“Vi—what?”
“Vivaldi? I’m trying to expand my classical music repertoire. I recognized a Mozart track on a chocolate advert last night.”
“I see,” he says, with the very faintest of eye rolls.
As one of theFour Seasonsblares out of the speakers and we take the coast road toward the motorway, I start to cringe. Ash is smirking as the jaunty music turns more than one head.
“And now we’re in a car advert,” I say, flicking quickly throughmy phone again to put us both out of our misery. “Why is all this music in adverts? Way to cheapen the classics, Saatchi and fucking Saatchi.”
“Well, no one’s going to pay for Beyoncé to help sell a Ford fucking Fiesta.”
We both laugh, as Ash takes the A299 on-ramp toward London, the car moving effortlessly around corners and up to speed.
As I dither around, creating the perfect road trip playlist, Ash turns the Vivaldi off in a flash of irritation. “I can’t take it anymore,” he says. “God help me, can we have something with a guitar in it? I’m just a working-class guy from Kent, for God’s sake. Put on Ed Sheeran.”
“Sorry,” I say, feeling sheepish. “If I’m honest, I’m sort of relieved you turned it off. I’ve had it up to my tits with Tchaikovsky.”
“My balls with Brahms,” he says, laughing.
“It’s enough to give you a migraine,” I say, “but at least I’ll have an opinion on it, if Joe comes.”
He laughs. “Ifhe comes?”
“When,” I say firmly.
As the rain threatens, we stop to raise the roof. Then we near Dartford and have to head for the M25, a route that should be very straightforward, but that Ash is turning into a complete catastrophe. The GPS navigation narration should have helped, but Ash seemed to have an innate distrust of it, shouting, “Can you check this is really the turn?” and “Isn’t that a one-way?” and “There is no way I’m taking that on-ramp!”
“Why do you not trust the GPS?” I argue, as we round another enormous roundabout and Ash starts to sweat. “Look, we’ve already been past that McDonald’s twice now. Shall we just stop for some nuggets?”
“No,” says Ash sharply.
“If you’d just listen to the GPS,” I say again.
“You know, Mara, that GPS doesn’t think several roads in Broadgate exist. And one time, I had to help fish a Danish tourist out of the sea because he’d followed his GPS down a boat ramp and into the water.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I’m sure it’s accurate in London or whatever, but I don’t trust it.”
I try not to laugh but I can’t help myself. “Ash is afraid of machines. I’m not calling on you when the computers rise up.”
“I’ll be in Greenland,” he snaps.
As we near the midway point and we’re just about to stop for refreshments, our conversation has moved on to dating.
“So, you’re telling me that you never—never—saw anyone after the first date?”
“No. Except Noah. And there weren’t that many first dates anyway. My shortest date was thirty-seven minutes, and to be honest I should never have gone. Scorpio with Venus in Gemini.”
Ash laughs. “You’re a nightmare.”
“Well, I just figured that when I saw someone and had one martini or latte, or whatever, I’d know. There would be a feeling or a moment where I would justknow. But it never really happened again after Noah.”
“It doesn’t sound like he was reallythe one,” Ash says. “He sounds like an asshole.”
“He was,” I say, “but I was so convinced he was the one. Like, utterly convinced of it. And to be fair, the good stuff was good. We both loved films. I kind of idolized him in a way; he had theupbringing I’d dreamed of. His parents worked in film, so he’d been around it a lot. He was on the set ofGoldenEyewhen he was four, for example. You’d have thought he was the director the way he carried on, not a kid in an on-set crèche.”
I laugh weakly and Ash gives that tender smile that makes me feel completelyseen. “The clincher, though, was that his mother had done something on thePride and Prejudicefilm, and when I found that out, I just thought the universe had put us together.”
