Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [94]
His speed crept steadily up, passing forty in the thirty zone, then nudging fifty a few seconds after that. He was touching sixty as he swung around the last bend before reaching the motorway when he suddenly remembered the speed camera. He touched his brakes too hard, the back end of the vehicle wobbled and then straightened, just as a familiar flash exploded in front of his eyes.
‘Shit,’ he snapped. This was all he needed: everything was going from bad to worse. He just hoped there was no film in the camera, but looking at the way the day was already turning out, he doubted luck was with him, and it wasn’t like he could afford many more speeding convictions. ‘Shit,’ he repeated and now kept just under the speed limit as he coasted down the slip road leading on to the M11.
The traffic was thicker here, with overnight lorries heading to the South Coast docks and late-night businessmen heading for London. Even so, he kept carefully to the speed limit and let them thunder past. Above all else, he needed to calm down. Let it go.
He’d always known he wasn’t Victoria’s type, not in anything other than a casual way. But, hey, at first it had been fun. Now, though, she was playing a game, and he didn’t understand what it meant. Gary had asked if Lorna had been jealous, but he felt sure there was no way. Even if Victoria pretended there was. So what was her motive? His brain meandered around the issue.
And soon his speed was drifting downwards, and the same aggressive wide tyres that had churned up Victoria’s gravel were stroking the tarmac as they floated towards the edge of the lane.
Bryn started, jerking his eyes open as the car shuddered on the ridged white line separating him from the hard shoulder. He didn’t think he’d been dozing. Or perhaps he had. What time was it anyway? Twenty to two. Fucked for work tomorrow, that was certain. He could always sleep in the car, of course . . . But not now. Absolutely not now.
He opened the quarter-light, turning it backwards so that the cool air gushed into his face. He took several deep breaths and blinked rapidly to clear his vision, then he leant across and opened the glove box. Keeping hold of the wheel with his other hand, his fingers groped around, locating first an A to Z, then a pair of sunglasses, some mints and, finally, the packet of cigarettes. He tried to grip it with the tips of two fingers, but instead only managed to flip it to the back of the glove box, somewhere behind the ring-bound spine of the road atlas. He could do without this.
Bryn pulled over on to the hard shoulder, taking the car out of gear, but leaving the engine running, then he stretched across and retrieved the cigerette packet. He slid one out and pushed the dashboard lighter in and waited. But he rarely smoked in the car and wasn’t even sure the lighter worked. After a few seconds it clicked and popped back out, glowing; at least something was finally going right.
He lit up, then tossed the packet back, slamming the glove box shut. He knew he was tired and wished he’d never decided to drive. He would double back at the next junction, get home, think again in the morning.
He kept the window open but, just to be certain, he shuffled his backside back until he was sitting sharply to attention, put the car in first and signalled. One pair of headlights appeared in the rear-view mirror, and he waited for them to pass.
He used the hard shoulder to gain some speed, and was doing forty by the time the other vehicle, an articulated lorry, caught him. Bryn’s car wavered as it was buffeted in the slipstream.
He pulled out into the first lane, but the horn bellowed and he swerved back off the road again, just as a second lorry thundered by. How the fuck had he missed something that big?
He checked behind him once again, and this time made doubly sure that the road was empty. He levelled his speed at seventy-five; no one got speeding tickets for travelling less than ten per cent over the limit. Well, he didn’t think so anyway and, with thirty-plus miles until home,