Lucy watches her, grinning. ‘What are you doing, idiot?’
‘Am I mad? What about you guys? And will he even be there?’
Lucy reaches up and pulls her down into the chair. ‘Look it’s not even one o’clock yet. It’s – what? – a four-hour drive to London? What time does he shut the shop?’
Jo searches in her bag for her phone – she could Google this. With her hand in the bottom of her bag, a clear image appears in her mind of her phone charging on the dresser in her mum’s kitchen. Lucy takes over, pulls out her own phone and within a few seconds has established the optician’s is shutting early today – 5 p.m. rather than 7 p.m. She tells Jo it is a huge oversight that there is no photo of Eric the Viking on his website.
‘I could just about make it in time,’ Jo says, still sitting.
‘Yes, you could,’ Lucy assures her.
Jo now looks directly at her best friend. ‘But what about you, and … am I completely mad?’
‘Yes, undoubtedly,’ Lucy says, while at the same time pulling Jo to her feet and dragging her to the exit. At the door to the pub, Jo asks Lucy to let her mum know. ‘Say I’ll call her from the flat when I get to London. And tell her that I’m sorry. And I’m sorry to you, too. Look, I don’t have to go – Lucy, if you want me to stay, I will.’
‘I know you would,’ says Lucy, smiling. ‘But you really, really like this guy, don’t you? So justgo. I’ll be fine.’ She grins. ‘But you have to phone me as soon as you know what’s happening with Eric the Viking. And I want a photo of him. No excuses.’
‘But he might not be … I don’t even know if he still …’ Jo pauses.
‘Just go. You’ll never find out unless you do,’ her best friend tells her.
So in the end she hugs Lucy and does as she’s told.
48
The road to London
After about half an hour of driving, her heart has stopped racing and she is concentrating hard on the here and now. She may have no phone but she has her purse, plus the overnight bag she was taking to Lucy’s. She is sidetracked for a moment – she still has all their presents in the car. Then she is back to focusing on the road. And it needs all her attention. Sleet is blurring her vision and her windscreen wipers are on full-speed. She sends a silent message of thanks to her dad. Whatever the weather is like, she knows her little car will cope. Everything has been checked. Twice.
She thinks of her mum. There is no doubt she will be worrying about the weather – the radio is predicting more snow – but she knows she can rely on her dad to reassure her. Hasn’t Jo been driving on the farm since she was fourteen. Although, perhaps best not mention that one – she’s not sure her mum knows her dad let her drive his old Land Rover around the farm.
By Wetherby, they are at a standstill. Her radio tells her (in between a Slade Christmas classic and Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’) that a lorry has jack-knifed and is blocking both carriageways. The sleet has stopped but snowflakes are fluttering slowly down. They melt as soon as they settle on her bonnet, but the edge of the dual carriageway is turning to an off-white slush.
She’s glad her car’s heating is so good, but is suddenly hungry. She thinks of Lucy; did she stay for lunch in the pub? Jo smiles – of course she did. She would have joined Clare and Finn and pumped them for information. She is probably looking at Eric the Viking’s Instagram feed right now.
Jo is flooded with doubts. This is madness. She could get stuck here for hours. And if it really starts to snow, she could be stuck overnight. Happy bloody Christmas.
She tells herself she is feeling this way because she’s hungry. But there is nowhere to stop, and anyway she’s not even moving.
Then she remembers her present for Sanjeev. She knows he will forgive her (in the same way he knew she would fight his corner with his wife). She reaches into the back and rummages in the tote bag filled with their Christmas presents. She bought an old-fashioned stocking filled with Cadbury’s confectionery for Sanjeev – she does this each year, ever since he told her that as a boy it was always his favourite present. She tears open the paper and packaging and starts eating.
Once she is on to her second bar of chocolate, she feels better and the traffic has started to move. As a mantra to reassure herself she repeats out loud: ‘Eric the Viking likes me’; ‘I am not Average Jo, I am on an adventure.’
It doesn’t take her long to get bored of this. She thinks ofClaudia Jones; hadn’t she said the same thing about her campaigning?I even bore myself.Jo reaches for the radio controls and clicks a few buttons until she finds a Radio 4 Christmas play. Perfect. The play makes her think of her mum at home in the kitchen, and this calms her.
When she nears London, she is heartily sick of every radio station and all her Spotify choices. There have been more delays at Loughborough, and by Luton the sheer volume of traffic into London is keeping the average speed at under thirty miles an hour. It is at this point she finally admits to herself there was no possible chance of her getting to Highgate for 5 p.m. She thought everyone left London for Christmas; apparently not.
Things improve after crossing the M25, but then heavy snow slows her progress. Now the flakes are falling, big and fat. She tries to think of how many children will be delighted, but mainly she feels foolish and tired and hungry. All she can do is concentrate on the road, lanes blurred by settling snow, until they are crawling in a single file towards the capital.
It is past 8 p.m. before she reaches North London, and she is conscious she still has to find somewhere to park. After a few false starts she finds a multi-storey car park, and then she starts the trudge through the gathering snow to Uncle Wilbur’s flat. She has very little hope that there will be anybody else in the alleyway, and she envisages a lonely Christmas Eve in a cold flat. Then she thinks of Malcolm. Won’t he be at home? She could always call on him.
Her spirits lift and she finds pleasure in the sight of so manypeople out celebrating. The snow lends an additional vibrancy to the Christmas mood; some people are throwing snowballs, some just walking hand in hand, faces upturned to the sky. The couples make her think of Eric the Viking and she picks up her pace. Just maybe …
The alleyway is dark and still. The streetlamp nearest the High Street is out. In the distance she sees movement and hurries towards it. A figure is backing out of a doorway, key in hand.
The figure turns.
‘Jo! What are you doing here?’
