The Overnight (24 page)

The fog shrinks away across the lanes, and he sees the cab scraping along the central barrier, striking sparks from it and buckling it out of shape. A seizure of trembling spreads through his arms into the rest of him as he grapples with the wheel to speed the car into the middle lane—to outdistance the object that's swinging towards him like a colossal scythe. He's pulling out when the rear of the lorry catches the Micra and slews it side on towards the lorry ahead. The next moment everything collides, and the car caves in so fast that he scarcely has time to understand what's being crushed besides shattered glass and groaning metal. It's him. It's his head, which fills with noise and whiteness that sinks into a flood of black.

"Mummy, have you really got to work all night?"

"Don't worry, Bryony. I'll be fine. I had a sleep while you were at school."

"But have you really really got to go?"

"We're all working. We've got an inspection tomorrow, I told you, like you have at school. You know how your teachers try and make sure everything's looking its best. So long as it isn't just about putting on appearances it isn't wrong, do you think?"

"I thought you liked helping me with my work for school. I like it when you tell me better words."

"I will again. Honestly, love, I won't be gone for long, and you know I'm not going far. What's the problem?"

"I like it when you read to me in bed."

"Don't you when daddy does? I thought you used to."

"I do still. Have you got to work because he isn't giving us enough money?"

"Bryony, I don't know if you're old enough to understand this—"

"I am. Miss Dickens says I'm old for my age."

"Well then, try and understand I don't want to depend on your father or anyone else any more than I absolutely have to. The more I earn myself the happier I am."

"I want you to be happy."

"You don't need me to tell you that's what I want for you, and you will be if I can buy us more things, won't you? The more committed I am to the job the more likely I am to be promoted. That's how it works."

"You told me that."

"Is there something else before your father comes, then? What's actually bothering you?"

"Maybe I won't be able to sleep."

"Why not? Is there some reason you don't like sleeping at your father's? If there's anything at all I should know you mustn't be afraid to tell me. Is there, Bryony?"

"I might have a dream."

"Why should you? Why only there?"

"I had it last night."

"Did it wake you? I'm sorry, Bryony. I must have been too asleep to hear. What was it about, love?"

"Me and daddy couldn't find you at the shop."

"Perhaps it was my day off."

"No, it was tonight and I was worried about you because it was so dark."

"It won't be. The shop's always lit and if you remember there are big lamps outside as well."

"We couldn't see. I'm sure it was dark. I could hear you calling out but I couldn't get to you, and then I couldn't find daddy either."

"It would have been the fog, was it? That's what must have got into your head. I expect daddy found you and I did as well, but you'd already woken up."

"No, he was looking for the other lady."

"Which other one?"

"The one who dresses up in leather."

"Do you mean Connie? What do you know about her?"

"I heard her talking to daddy when I was at your shop for the competition."

"And have you bumped into her elsewhere?"

"No, mummy. Only that time."

"I wonder why she made such an impression, then," Jill says, and the doorbell seems to respond with a ring as terse as a four-letter word.

Bryony swings her unshod feet off the creaky cane sofa and jumps up. "I'm just going to the toilet." she says as she always does when leaving is imminent, and runs upstairs.

Jill is inclined to take her time over answering the bell, which sounded more peremptory than it has any right to be, but she wants a private word with Geoff. She hurries down the short hall that's decorated with Bryony's paintings and crayonings of girls on ponies, which she keeps assuring Jill she doesn't want to own or hire even if they could afford it, and twists the latch. The front door snags halfway as usual on some undetectable obstruction, then swings wide to show Geoff stooping to tug a clump of dandelions out of a crack in the path. "No need for that," she tells him.

"They're making the place look untidy."

"So let them. Bryony likes scattering the seeds." His eyebrows stir just enough to provoke her to add "I should think you'd sympathise with that."

"I didn't realise you still cared where mine end up."

"Are you saying I should have while we were together? Don't tell me. I don't want to hear," Jill says, only to infuriate herself further by having to amend it. "Not unless it's somebody I know."

"Why would you imagine that, Jill? You're making it sound as if I'd want to hurt you."

His deep brown eyes have produced a faintly injured look, but it no longer works. "Bryony seems to think there's someone we both know."

"She's completely mistaken. You can't believe I would ever introduce her to any—" A thought snags his gaze, which tries not to admit as much. "I've done my best to keep her away from my private life," he insists.

"Not much point in that if you bring it where I work while Bryony's there as well."

"I didn't know, did I? I mean, nothing had happened. I won't come near the shop again if that's what you prefer."

"You mean things have happened since, not that it's any affair of mine."

"It isn't really, is it, but well, yes."

"I wonder if you've the slightest idea what difficulties you may have made for me. Presumably you can't have, not that I'd call that an excuse."

"I'm not sure I see the problem. We're all adults and I should have thought we could act like it."

"You're going to start then, are you?" This leaves enough of Jill's anger unexpressed that she blurts "I wish my parents weren't on their winter break. I'd rather Bryony stayed with them."

Upstairs the toilet flushes as if it's washing away Jill's remark. Geoff looks close to giving her an understanding look, which makes her angrier still. She's tempted to forbid him to show up at Bryony's Christmas play at school—to threaten to walk out if he disobeys. Instead she shouts "Hurry up, Bryony. I want to put the alarm on."

She's ashamed of her sharpness when Bryony appears clutching her overnight bag, from which her teddy bear is poking out his battered head to see where he's going on the way to keeping her bed warm. She waits with her father on the path while Jill types the date she and Geoff split up. Jill has barely shut the door when Bryony drops the bag and runs to hug her so hard it feels as though she wants to root them to the path. "It'll be fine. It'll be an adventure," Jill says and strokes Bryony's head until the hug slackens enough to let her disengage herself. "I'll see you tomorrow after school."

Bryony stands next to the Golf as Geoff climbs in while Jill starts the Nova. As Jill eases the car away from the kerb, Bryony lifts her free hand in a timid wave that Jill tells herself isn't really a hopeless attempt to arrest her. Bryony must still be more upset to be reminded that her parents aren't together than Jill realised. Once they're home again and Jill has slept off the night at the shop they'll have a proper talk.

Ten minutes take her through Bury and onto the motorway. She has sped past several exits when she encounters a slow herd of traffic. Eventually it takes her to the elevated section that gives her a distant view of the stretch past Fenny Meadows. While the fog emits only the faintest tinge of red, an elongated shining wound leads there—the brake lights of hundreds of stationary cars. Jill switches on the radio and tunes it to a local station. The Nova has crawled for some minutes to the accompaniment of a folk song about the lone survivor of a battle when the radio issues a travel bulletin. "The M62 eastbound of junction 11 is closed due to a series of accidents. Police do not expect it to be reopened for some hours. Drivers are asked to find an alternative route."

That's where Fenny Meadows is. Jill is tempted to use this as an excuse to stay away from Texts tonight and let Bryony know, but it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the staff. When she arrives at the next junction she heads for the East Lancashire Road so that she can come up behind the retail park. Less than ten minutes later she's on the dual carriageway, but misses the turn for Fenny Meadows. If there's a signpost from either direction, it certainly isn't prominent. Once she reaches a gap in the central reservation she swings back so as to cross to the first side road she's able to locate, which is marked only by an illuminated bus shelter. The lane doesn't even seem to have a name.

It's the route to Fenny Meadows, however. Before long the fog makes that clear as well as the opposite. The tall thorny hedges that enclose the road, their spikes glinting as the headlights sharpen them, appear to be liquefying rather than shaping themselves from the murk. Occasionally a shiver passes through the tangles of black twigs, and they exude greyness like a mass of cobwebs. There must be a wind, because the fog keeps lurching eagerly closer both behind and ahead of the car. By the time she has guided the Nova around all the curves and crooks of the narrow lane, she's more anxious to reach Fenny Meadows than she could have imagined. She lets out a relieved breath that glimmers for an instant in the air as a pale surface framed by the hedges proves to be more solid than fog.

It's the rear wall of Frugo. She drives past the shops, some of which are already closed for the night. The glow from their windows lies inert in the murk, which seems to snag on the livid graffiti that swarm over the unoccupied properties. Not a hint of Christmas is visible in Texts; the shop feels mired in the October that first gave rise to the fog. At the back her headlamp beams expand into a white stain that vanishes into the wall. She locks the car, and as the keys finish jingling she discovers she's holding her breath.

Why is the retail park so quiet? She feels as if the fog has swamped every sound until she realises what's missing: the noise of the motorway. When she heads for the front of the shop her footsteps seem shrunken by their isolation and yet too loud. She could fancy that something dwarfish is scuttling after her down the alley—her echoes, of course. She's glad to have left the dim passage until she sees Connie in the window.

The three photographs of Brodie Oates lie at Connie's feet. Jill won't miss the display—presumably it's redundant now that he has visited the shop—and she won't let herself feel as though it's her face Connie seems about to wipe her shoes on. She's hurrying past Frank the guard, who looks preoccupied with the fog, when Connie calls "I put these on a trolley for you, Jill."

Jill has half a mind to pretend she didn't hear. She wasn't expecting Connie's voice to render her body so stiff it feels crippled and shrivelled, and to bring such an unwelcome taste to her mouth. She turns to see Connie pointing at the books she has taken out of the window. "That's kind of you," Jill says with a sweetness that can't quite overcome the taste.

"It is rather, isn't it? You can put them and the signed ones on a shelf end. Maybe they'll move faster once people can get their hands on them."

"You've got some left over from your show, you mean. Didn't it go as well as you were planning?"

Connie parts her full pink lips to lure her closer. The gesture sickens Jill, but she can't resist approaching for Connie to murmur "Not as well as our star kept telling us it should. He blamed everything except the fog and his book. Your display, I'm afraid."

"I do apologise. I'll just have to try even harder, won't I."

"I'm not criticising you, Jill. I'm only saying what he said. I don't think we could have done any more for him than we did, any of us."

"Well then," Jill mutters, and is about to head for the staffroom when Connie says "You've got ready for the marathon, have you?"

"I expect I'm as ready as anyone."

"Someone's looking after your little girl, what's her name, Bryony, isn't it? Someone's taking care of her."

"Her father." Jill feels as if she's spitting out the stale taste of the phrase as she adds "He's very good at taking care of people for a while."

Connie either has no answer to that or doesn't feel any is advisable, but the sight of her lips nestling together to conceal an expression goads Jill to enquire "May I ask where you got my daughter's name from?"

"Didn't I hear it the day you brought her along?"

Jill can't remember. She only knows she feels that Connie has bested her. As she turns away, her mouth filling up with dirty words and their taste, she hears Connie promise "They'll be waiting for you when you come down."

She means the books—the excess of them that she ordered and dumped on Jill. Two men who seem to have occupied a pair of armchairs ever since Jill can remember watch her stalking away. She brandishes her badge at the plaque on the wall and comes close to kicking the door. Eventually it gives way, and she chases her faint breaths upstairs to the staffroom.

Ross and Mad are sitting at either end of the table with Agnes between them. She's wearing a prim frown like a reluctant chaperone and saying no more than they are. All three seem glad to see Jill, though perhaps only because she's somewhere to look. As she runs her card under the clock, Woody darts out of the lair of his office. "There you are. I thought we'd lost another of the team."

Jill doesn't know if his red-eyed smile makes his thoughtlessness more shocking or suggests he's too tired to think. Ross grows rigid so as not to wince, and Agnes lets her jaw drop on his behalf, while Mad looks as though she might give him a comforting pat if she could reach. Jill can only try to lessen the tension by saying "The motorway's closed. I had to use the old road."

"Connie told me," Woody says, presumably about the motorway, but the name sours Jill's mouth. "Want to hear the good news?"

His smile is fierce enough to prompt all his listeners. It's Ross who mumbles "If there's some."