could be outsiders, and now they would relish that sense of alienation. It was a different type of segregation to that found in the city, and one they could use to their advantage.