and stretched his legs out. ‘Impossible. That’s the beauty of it. The information is always at your fingertips. It pinpoints exactly where you are, night and day.’
She stopped glaring and studied the display. Maybe she should give it a go?
‘It never goes wrong?’
Nick shrugged. ‘It’s a machine. It has its moments but, on the whole, it’s as accurate as you would be. Just about perfect.’
Adele sighed. Perfect. How she was learning to hate that word.
She knew all about the pressures of having to be right one hundred per cent of the time, of having everyone expecting you to be perfect. No, not just expecting—relying on you being perfect. It was such a strain to have to juggle everything and never having the luxury of knowing that, if you dropped a ball once in a while, it didn’t matter.
The rattle from the engine warned her that her foot had been heavier on the accelerator than she had intended. Eighty-five? Whoops. She carefully eased off the pedal.
A cut-glass, metallic voice pierced the silence. ‘In nine hundred feet, take the next exit.’
Adele squinted at the display, but the sun was on it and she couldn’t see it properly.
‘That means get over into the other lane, Adele. We’re going to miss the exit if you don’t.’
Easier said than done. Half the traffic on the motorway was trying to leave by that exit and there wasn’t a space to slip into. She tried to find a gap without causing a pile-up, but there were too many cars all packed too closely together.
‘Take the next exit. Take the next exit.’
By the time she had checked her mirrors again and tried to slow down, it was too late. The rust bucket sailed right past the cluttered slip-road.
Nick threw his hands in the air. ‘Great!’
She glared at him. ‘It would have been easier if you’d just let me rely on my own eyes and ears and read the signs! I’m not used to using this stupid—’
The sat nav interrupted her with a persistent binging noise. A huge question mark flashed on its screen. ‘Perform an U-turn as soon as possible,’ it ordered in an infuriatingly calm manner.
‘Be quiet, you bossy woman!’ she yelled back. ‘We’re on a motorway. I thought you were supposed to know that!’
Nick threw his head back and roared with laughter.
Of course, he would find it funny.
The service station was a welcome sight, although not the most glamorous of locations. Adele leapt out of the car and headed for the Ladies’. Once there, she placed her hands on the shelf in front of a wide mirror and leaned forward to let them take her weight.
She breathed out and stared at herself. Her hair was still in its pony-tail and she looked as neat and tidy as always, but as she studied her reflection she could tell she was coming slightly unravelled. It was something about her eyes, a slight downturn of her mouth.
She stared until she thought she would go cross-eyed and then she straightened, pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin.
It was a familiar routine. One she’d learned at school when she needed to present a brave face to the world. She hadn’t had the charm and easy wit of some of her classmates, but what she’d lacked in confidence she’d made up for with observation and hard work.
She’d spent hours studying the popular girls, the way they stood and talked. Even their laughs and hand gestures. Then she’d got up early and practised in the bathroom mirror while everyone else was snoring. Pretty soon she’d had friends and the teachers seemed to notice her more and, by the end of her days at Lumley College, she’d been head girl.
No one need know the geeky girl still lurked under the surface. She was hidden by the right body language, a certain glint in the eyes. It was like slipping on a cloak, an outer skin that nobody bothered to look beneath.
She could normally make the transformation with a single bat of her eyelashes, but today had been especially trying and she needed the reassurance the mirror could give her.
Over the years her alter ego had spent more and more time in the limelight. Nowadays the real Adele only peeked out when safely within the sanctuary of her own home. Maybe one day the shy little girl would get drowned out by this alternate persona altogether and the brisk efficiency, the confidence, would be real.
She smiled. Eventually she’d named the other side of her personality. Super Adele she’d called her. Only instead of a cape and unforgiving Lycra, her costume had more to do with the way she held herself, the smile gauged to be just bright enough without being obviously fake. The precise dimensions had taken years to perfect.
Carefully, she added another layer of mascara and brushed the lipstick across her lips. There. Ready to face the world—on the outside, anyway.
She hoisted her handbag squarely back onto her shoulder and walked over to the door.
Super Adele had seemed such a good idea in the beginning. Everybody loved her. And, for a while, she’d revelled in the attention. Nowadays, the adoration had lost its warm glow.
It’s her they love, not me.
Even Nick. He’d fallen in love with Super Adele.
When they’d first been married, she’d gloried in the way he’d thought she could do anything, be anything, but after a couple of years it had just got tiring. She’d tried to climb down off the pedestal, but Nick wouldn’t let her. He was holding fast to Super Adele and wasn’t going to let her go.
The impulse to sag and let her shoulders droop was almost overwhelming, but she straightened her spine further. The restaurant was just in front of her and she could see Nick sitting at a table waiting for her.
Oh, how she longed to just slump into the moulded plastic seat, lay her head on the table and sob.
Sometimes she hated her alter ego.
Nick let Adele sweep off and made his way to the café. An abundance of bright plastic and the smell of greasy food greeted him. He avoided the ageing sausages and other offerings—they looked as if they had been sitting under the heat lamps for at least a week—and bought two cups of grim-looking coffee instead.
He settled into an off-white seat near the streaky windows that filled one side of the room and waited for Adele to appear.
The restaurant was practically deserted. An elderly couple were working their way through a rubbery-looking fried breakfast with excruciating slowness, a businessman took refuge behind a crisp newspaper and a teenager in a dirty apron was only just pretending to clean the tables.
She soon appeared and sat down, all stiff and starchy, in the seat opposite him. He hated it when she did that. She didn’t need to put on a front with him.
‘Come on, Adele. It’s not the end of the world. It didn’t
