‘You’re overthinking it, Ava. You just need to do that, with your words. Stop thinking about the book, the chapters, the audience; it’s just a woman on the other side of a screen whose world has been torn apart and you’re talking to her.’
I feel the tears stinging the back of my throat. That dull heavy ache that pulls at me until I have to look away from the screen, grab the back of my sleeves and dab at my eyes.
‘My first ever like on a post was from this girl – well, woman I guess – but her profile picture looked so young. She didn’t post much, but there were pictures of her with a man for a while until he wasn’t there any more. In my head, she’d lost him too, like me. She liked every post – I knew because I’d check – until slowly my blog got big enough that it made checking it hard; but, in my head, every time I write something, I think of her reading it.’
‘That’s lovely.’ Sam nods thoughtfully. ‘You know when this is all done, we can send her a proof, reach out.’
‘So, there’s going to be an ending? I’m going to get this thing finished?’
‘I’ve never doubted it.’
‘Thanks.’ I smile, the emotion turning into a dull warmth of finding a connection you hadn’t expected to.
‘I think you should go and take a drive somewhere, get out of the village. It sounds a little… close.’ She smirks.
‘Yeah.’ I stretch out my arms and yawn. ‘I could do that.’
‘I’ll catch up next week.’ She waves and then we cut the call.
I choose a supermarket forty-five minutes away as my great adventure.
The drive is suitably uneventful; back home travelling anywhere near five o’clock would be considered a suicide mission, but here the traffic jam on my journey consists of a tractor slowing traffic for three miles until it turns off into a nearby farm.
The scenery could be considered boring in comparison to the view from my apartment but its bland tarmac and metal barriers are a welcome change, a return to normality almost. I take it all in, feel a pang of homesickness for London that I have never experienced before. I had drowned myself in chaos back home; it’s strange not to do it here too.
I even start to enjoy the simple act of driving on my own, the music turned up too loud, the way I can trundle along as fast or as slowly as I like, that strange knowledge that I could turn my car down a road I had never been down and end up somewhere entirely different. I could, if I wanted to, disappear entirely.
The first real sign of humanity, real humanity, is an advert for McDonald’s. I follow the sporadic signage until I’m ordering a burger, some chips and a Coke. I make it to the car park, unbuckle my belt and scroll through my phone. The 4G is strong here and my Instagram floods back to life. I ignore the grief account, look instead at my personal one, binge on the lives of old uni friends, cousins, my estranged aunt who is ranting on about her dead hamster. I take it all in like a drug, let the inane pointlessness of it all sweep over me and feel myself be carried away in a doom scroll of epic proportions until the last chip has been consumed and the straw gurgles at me that the cup is finally empty.
I drive to Leclerc. The building is probably bigger than the whole of Monpazier itself, with its garish white metal cladding and blue neon lettering. I take a trolley for good measure.
Inside is another world: fluorescent lights, screaming children, dozens of brands of the same product all stacked to the ceiling, and it feels strangely wonderful. Something that was such a chore back home, to head to the big ASDA, was my idea of a dream escape today.
Money is a concept I ignore as I glide through the aisles, picking whatever takes my fancy: biscuits I used to love, cheap cheese that the artisanal market stalls don’t sell, some freezer food, cleaning supplies. I lose myself in the wine section, adding bottles of red, white, crémant and cava, wondering if it’s humanly possible, let alone safe, to consume this much in the remaining three weeks of my trip, but adding it to the trolley anyway because it’s so disgustingly cheap it feels wrong not to. The clothing section wastes another half an hour. I find a leopard-print silk scarf with neon green edging and buy it for The American; she’ll appreciate the effort.
Finally, I find myself in the beauty aisle and add face masks, eyebrow tint, make-up remover and nail polish to the trolley, curating a list of things that can fill up an evening and make me look less like a dishevelled pity parade. It’s times like this when I appreciate being a woman with the multitude of things we can buy and do to distract ourselves for an evening.
When every aisle has been plundered and the trolley wheel has started to squeak with the weight of my impulse spending, I admit defeat.
It’s dark when I leave the car park. The familiarity of the roads leaves me along with the thrill of driving on my own. Instead, the sparse traffic has been replaced by large, unyielding lorries with headlights so bright I am momentarily blinded, and I resort to a ‘point, shoot and pray’ method that leaves me gripping the steering wheel so tightly my palms sweat. I try to distract myself by picking at some sweets and turning the music up so loudly that I can feel the bass through my feet.
I am grateful to turn off the A road, grateful to swap the lorries for the occasional car overtaking me, these routes so engrained into their day-to-day lives that they have no qualms about driving at sixty around a single-track blind bend.
When I finally see the small beacon of Monpazier, the yellow streetlights, a halo on the hilltop, I feel like I can breathe. Ten minutes and I can be there. Ten minutes and I will be standing on my doorstep with the daunting realisation of how I’m meant to be getting a boot-full of wine up the—
I hear the hit before I register what’s happening. There is a thud, the crack of glass, the screeching of the breaks, my detached screaming as the car pirouettes on the road, tyres burning on the tarmac, bottles smashing, until everything comes to an eerie silence.
I sit there panting and then when my senses return, I turn off the engine, yank the keys from the ignition and throw myself out of the car. I run to the front, where a deer is slumped, bloodied and limp in a ditch.
The car is facing the wrong direction, the windscreen cracked, a large, deer-shaped divot on the bonnet.
It’s almost like my own father has taken control of me. Without thinking I locate a warning triangle, put on a fluorescent jacket, wrestle on the hazard lights and then I slip myself down the bank, catching my breath in the irrigation ditch on the other side of the road.
I reach for my phone and pause because there’s no one to call. No one that can help. There’s no Ettie any more to rescue me, no point in calling my parents, no point even in calling Archie, although I’m sure he could say something that would make the situation a little easier to deal with. I scroll through my contacts, down to the F, down to a number that has only ever been in my phone for the direst of emergency, a number I had only ever dialled once before.
I don’t want to do it.
Yesterday is still all too raw: the look of devastation on his face when I pointed out his hypocrisy is still branded into me but the memory that lingers hotter and longer is the feeling of his hands on mine, his closeness, his softness. I look at the bashed-up car, turn the phone over in my hand, try to work out how long a walk it would be. I yell out in frustration, a frayed and guttural sound because I know I have no choice.
