Wishful Thinking

Wishful Thinking

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are the product of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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It wasn’t so much a loud bang as a dull thud but Jess found the impact equally sudden and shocking. She clutched the steering wheel in sheer panic as the car began to spin out of control and lurch to the right into the fast lane of the three lane motorway. Instinctively she slammed on the brakes but that only seemed to feed greater momentum into the careening vehicle and in a split second she remembered that braking was liable to send her into a spin. She removed her foot from the pedal and held onto the wheel for grim life. It took all her strength to prevent the vehicle from crashing into the central reservation barrier but it began to slow rapidly thanks to the shattered tyre. The car came to a halt straddling the fast lane of one of Britain’s busiest motorways.
We’re dead!

Jess waited for the force of the impending vehicles crashing into her. It seemed to have taken an age but in reality happened in a matter of seconds. She checked her mirror to see how long she had before the first vehicle smashed into her car and could not believe her eyes. She was alone on the motorway in a dark oasis of calm. The lights of the nearest cars were quite a distance behind and Jess rapidly flicked on her hazard lights, pushed the car into gear again and shot across the dark and yawning lanes, onto the hard shoulder. A split second later, three rows of speeding vehicles barrelled past her at mind-numbing speeds.

A strange, high-pitched wailing noise sounded from behind her and Jess spun around in her seat. Six year old Ben, restrained by his seat belt, had his arms outstretched towards her. His wide-open eyes looked enormous in his little face and the sound, like a long, unbroken chord emanated from his throat.

“It’s alright, baby. Oh, sweetheart, it’s alright. We’re safe.”

His eyes retained that wide-open, glassy appearance as if he hadn’t heard her, but the wailing stopped as he took in breath. “Are we dead now, mummy?”

A sob broke in her throat. “No darling. We’re alright, I promise you. We’re safe.” And she thought to herself:
though God only knows how or why.

Ben unbuckled his belt, scrambled into the front passenger seat and threw himself into his mother’s arms. For a long time they simply sat there, holding onto each other as the cars whizzed past to their right – long, relentless streams of them.
How?
Jess marvelled.
How did that happen?

Minutes past – many minutes – Jess lost count of how many of them. She sat in her car, hugging her son and waiting for her heart to stop pounding in her chest – something she believed was never going to happen again. Finally, however, she detached herself from her son and reached into her handbag for her mobile phone.

She groaned when she saw the flickering one bar and quickly ran down her index for the roadside rescue number. Almost as soon as she located it, the phone gave three plaintive beeps and shut down. “Damn,” she cursed softly, under her breath, but Ben, now attuned to her reactions, began to whimper again.

“Are we going to die?” he whispered.

“Of course not, silly,” she reassured him, wishing she could sound more convincing. How they had escaped death in the first place was a mystery she could not begin to comprehend. “It’s the stupid battery that’s died. I’m just going to have to go and find one of those phones to call for help.”

He began to cry in earnest. “You can’t leave me. Please don’t go anywhere.”

Jess put her arms around her little boy and drew him closer to her, making soothing sounds and kissing his flaxen hair. It was a delaying tactic, she knew, because she doubted her legs would allow her to step out of the car, much less walk along the hard shoulder in the dark searching for the nearest emergency phone.

Eventually, as Ben began to calm, she held him gently at arm’s length and looked him in the eye. “We can’t stay here all night, it’s too dangerous. I need to get help. I won’t be gone for more than five or ten minutes. You go back into your seat, snuggle up under your blanket and play one of your games. By the time you’ve made it to level two, I’ll be back.”

“But if it’s dangerous here, it’s dangerous for you to go out there. Let me come with you. I’ll be good, I promise.” Ben reasoned.

Jess hesitated. As she weighed up her options, she saw a blue flashing light growing stronger and stronger behind her. “Thank God!” she breathed.

A moment later a police officer stepped out of his vehicle and approached hers. He surveyed her shredded right rear tyre for a moment before leaning down to her window. “Looks like you’ve had a lucky escape,” he told her, casting a quick eye all around the car’s interior.

Jess released a tearful sigh. “You can say that again. Can you help me, please? My battery is dead and I need to call the breakdown service.” Jess scrabbled in the glove compartment for her membership card which she then handed to the young officer.

“Christmas weekend – you’ll be lucky to see them inside two hours,” he observed, peering into her car again. “But I’ll let them know you’re a lone female with a young child. You might get lucky.”

Jess closed her eyes and breathed the word
lucky?
as the officer returned to his car to make the call.

*

In fact luck must have played its part that day as the breakdown service arrived within thirty minutes and within another twenty, the shattered tyre had been replaced with the spare, a few safety checks made and Jess’s car pronounced safe to continue on its journey.

Jess stared at the mechanic in dismay. He was a pleasant, middle-aged man who had kept up a cheery line of banter throughout his work. He had cheerfully helped Jess to unpack the boot in order to retrieve the spare tyre and then re-pack it again afterwards. He introduced himself as Dave and told her he lived locally, which was why he managed to reach her so quickly. His shift ended at six pm so he’d been heading homeward when the police call came through.

He seemed to understand Jess’s reluctance to get back into the driving seat. “Just stay in the slow lane and take it easy. You’ll be fine. Do you have far to go?”

Jess nodded miserably. “Another hundred and fifty miles or so; I…I don’t think I can do it.”

“Of course you can! You mustn’t let something like this put you off. You just need to get straight back into the driving seat. You’ll soon pick up your confidence.”

“No! Really – I can’t! Not tonight. My son is too upset. I need to find us a hotel. You said you lived locally – you must know somewhere?” she pleaded.

He scratched his cheek just below his left ear and looked into the sooty sky which was heavy with snow clouds. “There are only a couple of little villages around these parts. If you can manage to drive another twenty or thirty miles, you’ll find a few decent hotels…”

“Thirty miles?” she echoed dismally, glancing into the rear of the car and meeting Ben’s worried gaze.

“Look – first things first! We need to get you off this motorway. Now there’s a turning about half a mile ahead - I’m going to guide you there, nice and slowly. As it happens, I do know a little hotel – it’s nothing too fancy, but it might just do for you overnight. If it’s open…”

*

After Dave had guided her carefully back onto the motorway and then almost immediately off onto one of the small slip roads, Jess felt able to breathe a sigh of relief as she followed her rescuer down a quiet country lane towards the lights of a nearby village. Snow had begun to fall and Jess would have normally delighted in this and used it to weave magic for Ben to alleviate the long journey, under different circumstances. Right now, after the powerful adrenalin rush of their close encounter with death, she felt too drained to care. Dave indicated left and she followed him into the tiny car park fronting a small hotel. The whole place huddled in darkness and Jess’s flagging spirits sagged to a new nadir.

Fat snowflakes were just beginning to settle on the gravel-covered forecourt as Dave strode towards her and crouched down at her window.

“I think they’ve closed for Christmas, but I’m sure they’re home. I’ll go round the back and check.”

Jess nodded her thanks and closed the window on the chill night air. At least they were off the motorway and the pounding in her heart had subsided. She glanced at Ben through her rear view mirror. He was sitting silently, staring out of the window, his beloved games console dark and silent in his hands. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. It will be alright, I promise you,” she told him, but without much conviction.

Chewing on her lower lip, she faced the front again and peered out through the windscreen at the falling snow. The flakes were huge and grey against the night sky, tinged with yellow from the distant lights of the motorway. She thought they looked too wet to pose much of a threat of settling for long on the ground, though a clean, crisp carpet was already spreading thinly on the forecourt of the hotel with its mock-Tudor facade. She glanced at the sign: ‘Good Rest Ye’ and smiled faintly at its wit. Some organisation or other had actually awarded it four stars for hospitality. Jess guessed it could not have had more than eight or ten rooms. It looked like a small, family business, cosy and unpretentious. She hoped Dave would be able to appeal to the proprietors and persuade them to offer a room for the night as she felt suddenly too exhausted to contemplate driving any further. She blamed herself entirely for everything, as usual.

Just then lights flickered on at the front of the building and the front door opened to reveal Dave and another middle-aged man who strode across the gravel drive towards her car.

“You’re in luck,” Dave told her cheerfully. “The hotel is closed for the holiday but Mr Goodchild here has agreed to open up a room for you for the night. If you want to take out whatever bags you need for the two of you, he’ll help you carry them inside. D’you hear that, Ben? You’re stopping here for the night.”

*

Fifteen minutes later, Jess surveyed a pleasant and comfortable-looking room with genuine appreciation. She had registered her details and met Mr Goodchild’s kindly wife who immediately insisted on preparing a meal for them.

“It won’t be gourmet, I’m afraid as we’ve given Chef the week off to take his family to Italy for Christmas. That’s one of the reasons we’re closed to the public at the moment.”

Jess protested half-heartedly, not wishing to cause extra work for the considerate woman but at the same time thankful that Ben would not have to go without supper. She had planned to break their journey at the half way point in order for them to eat.

“Oh it’s no trouble. I have to prepare a meal for us and,” Mrs Goodchild looked around her furtively before adding
sotto-voce,
“our son.”

Her words puzzled Jess, who also looked around, but without any idea why. Was she afraid her son would object to sharing his meal with strangers?

“Now Mr Goodchild will show you your room and you can freshen up and then go into the family sitting room where there’s a nice fire. I’m afraid the main lounge is closed at the moment.”