Chill Factor Read Free

road. In ten years, perhaps less, she’d be over the hill, he thought, but right now she was perfect. Just perfect.
    A hundred yards beyond her there was a small shopping precinct. He swung into it and jumped out of the car. As shereached the precinct he was coming from the newsagent’s shop, peeling the cellophane off a packet of Benson and Hedges. He walked out on to the pavement on a collision course.
    “’Scuse me, love,” he said to her. “I seem to have lost my matches. Could you give me a light, please?”
    “Mmm, ’course I can,” she replied, raising her stunted cig to the fresh one between his lips. Glowing tip met tobacco and transferred its fire as he inhaled, his eyes on her. Her lashes were short and brown, and there were whiteheads at the sides of her nose. She was wearing cheap perfume, lots of it, and he wondered what a classroom full of that would do to a man.
    “Thanks,” he sighed, smoke streaming from his nose and mouth. “I was ready for that.”
    “No problem,” she replied with a smile. She looked radiant when she smiled.
    He turned, as if to leave, then said: “Sorry, love, can I give you one?” and held the packet towards her.
    “No, I’m all right,” she told him, blushing ever so slightly.
    He walked in the wrong direction, away from his car, for a few yards, then turned in time to see her cross the road and walk up a street on the right. Her feet were walking, but her arse was doing the samba. She vanished into a development of houses built at the height of the boom: all Elizabethan gables, Georgian windows and Thatcherite mortgages.
    Back in the car he wound the window down and lit another B and H. They were shorter than they used to be, he thought. Once they were a luxury cigarette, the epitome of coolness, but now they were just a device for getting nicotine into your system as economically as possible. He held it outside in a half-hearted attempt to stop the car’s interior smelling like a public bar.
    It had been a long time. He inhaled deeply, wrapping his tongue around the smoke like a grazing cow, and felt it fill his lungs, inflating every little bronchiole and alveolus, finding its way into corners where oxygen had never ventured.Distillations of nicotine were absorbed into his bloodstream and transported to the brain, where receptors, lying redundant for millions of years until Sir Walter Raleigh brought tobacco from the New World, eagerly latched on to them and converted them into an electro-chemical signal. A signal that said: “Ah! That’s good.”
    Yes sir, it had been a long time. But the urge never left you. Once tasted, you were hooked. He remembered the date and did a quick calculation. Fifteen years and six months, almost to the day, since the last time. It hadn’t been easy, for the yearning, the hunger, was always there, waiting to catch you out. And lately it was stronger than ever. He’d allowed the genie out of its bottle, and once on the loose he knew it had to be obeyed. The thought scared and excited him. He flicked the smouldering stub on to the car-park and started the engine.
    Home was a four-bedroomed detached house built with just six others on a spare patch of land between a farm and the canal. The service road was block-paved, with speed humps, and the gardens were open plan. There was a paddock to the rear, but his neighbour had jumped in first and bought that, much to his annoyance. Each house had a double garage but they all left their vehicles outside. It’s not conspicuous consumption if you hide it away. On a Sunday morning, when everyone was at home, the development resembled a four-wheel-drive regatta, just before the judging of the concourse d’elegance.
    His wife’s Suzuki Vitara was on the drive, with a Citroën Xantia behind it. “What’s he doing here?” he wondered, parking in the street and swinging his legs wearily out. He collected his jacket from the Armani hanger behind the driving seat and his briefcase from the