‘The time when I have to give up on this pretence …’
– Heading straight on at the roundabout, take second exit.
‘… and accept what is happening to me. Which means that right now, at 12.09 p.m. exactly, on Thursday, March the fifth, 2009, forty miles south of Aberdeen, proceeding north on the A90 at forty-seven miles per hour, I am going to leave this road, and abandon this journey … So I shall not go straight on at this roundabout, Emma, I shall go left at this roundabout, following the signs to Edzell. Now, what do you think of that?’
– In two hundred yards, make a U-turn.
‘Ha! Is that the best you can do? Oh no, Emma, there won’t be any U-turns, not from now on. I’m not going to follow your directions any more, and I’ll tell you why not. Because I don’t want to go to Aberdeen and get on the ferry. And in fact the logic of this situation dictates that I can’t go to Aberdeen and get on the ferry. Do you know why? BECAUSE I AM NOT MAXWELL SIM ANY MORE. I AM DONALD CROWHURST and I have to follow in his path and repeat his mistakes. He did not sail around the world at all and I won’t be sailing to the Shetland Isles either. He decided to fake his voyage and I am going to fake mine, and I don’t care how many satellites there are in the sky trained on me right now, from this moment onwards nobody knows where I am, I have disappeared, disappeared into the darkness of this approaching snowstorm and I will hide out here, drifting in the mid-Atlantic, for as long as it takes, until the time is right, until the time is right for me to emerge again, in triumph, and present myself to the world.’
– In two hundred yards, make a U-turn.
‘Nope. No can do. This is it, baby. The parting of the ways.’
– In three- quarters of a mile, slight right turn.
‘Something occurs to me, by the way.’
– Slight right turn coming up.
‘It might have been a good idea to put some petrol in the car back in Brechin. So far we’ve done … 527 miles since we left Reading, and I haven’t filled up once. There can’t be much more left.’
– Next right.
‘Still trying to get me back to Aberdeen, then? I thought I told you, we’ve abandoned that idea. Left turn here, I think.’
– In two hundred yards, make a U-turn.
‘You don’t give up, do you? Give into it, Emma. Surrender. There’s something fantastic about just giving up. The sense of … release is incredible. I can remember when I first discovered that, actually. It was on that holiday to Coniston, with Chris and his family. One day we decided that we were going to climb up the Old Man of Coniston, all of us, and then about halfway up Chris and I got ahead of the others and it turned into a kind of race, between Chris and me. And before we knew what was happening, we were running up this bloody great hill, or mountain or whatever it is. And then pretty soon Chris got ahead and it became obvious that he was much fitter than me – well, that should have been obvious before, really – and then he was more or less out of sight but I kept sort of plodding on, out of breath, tripping over all these rocks, with this terrible stitch in my side and thinking that I was going to have a heart attack any minute. And after a few more minutes of this, I thought, What is the point, what is the bloody point of carrying on like this, so I just flopped down by the side of the path and let him get on with it. I knew what I was capable of, you see. I knew that I couldn’t compete with Chris. Never could, never would. And to accept that – to accept myself for what I was – was such a relief. Soon I was caught up by the others who were walking along behind – Mr and Mrs Byrne, and Mum and Dad, and Alison – and they stopped and I remember Mr Byrne saying, Are you just going to sit there? Aren’t you even going to try? And I told him, No, I was perfectly happy sitting there while Chris ran on to the summit, and everyone else followed him. I’d given up and I was happy about it and for the next hour or more I just sat there, enjoying the view. Knowing that I’d found my level and I’d never rise above it.’
– Proceed on the current road.
‘I think that might have been a deer we just passed. Did you see it? In the woods.’
– We need to talk about Chris.
‘Yes, you’re right. We do need to talk about Chris. We need to talk about a lot of things, Chris being one of them. But before we do that, I’m going to pull over into this lay-by here, and have another little drop of whisky, and then a little snooze, if that’s all right by you. Because suddenly, Emma, I feel tired. Incredibly tired. And I would hate us to have an accident. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you.’
– We need to talk about Chris.
‘Mmm?’
– I said, We need to talk about Chris.
‘Shit! What time is it? Three o’clock! Bloody hell.
‘Where did all this snow come from?
‘And what happened to all the whisky? I didn’t drink all that, did I? I’m going to have to open the other bottle …
‘Oh God, my head …
‘Right. Let’s get started. Not much visibility this afternoon, I must say. And so dark! Feels like it’s night time already.’
– Proceed on the current road.
‘OK. Will do.
‘Now. What was it you wanted to talk about?’
– Chris.
‘OK. We can do that. Was there anything in particular you wanted to discuss?’
