The car in front was weaving dangerously in and out of the traffic. Gabe was hemmed in by a Ford Focus on one side and a Toyota in front. Shit. He glanced in his mirror, pulled into the slow lane then darted back in front of the Toyota. At the same time a Jeep pulled in from the fast lane, just missing his hood. He slammed on his brakes. The Jeep driver flashed his hazards and gave him the finger.
“Screw you, too, you fucking wanker!”
The rust bucket was several cars in front now, still weaving, tail lights disappearing into the distance. He couldn’t keep up. It was too dangerous.
Besides, he tried to tell himself, he must be mistaken. Must be. It couldn’t have been Izzy. Impossible. Why on earth would she be in that car? He was tired, stressed. It was dark. It must be some other little girl who looked like Izzy. A lot like Izzy. A little girl who had the same blonde hair in pigtails, the same gap between her front teeth. A little girl who called him “Daddy.”
A sign flashed up ahead: SERVICES ½ MILE. He could pull in, make a phone call, put his mind at rest. But he was already late; he should keep going. On the other hand, what was a few more minutes? The slip road was sliding past. Keep going? Pull over? Keep going? Pull over? Izzy. At the last minute, he yanked the wheel to the left, bumping over the white hazard lines and eliciting more horn beeps. He sped up the slip road and into the services.
* * *
—
GABE HARDLY EVER stopped at service stations. He found them depressing, full of miserable people who wanted to be somewhere else.
He wasted precious minutes scuttling up and down, past the various food outlets, searching for a payphone, which he eventually found tucked away near the toilets. Just the one. No one used payphones any more. He wasted several more minutes looking for some change before he realized you could use a card. He extracted his debit card from his wallet, stuck it in and called home.
Jenny never answered on the first ring. She was always busy, always doing something with Izzy. Sometimes she said she wished she had eight pairs of hands. He should be there more, he thought. He should help.
“Hello.”
A woman’s voice. But not Jenny. Unfamiliar. Had he called the wrong number? He didn’t call it very often. Again, it was all cellphones. He checked the number on the payphone. Definitely their landline number.
“Hello?” the voice said again. “Is that Mr. Forman?”
“Yes. This is Mr. Forman. Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Detective Inspector Maddock.”
A detective. In his house. Answering his phone.
“Where are you, Mr. Forman?”
“The M1. I mean, in the services. On my way back from work.”
He was babbling. Like a guilty person. But then, he was guilty, wasn’t he? Of a lot of things.
“You need to come home, Mr. Forman. Right away.”
“Why? What’s going on? What’s happened?”
A long pause. A swollen, stifling silence. The sort of silence, he thought, that brims with unspoken words. Words that are about to completely fuck up your life.
“It’s about your wife…and your daughter.”
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2019, NEWTON GREEN SERVICES, M1 JUNCTION 15, 1:30 A.M.
The thin man drank black coffee, plenty of sugar. He rarely ate anything. Once, maybe twice, he had ordered toast and then left it after a couple of bites. He had the look, Katie thought, of someone closer to death than their years should have taken them. Clothes hung off him like they would a scarecrow with the stuffing removed. Emaciation had carved chasms out of his face, beneath his eyes and cheekbones. His fingers, when he grasped the coffee cup, were long and delicate, bones so sharp they looked like they might slice straight through the thin covering of skin.
If Katie didn’t know better, she would have said he was terminally ill. Cancer. Her nan had gone that way and they shared the same look. But he had a different kind of illness. A sickness of the heart and soul. The best medicine and doctors in the world couldn’t cure what afflicted this man. Nothing could.
When he first started visiting the services, once or twice a month, he used to hand out leaflets. Katie had taken one herself. Pictures of a little girl. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Katie had, of course. Everyone had. The little girl had been all over the news. Her and her mum.
Back then, the thin man had hope. Of a sort. The insane kind of hope that fuels people like a drug. It’s all they have. They draw on it like a crack pipe, even when they know that the hope itself has become an addiction. People say hate and bitterness will destroy you. They’re wrong. It’s hope. Hope will devour you from the inside like a parasite. It will leave you hanging like bait above a shark. But hope won’t kill you. It’s not that kind.
The thin man had been eaten up by hope. He had nothing left. Nothing but a lot of road miles and coffee club points.
Katie picked up his empty cup, wiped down the table.
“Can I get you another?”
“Table service?”
“Only for regulars.”
“Thanks, but I have to get going.”
“Okay. See you.”
He nodded again. “Yeah.”
That was the total sum of their conversations. Every conversation. She wasn’t sure if he even realized he was speaking to the same person each time he came in. She got the feeling that most people were just background to him.
Katie had heard that this was not the only coffee shop he visited, nor the only service station. Staff moved around, and they talked. So did the police officers who often came in. The rumor was that he spent every day and night driving up and down the motorway, stopping in different service stations, looking for the car that took his little girl. Searching for his lost daughter.
Katie hoped it wasn’t true. She hoped that the thin man could eventually find some peace. Not just for his sake. Something about him, his quiet desperation, scraped at a raw nerve. Most of all she hoped that one day, she would come into work, he would be gone, and she’d never have to think about him again.
Night driving. Gabe never used to like it. The flare of the oncoming headlights. The patches of unlit motorway where the road ahead seemed to melt away into infinite nothingness. Like driving into a black hole. He always found it disorienting. Darkness made everything look different. Distances changed, shapes distorted.
These days (nights), it was the time he felt most comfortable. Cocooned in the driver’s seat, playing something low and ambient. Tonight, Laurie Anderson. Strange Angels. It was the album he played the most. Something about the otherworldliness, the weirdness, resonated with him. Seemed to fit his journey up and down the black tarmac.