windows but they were illegal now, so he’d have to settle for the darkest tint that was available. Yes, he could see himself at the wheel of that large powerful black car. He’d start visiting garages on Monday while Rosie was at work and test-drive what he liked the look of. The salesman would be so grateful when he showed interest in a decent car and then struck a deal.
Headlights came towards him. What the fuck! Was someone trying to overtake? No – it was a wide vehicle, he realized too late as he slammed on the brakes and pulled the wheel hard left to try to get out of its way. A delivery lorry. A fucking delivery lorry! He felt the whiplash in his neck at the exact moment he heard the crunch of metal and the sound of shattering glass. In a split second, almost simultaneously, the wipers stilled, his headlights went out and he felt as though he was flying through the air, up and over and then down.
‘Fuck!’ he cried as the car landed on its roof and the pain shot through him. ‘Fuck you!’ Then his world went very dark and silent as he blacked out.
The lorry came to an abrupt halt, stopping as quickly as it could on the wet road. ‘Jesus!’ the driver exclaimed, his heart racing. He felt hot and cold at once. There was no way he could have avoided him. The other bloke was driving like a madman. It wasn’t his fault, he told himself.
He had broken out in a sweat and his hands shook as he cut the engine. ‘Jesus,’ he said again, and opened the cab door to survey the damage. ‘I hope the silly bugger’s all right.’
His legs felt unsteady as he climbed out and then stood in the rain and examined the damage to the offside wing of his lorry. It wasn’t much but that didn’t mean the car had escaped as lightly. The lorry was far more robust and built of stronger stuff. He looked down the road to where he’d hit the car, or rather it had hit him. There was a significant difference – he wasn’t responsible for the impact. But there was nothing to be seen on the dark and wet road, apart from something that could have been glass glinting in the light of his headlamps. There was no sign of the vehicle.
A car came towards him from the opposite direction. It was going slowly, the driver proceeding with caution, just as one should on this narrow slippery road. It came to a halt and he went over. The woman driving peered at him through her window and then lowered it a little.
‘Have you broken down?’ she asked.
‘No. I’ve been involved in an accident. Just now,’ he said anxiously, nodding down the road to where it had happened.
‘Are you OK?’.
‘A bit shaken,’ he admitted. ‘He was driving like a maniac.’
‘Not that small Fiat?’
‘It might have been.’
‘It overtook me back there. Blaring its horn, flashing its lights. I’m not surprised it’s been involved in an accident. He nearly killed me.’
The lorry driver began to feel a little better knowing that someone else had been subjected to the driver’s dangerous manoeuvres. ‘I’ve no idea where the car is now,’ he said, frowning. ‘There’s some damage to my lorry but I can’t see the car. I’m going to fetch my torch from the cab and take a look.’
‘Perhaps he’s driven off?’ the woman suggested, opening her car door.
‘Perhaps,’ he said. But he doubted it, not from the strength of the impact. And if he wasn’t mistaken he thought he might have caught sight of the car in his wing mirror just after it had hit him, spiralling towards the edge of the road. He couldn’t be sure though, since it had all happened so quickly and in the dark and the rain.
Without being asked, the woman got out and offered to help him look. He thanked her and she switched on her hazard warning lights, pulled up the hood on her coat, and went with him to his lorry. He took his torch and anorak from the cab and slipped on his jacket. With the torch held in front he led the way past the lorry in the direction the car had been going. Further up the road they came across a pile of broken glass and a piece of chrome almost certainly from a car’s bumper. But there was no sign of the car. He swept the torch around, scanning as far as the beam fell, left, right and in front. A car came from the direction of the hypermarket, slowed and pulled over. Lowering his window, the driver asked. ‘What’s up? You OK, mate?’
‘There’s been an accident,’ he said. ‘Did you pass a small car just now? Possibly a Fiat?’
‘No,’ the man said, and glanced at the woman seated beside him. She shook her head.
‘I think it could be in the ditch,’ the lorry driver said.
The man immediately got out and joined in their search, while his wife stayed in the car. The torch beam shone brightly into the dark, sweeping through the drizzle to the bare trees and grassy banks which flanked the ditches either side of the road. The three of them moved forward in silence, watching and listening, the air quiet, save for the sound of their shoes on the tarmac and the rain dripping from the trees. Then, further up the road, the beam fell on the outline of something more solid, something partially raised and sticking out above the ditch.
‘Over there!’ the lorry driver cried, and the three of them ran to the spot.
‘Jesus!’ he gasped.
‘Bloody hell,’ the man said.
‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ the woman said, taking out her phone.
The car was completely upside down in the ditch, fitting in so exactly it was almost as if it had been made for it. The doors and windows were compacted against the sides of the bank; only the underneath of the car and the bottom of the doors were visible. It was as though the car had been turned upside down and then dropped in directly from above to fit in so precisely, the lorry driver thought. And in a way it had, for the impact had flipped it over and sent it flying to land squarely in the ditch.
‘There’s no way we can get into that,’ the man said, and the lorry driver nodded.
As the woman spoke on her phone, giving details of their location to the emergency services, the man from the car began knocking on the metal of the upturned car and calling, ‘Anyone in there? Can you hear me?’
But there was no reply.
‘I suppose he could have been thrown clear,’ the lorry driver said.
‘It’s possible,’ the man from the car agreed. Together they began walking slowly up the road, peering where the torch beam shone – on either side of the road, into the ditches and up the bank, but there was no sign of anybody, dead or alive.
Other vehicles began joining the slow-moving queues forming in both directions from the hypermarket. Some of the drivers wound down their windows and asked what had happened, and, their curiosity satisfied, continued around the lorry and parked cars, driving over the glass which crackled like ice. The two men, having found nothing, returned to the woman, who said the emergency services were on their way. The men began tapping on the metal of the upturned car, calling out, ‘Anyone in there? Help is coming.’ Just for a moment they thought they might have heard something, possibly a groan, but then another car passed and sirens sounded in the distance, after which they heard nothing further from the
