With one eye still on the winding road, Rosie glanced at the luminous clock on the dashboard. It felt like she'd been driving along this damned road forever. Surely the village was just over the next hill? But the inky blackness was impenetrable; the only light came from a few distant stars, far above. So she sighed and fixed her eyes back on the ribbon of pitted tarmac, determined to push on in the hope of reaching civilisation before midnight.
A few miles further along, the car began to splutter and cough. Speed dropped from a respectable sixty miles an hour to less than ten. Slowly but surely, the small mini ground to a halt and the engine died with one last wheezing shudder.
"No!"
Rosie stared in dismay at the fuel gauge. The tiny marker was firmly on the red and although the low fuel light wasn't winking, Rosie knew the symptoms of an empty fuel tank all too well. This wasn't the first time her mini had run out of petrol—she was a poor student and more often than not she could not afford to put much petrol in her car. Usually it did not matter when she was caught between her flat and campus, but this time she was stuck in the middle of nowhere, it was late at night, and it was also freezing out there.
She shivered, even though the car was still fairly warm, aware the heat would not last long now the engine had stopped.
"Fuck!" Rosie's profanity echoed fruitlessly around the cramped car. Her breath began to steam up the glass, while outside a chill wind swept across the bleak moors, occasionally buffeting the car with icy blasts.
She peered into the back seat at the bags she had thrown in earlier. There were a couple of fleece jumpers in there somewhere, but not much else that would be of any use. Despite her dad's nagging over the years, Rosie never had gotten around to storing useful things like a torch and a blanket in the car. No doubt her dad would have a field day on this one. She shuddered to think of his reaction when he came to rescue her.
She rummaged in her bag for her mobile phone and peered at the screen. It was at that moment she began to wish she had stayed at college instead of agreeing to come home for the weekend. A stupid house party at the manor was unlikely to be that wonderful. But the invitation was not the reason she had agreed to return, she reminded herself grimly. Marc was the reason. Marc, the sole reason she had left in the first place. She had only agreed to come home for the party in the hope Marc would be there.
Marc: her first love. The man she had thought would be her only love. Until they'd had that awful argument and she had stormed out of his life on a wave of vodka and regrets. As is often the way, the argument had been about something and nothing, but Rosie's hot temper had fanned the inferno into a blazing row where things were said in the heat of the moment that could not be taken back so easily.
"I can't help it if Aaron fancies me!" she'd yelled outside the Wild Boar pub. Of course she had known Marc was jealous of Aaron, but she had had too much to drink and Marc had been ignoring her—or so it felt like.
"That doesn't give you an excuse to be all over him like a disease!" Marc had been livid, she remembered with shame.
And with just cause...
She knew she had behaved badly that night, but the lack of attention coupled with Aaron's easy flirting had been a recipe for disaster. One she had come to regret bitterly in recent months. She had left for college a week later and even though she had wanted to make up with Marc, he had not rung her. Now it was eating away at her insides like a cankerous growth.
The persistent patter of rain in the window reminded Rosie that she needed to call her dad before her parents began to worry. Once again she looked at her phone screen and with a sinking heart she saw that it had turned ominously black. The battery had died in the time it had taken her to drift off down memory lane.
"Fucking phone!"
She thumped the dashboard and tossed the small object into the back of the car. Now she was screwed. The chances of somebody else driving along this road at this time of night were pretty much zilch. Her only hope was to try walking until she reached one of the outlying farms. She was fairly certain that she had to be no more than six or seven miles from the village, although the familiar landmarks were difficult to define in the darkness.
Rosie rooted around in her rucksack trying to feel for the fleeces she had packed. It was not easy in the dark, but with the temperature dropping she knew she would need the extra layers. After she had dragged on as much clothing as she could manage, she opened the car door and stepped out on to the road.
It was so dark Rosie could barely see her nose in front of her face, but she knew there was little point in waiting for a knight in shining armour. With a sigh of resignation, she began walking down the road, her shoulders hunched against the biting February wind and her hands shoved deep inside her pockets.
The wind howled relentlessly, finding every exposed millimetre of skin and sucking the last bit of warmth from Rosie's body, but she carried on walking, praying that round the next bend she would see lights twinkling in the distance. Farther back up the winding road, her car had disappeared, swallowed up by the dark night.
Small flakes of snow began to swirl in the icy air. As she soldiered on, her breath steamed in front of her face and the snow began to settle on the tufts of springy heather growing along the side of the road. It felt like she was the only person left in this godforsaken wilderness; even the sheep had disappeared to warmer places.
On and on she walked and colder and colder she became. Eventually her feet began to turn numb and she wondered how long exposure would take to kill her. It would be a lovely funeral, she decided bleakly. Her parents would cry inconsolably and everyone would toast her memory at the pub afterwards. She was just trying to think of a suitable song for the service when the sound of a motorbike approaching roused her from the stupor she had fallen into.
"Hello!" she yelled as she turned to face the oncoming bike. But the wind sucked the words from her mouth instantly, swallowing them up in a swirl of snowflakes. The blinding headlight momentarily dazzled her and she shielded her eyes against the halogen glare whilst praying the biker actually saw her and did not mow her down.
That'd spoil the whole open coffin service
, she thought.
When the bike abruptly stopped, she opened her eyes and stared at the familiar figure. It was Marc.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, her teeth chattering.
"I could ask you the same thing," he replied with the barest hint of a smile when he lifted the visor of his helmet. "Didn't think you were planning on coming back anytime soon."
"I heard there's a party at the manor—social event of the century, mum told me. I could hardly miss that could I?"
Marc snorted derisively. "Really? That's a rather optimistic assessment considering who's hosting it."
Rosie had to admit Marc had a point there. Colonel Tavistock and his wife were hardly Posh and Becks. "Free booze is free booze," she countered.
"True," he admitted finally. "Anyway, it's a little cold to be standing around discussing your social engagements, so do you want a lift home—or would you rather walk?"
Her temper was beginning to fray around the edges at Marc's snotty attitude. She wasn't the only one at fault here—his stinky behaviour had led to their argument in the first place. "You know what?" she snapped, "I think the walk'll do me good." She stomped off down the road, trying not to think about how far the temperature had dropped in the time they had been stood talking.
After a few minutes, the bike pulled up alongside her again.
"Stop being stupid and get on," Marc growled. "You'll freeze to death out here in this."
"Like you'd care," Rosie muttered. But he was right. She was beginning to realise that leaving the relative warmth of her car had been an insane idea. It was colder than Siberia on this exposed section of road. Very reluctantly she took the spare helmet from him and climbed on whilst trying to ignore the pang of longing that ripped through her when she slipped her frozen arms around the familiar bulk of his body.
* * *
