the and love. He smiled anyway. ‘I don’t like to disappoint a lady.’
Nick laid his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. What he’d said was spot-on. She wasn’t the only one disappointing her spouse. He might have just brushed over the truth of it with a joke, but just once he would like her to look at him the way she had in the early days of their marriage. She’d thought he was wonderful then. He hadn’t changed; he was still the same old Nick, but nowadays everything he said and did seemed to be wrong.
‘Oh, bother!’
He opened his eyes to find out what had caused Adele’s outburst. A string of red brake lights snaked up the hill in front of them. Very soon they joined the back of the queue. The traffic was moving at ten miles an hour at best.
Nick stared angrily at the bumper of the car in front. ‘Well, that’s just great! If we don’t get moving again quickly, we’re going to miss dinner.’
The line of cars was at least a mile long, and possibly longer, as the road curved up and round a hill, blocking his vision.
‘Do you think it’s the snow?’ Adele asked as she spritzed the windscreen with screen wash for the fiftieth time. ‘We all know it only takes three flakes of the stuff to bring the great British transport system to a halt.’
‘Shouldn’t be. The gritters have been out and the carriageway is clear. It’s probably an accident—some fool going too fast in these conditions.’
‘I hope it isn’t serious,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Me too.’
Five minutes later they were hardly moving at all.
‘My calf muscle is aching from keeping my foot on the clutch,’ Adele moaned. ‘I’d prefer to be at a complete stop than this interminable crawling along. I don’t want to get stuck in this. Do you remember that story on the news a few years ago? It snowed and hundreds of people got stuck on the motorway in East Anglia and had to spend the night in their cars.’
‘That’s not going to happen here.’
‘How do you know? We’re only doing…’ she peered at the speedometer ‘…two miles an hour. Any slower and we’d be going backwards.’
Nick frowned but didn’t say anything. Adele craned her neck to look out of the back window. ‘There’s at least a hundred cars behind us as well. It’s not like we’ve got much choice.’
An idea started to sharpen out of the fog at the back of his brain. ‘Maybe not.’
She shot him a look of desperation. ‘Please, don’t tell me you’ve been taking stunt-driving lessons, as you’ve always threatened you would, and you want to drive over the top of all the other cars until we’re clear.’
‘Tempting—but no.’
Adele punched him on the right arm.
‘I’ve been climbing in this area a few times, remember? I think we’re not far from Kendal. If I’m right, there should be a junction in a mile or so. We can take the road into the town then get on the A6. After about ten miles, it runs almost parallel to the motorway. We could leapfrog over the jam and join the motorway again at the next junction.’
‘That sounds frighteningly like a good plan.’
He did a little bow—well, as much as his seat belt would allow him.
Adele flicked the sat nav with her finger. ‘See? It’s saying nothing. Your little gizmo couldn’t come up with an idea like that.’
‘Nope. She’s a lot like you.’
‘Don’t call it she. And do not start comparing me with that thing. I hate it.’
He laughed. ‘Well, I see a certain similarity. She’s programmed to get to Invergarrig by the quickest route and she’s going to stick doggedly to the plan, no matter what. She won’t be of any use to us if we wing it.’
‘Are you saying I’m a machine? That I can’t…’ she paused, as if it was difficult for her to even say the words ‘…wing it?’
‘Calm down. I’m just saying I don’t need two bossy women in my life at the moment.’
As Adele breathed in, the atmosphere in the car thickened.
‘Well, I’ve told you I’m seeing my solicitor as soon as we get back. I can’t clear off any quicker than that! If you didn’t want me around, you shouldn’t have asked me to come with you.’
He leaned forward and pressed a button on the side of the satellite-navigation unit. His voice was gentle when he spoke. ‘No, you daft woman. I didn’t mean you; I meant her. She’s got a fixed idea of where she’s going and how she’s going to get there and she’s just going to make a fuss if we deviate. It’s time to turn it off and follow our instincts.’
‘Oh.’
Nick risked a look at her when she was concentrating on the road ahead. Her shoulders had dropped an inch and the faint remnant of a self-satisfied smirk lingered round her lips.
‘You, I can deal with,’ he said, reaching across and rubbing her forearm as it rested on the gear stick. ‘Her—going bing, bing, bing and please do a U-turn— not so much.’
They smiled at each other and it was as if all the tension had melted away. For once they were united against a common enemy, even if it was an electrical harridan.
Perhaps there was hope. Perhaps it could be him and Adele against the world again, instead of the pair of them clawing away at each other. And, for a moment, Adele seemed to echo his thoughts.
She smiled a sweet smile at him and his stomach did a triple flip. Then she opened her mouth and the flimsy hopes he’d balanced one upon another tumbled.
‘See, Nick? As friends we work. Now we’ve made a decision about our future we don’t have to push and pull any more. If we can keep this up for the rest of the weekend we’ll be home and dry. It’ll be better for your family too. Once they know the truth, they’ll see we can maintain a civil relationship and the news of our separation will be easier for them.’
The voice in his head had a hard edge of sarcasm. How thoughtful of you.
There she went again. Making sure everyone else was OK—especially Adele. God forbid anyone should ever think she was less than perfect. All this treacly stuff about being better for his family was tosh. Adele just didn’t want to be the bad guy in this scenario and she was pleased as punch she could walk out on their marriage without a pang of guilt.
And all the time she was bolstering her own defences, she was twisting the knife one more time into his unguarded flesh.
She just carried on chattering as if she’d had the greatest revelation ever.
‘We were good friends once, before we started going out, weren’t we?’
He nodded.
‘Well,
