Snowstop Read Free Page B

seats. ‘Why didn’t you ask properly?’
    She was surprised as much as he at his change of mind. ‘It’s perishing out there.’
    His expensive jacket and sweater had been like paper near Beagle Tarn. ‘For a few miles, then.’
    â€˜My boy friend chucked me out.’ She sniffed, hugging her slimline knickerpink trannie. ‘He’s earning two hundred quid a week as a chippie, and thought I was too expensive because I asked for a gin. Some people are born rotten. I winked at one of his mates, as well, but it didn’t mean anything. Just a bit of fun. Anyway, you’ve got to show you’re alive now and again, haven’t you?’ She patted the seat and looked around. ‘It’s a lovely car, though.’
    Wheels crunched onto the road, tarmac buttered with light. ‘Why didn’t you go back home?’
    Her laugh ended as a squeal. ‘Home? What’s one o’ them? Oh yes, I used to hear people talking about such things. I wrote to Santa Claus asking for one at Christmas. I even saw one on telly once. It looked ever so funny.’
    He drove as carefully with a hitchhiker in the car as he always had with Gwen and Laura. She didn’t know how lucky she was, finding someone who also had no home.
    â€˜He didn’t even like me to talk. Whenever I said anything he told me to shut up. He talked, though. It was all right for him to open his mouth. But I like to talk as well, and when I said so he told me to wrap up or he would belt me one. I can’t think why I stuck him for so long. Three whole months, or near enough, but it felt like all my life. I would have left even if he hadn’t chucked me out. He’d got no consideration.’
    He thought she was being sick, but she was retching out tears, the indigestible food of her spirit, hands gripping the back of his seat. The words, harsh as ice, were in his throat to tell her to shut up as well, but he crushed such resemblance to her loutish boy friend, and passed a clutch of Kleenex from the glove box.
    Why am I crying? she wondered, at the shock of getting a lift when she thought she had been left to die, a change for the better that would break any heart. Getting into such a car was like climbing into heaven: two soft seats to herself, a smell of fags and leather, and a stranger’s breath.
    Since he felt so superior to the poor waif he thought he was obliged to say something. ‘Are you hungry?’
    She wiped her face, and passed the remaining Kleenex as if they were too precious not to be used again.
    â€˜It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I don’t need them.’
    She stuffed them in her pocket, and smiled. ‘I’m starving, if you want to know.’
    â€˜You’ll find some biscuits and a bar of chocolate in that box on the floor.’ Her presence was disturbing, and he took a bend too sharply, treadling his way back onto a straight course. A rustle of paper as she burrowed around as if a hamster had got loose, her face in the rear mirror pale and oval, with regular features and dark untidy hair – nothing that a comb and a bar of soap wouldn’t improve. He wondered what her body was like under the baggy clothes.
    â€˜I feel a bit sick, sitting in the back. That woman had me in front. We nearly hit a dead sheep on the road. But I’ll be all right in a bit. Have you got a wireless in your car?’
    He wanted to stop, throw her out for being such trouble. ‘I have, but I won’t put it on, if you don’t mind. And don’t you put yours on, either.’
    â€˜I can’t. The batteries are dead. It costs about a fiver to buy new ones.’
    â€˜I like to concentrate on the road.’ Seeing a space by a gate he drew in so that she could sit beside him. Her smell of sweat was not unpleasant. He sweated too when he walked, ‘Is that better?’
    â€˜Thanks. I had to traipse bloody miles before I got a lift.’
    He