SARAH

The pub door was heavy. Heavy enough to make a satisfying thud as I flung it closed behind me anyway. I shouldn't have walked out, should have stamped on the rude child rearing up inside me but how could I? I can't face the chance of living through everything again with a grandchild, no matter how small that chance might be. That's what Paul doesn't understand. How I can get so worked up over such a tiny probability, but someone has to be unlucky. There are others out there for whom the dice did not fall smoothly, why should we assume that it wouldn't, no couldn't, happen to us? So really I'm not sorry I left.

The sky outside was dark and full of drizzle, I could feel my hair filling with frizz and goosebumps rising on my arms in the winter chill. Wishing I had picked my coat up on the way out I wriggled my fingers into the pockets of my jeans and headed out of the car park, kicking up the gravel as I went. It's not an area I know well so I peered left and right out of the entrance to the car park for a moment then headed left, away from the houses and towards fields as far as I could see.

I wondered how long it would be before Paul came after me, whether I could draw out the silence for longer before I had to answer his inevitable questions, whether he would guess which way I had gone. It occurred to me that I'd have given either of the kids hell for walking along a country lane at night wearing dark clothing. Not that Danny ever got the chance to be on his own for long enough to do something so stupid. I didn't really care either that I was being at best teenage, at worst reprehensibly irresponsible. I just needed the space.

I could feel the tension rising, the mounting pressures forcing their way through my skin. I imagined all of the worries worming their way into my body to feed and multiply, bloating me and stretching my skin. They writhed inside me, slipping into my bloodstream, allowing themselves to be carried upstream. I started a silent litany, Keep them away from my brain. Don't let them feed there. Let them float on past, head downstream again. Keep them away from my brain but I could not stop their inexorable progress. They split my temples, stabbing through the confusion of thoughts in my head and I had to stop and sit on the verge, hands clamped to my forehead in an attempt to keep everything in.

I failed of course, felt the edges of my mind spiralling away as I lay back onto wet grass and I would have cried up at the moon if I had any tears to give her. Why do people always cry to the moon? Anthropomorphising a lump of rock that could not help even if she wanted to. Muddy damp seeped through my jeans to the flesh beneath and I wondered whether other things could leave the same way, like exchange students.

The stars were out in force that night; blinding pinpricks in an inky sea. I am not familiar with the constellations but I made my own that night, tracing lines in the heavens to create my own hunter eternally chasing his prey across the sky, bow flung out to the side to point at other wonders. The real constellations do not look like the things they are supposed to be so I felt no harm in making my own, more apt designations.

It reminded me of being a small child, lying on my back in our garden on a brilliant Summer day, sun blazing down from a bright blue sky scattered with clouds. Sometimes my mother would lie with me and we would fashion our own world out of the clouds. She concocted the most fascinating universes of cloud people and buildings and vehicles and as they moved across the sky, the stories changed. I never had the heart to tell her that I could imagine nothing more exciting than sheep. Instead I lay there, on my back and listened with half an ear to her narrative whilst constructing my own sheep-filled universes. My sheep meandered gently across the sky, always moving but never straying out of sight and I discovered more and more until the sky was crammed full. I would take fright at the sky-full I had manufactured and screw my eyes shut so tightly that violet shapes staggered behind my eyelids. I would count to seventy-seven, no more, no less and concentrate on the soothing sound of my mother's voice as she described the cloud pictures only she could see. When I reached seventy-seven and opened my eyes the sky would be busy, yet devoid of sheep, only clouds left, bobbing about their business and I would start creating sheep again.

Back in the lane I was drumming my feet on the tarmac, repeating a rhythm I could lose myself in, when a blue Vauxhall Astra sped around the corner, passing inches from my feet and drenching me in rainwater. My world shrank to stinging spray, the screech of brakes and the dazzling glare of headlamps. The car had jerked to a halt not far from me so it can't in reality have been travelling that fast, horizontal is probably not the best position to judge these things from.

I heard the splashing clump of inelegant footsteps in puddles and a rough exclamation,

'Bloody hell, of all the stupid places to have a lie down.' There was exasperation in the tone but also amusement and it struck me that I must look rather comical, drenched and lying on the grass verge in the rain. This man probably thought I was drunk, it seemed vitally important to me to disabuse him of this notion,

'I'm not drunk.' The statement was followed through my mind by the thought that a drunk person lying in a ditch in the rain of an evening would probably say exactly that. I heard a stifled snort,

'Of course you're not. It is after all perfectly reasonable to lie about half across the road.'

Again, inadvertently doing my best impression of a drunk, 'It's only my feet in the road.' Another muffled snort and then I felt a presence in front of me and realised I had my eyes closed. When I opened them he had knelt down and was staring at me quizzically,

'Earth spinning is it? I have to say, you don't smell much like a drunk.' Now it was my turn to snort,

'That's because I'm not.'

'Hmmm, so you said. Care to tell me why you're lying in the road then?' I had to give that one some thought. I wasn't at all sure that I had a good explanation. I'd have settled for a reasonably plausible one but nothing came to mind and the whole story was something I was unwilling to share with a stranger who had just stopped his car after nearly running over me as I lay on the floor.

'It's a long story.'

'It would have to be. Why don't you at least sit in the car and tell it? You'd be warmer in there, you must be freezing by now in that top and you're soaked through. I've got a spare jumper if you don't mind the smell of dog and I'll give you a lift to wherever you were going. It'll be quicker than getting there by lying down at any rate.'

I opened my eyes, which I had absent-mindedly closed again and studied his face, my mother's age old advice about never accepting lifts from strangers still ringing loud in my ears, it's odd how people's voices stay with you even after they themselves are gone. He had a strong, square jawline, not the bone structure of a rapist I thought to myself. Straightforward blue eyes and freckles topped by sandy hair that might have been called strawberry blond on a woman. An honest face in a snapshot judgement, not one I could see picking up strange women on country roads and leaving them in bin bags later on. I must have been staring as he felt obliged to add,

'It's just a lift, scouts honour. No sharp implements or dodgy drugs in the car.' I laughed,

'Well I guess if you wanted to do me in you'd probably have come up with a more tempting offer than a jumper smelling of dog.' I should have told him Paul would be looking for me at that point. I would say that I didn't want to seem rude by implying that I wasn't alone if he tried anything but the truth is Paul never even crossed my mind. The next thing I knew he had grabbed my waist and unceremoniously hauled me to my feet.

'Can you walk on your own? Dare I ask, can you walk in a straight line?'

'A bit of support might be nice, you've given me a head rush dragging me up like that.' He helped me down the lane to his car and, true to his word, there was a dry jumper that did indeed smell of dog and a battered thermos of lukewarm coffee. I didn't like to speculate about how long the coffee had been in the car, it was welcome enough as it was. He started the car engine and looked at me,

'Well, I can't stay parked here all night, it's decision time, where would you like me to take you?'