The Lost Guide to Life and Love. Sharon Griffiths
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get. I had long since lapsed into silence. Jake was concentrating hard on the road ahead as he peered past the windscreen wipers into the gloom ahead.
‘Shall I drive for a while?’ I offered.
‘Might be an idea,’ he said, ‘I could do with a break. Look, there’re some services soon. We’ll stop and get a coffee. Give the rain a chance to stop.’
The service station didn’t look promising. The only free space was at the far end of the car park and we had to run through the rain, dodging the puddles and then into a world of flashing video games and the smell of chips. We bought some papers and some coffees and sat down at the only table that wasn’t piled high with heaps of dirty, greasy plates.
The coffee was only just drinkable, but at least it was good to be away from the constant whoosh of the windscreen wipers. I leant back, stretched my legs and flipped vaguely though the heap of papers. Suddenly, I sat bolt upright.
‘That’s her!’ I said. ‘The girl from the club!’
‘What girl?’ asked Jake, puzzled, as I twisted the paper round to show him.
‘ “Supermodel sensation, Foxy, has hunted herself down a very tasty new contract”,’ Jake read. ‘“The stunning redhead, who has taken the fashion world by storm since her first appearance on the catwalks at London Fashion Week two years ago, has signed up to be the new face of Virgo cosmetics in one of the company’s biggest ever deals. No chicken feed for fabulous Foxy!” Was she at the club? I don’t remember seeing here. And’—he looked back at the page—‘I’m sure I would have…’
‘No. She left in rather a hurry,’ I said. And told him the story of how she had jumped out of the window and down into the street.
I expected Jake to laugh. Instead he was furious. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’ he asked so fiercely that the family at the next table paused in the middle of chomping through giant burgers, nudged each other and stared at us.
‘Because the princes arrived, and everyone was buzzing round them,’ I said, astonished at his reaction. ‘It just put it out of my mind. Sorry. I didn’t think you’d be so interested.’
‘Of course I’m interested.’ He looked at me as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘A top model jumps from a toilet window in a club full of Premiership footballers and royal princes. Don’t you think that’s just a little bit interesting?’
‘Well, yes, of course it is. But so was everything else that was going on. I just didn’t think…I mean, I just don’t understand why you care so much. What are you doing? It’s not the sort of story you normally do. I thought you were writing about dodgy millionaires. Or are you selling celebrity stories now? What’s happened to your famous principles?’
That was, I know, a bitchy thing to say. And I regretted it immediately. But too late.
Jake stood up. Very quietly, deliberately, he gathered all the papers, left his half-drunk coffee and walked out. I picked up my bag and ran after him. ‘Shall I drive now?’ I asked when we got to the car. But he just glared at me and got in the driving seat. We drove on in the rain and silence.
He was frowning, but I don’t know whether that was because of the weather or because of me. I never seemed to measure up to Jake’s standards. Even back at journalism college, where he was the star of the course. I always thought he would team up with one of the very bright, scary girls, like the Staveley twins, Felicity and Arabella, who were heading straight into television or national newspapers. But they all went their own ways and somehow it was just Jake and me and it seemed fine, even if I went into food writing, which for Jake didn’t count as proper journalism.
Jake practically lives at my place, but he still keeps his old bedsit, a few miles away, where the cupboards are full of his neatly labelled files and a few basic clothes hang on a hook at the back of the door.
As we headed north, I could feel the silence between us, and wondered why he was suddenly so concerned about models and footballers. But somehow I didn’t think he was going to tell me. He didn’t tell me much any more.
We left the motorway and turned onto a road that led through small towns, then large villages, then small villages, then just about nothing at all. The rain had finally stopped, which was just as well, as we seemed to be climbing higher and the road was little more than a single lane as we kept tucking into hedges to let cars and tractors pass. Soon there weren’t even hedges, or many trees, just a few scrubby bushes, bent from the wind, and dry-stone walls. And no more villages, just occasional houses spread out over a vast, empty moorland, dotted with sheep.
‘Where now?’ asked Jake. It was the first thing he’d said for an hour.
I scrabbled in my bag for directions. ‘We come to a place called Hartstone and, just past the pub—that’s good, it’s got a pub—and the old chapel, there’s a track marked “High Hartstone only”. We turn up there and in about a mile there’s a farmhouse and that’s where we go to collect the key.’
The narrow road suddenly rose so steeply that it was almost perpendicular. Then, as Jake steered carefully past a large jutting boulder and rounded another bend, I gasped. ‘We’re on top of the world!’
After all that climbing, we were now on a plateau. To left and right the moors stretched out for miles. Ahead was a small group of buildings and beyond that the road tumbled down and we could see another valley, a stony blur of blues and greens and greys stretching out into a hazy purple distance.
Never before had I had such a feeling of space and distance. I don’t think I’d ever been in such an empty space. Bit of a shock for a city girl. Even Jake in his foul mood looked momentarily impressed, and slowed the car to take in the vastness of the view. Then we drove past the pub, grey and solid and hunched against the weather, saw the old chapel, which now seemed to be an outdoor pursuits centre. Or had been. It was boarded up and looked sad. Apart from that there was only a handful of houses. Where were the people who came to the pub? Where were the people who had come to the chapel? Were there even any people up here?
I spotted the ‘High Hartstone only’ sign and we turned and bumped off up the track, which twisted across the vast open space of the moor. It seemed a long mile.
Suddenly we could see a small collection of buildings, dropped down at the base of another high hill that seemed to soar right up to the sky. The road led straight into a farmyard and stopped. That was the end of it. Literally the end of the road.
‘Is this it?’ asked Jake.
‘I suppose so,’ I said, having no idea. With that a woman emerged from one of the barns across the yard. She was tall, striking, with a heavy plait of greying auburn hair and, although dressed in jeans, wellies and an ancient battered waterproof, moved with a casual sort of elegance. I’d never seen anyone quite like her before.
Jake sat in the car, arms folded and a deliberately blank expression on his face as if to say that this was nothing to do with him. So I got out of the car, stiff from the journey, and walked towards her. She would have been intimidating, if she hadn’t been smiling in welcome. ‘Mrs Alderson?’ I asked tentatively.
‘Hello there!’ she said cheerfully. ‘You must be Miss Flint and’ she glanced towards the car, ‘Mr Shaw?’
‘That’s us,’ I said, relieved, thinking how nice it was to hear a friendly voice after the hours of silence in the car. She had deep dark blue eyes and the most amazing skin, and her wrinkles were definitely laughter lines. Tucked into the neck of her jumper was a vivid jade scarf that lit up her face and contrasted sharply with the dingy mud of her jacket.
‘Good journey? Found us all right?’
‘Yes, fine, thank you. Excellent directions,’ I said, extra brightly to make up for Jake’s silence. She gave us both a quick look and I swear she knew that we’d had a row en route. But she just smiled again. ‘That’s the cottage up there,’ she said, pointing up the hillside behind the farm.
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