Maria shook her head and turned to look out of the side window, fumbling in her pocket for another cigarette. “Well, he does.”
“Good for him. What else does he keep both bloody hands on? That’s what I’d like to know.”
Maria angrily thrust the unlit cigarette back into the pack and rounded on her husband. “Don’t you dare start all that again, Dan, he’s just my bloody boss. Why is it that you think I’m having an affair with every bloke I work with? I mean, for Christ’s sake, you even accused me of sleeping with that salesman - Martin – and he looked like a bloody bulldog!”
“Well it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve cheated on me, would it? Why shouldn’t I believe you’re screwing half the guys in your office? I mean, you must be getting it somewhere…”
“You what!” Maria screamed at him.
“Well you’re not interested in getting anything off me anymore, are you? So you must be getting your thrills somewhere else.”
“You…“ Maria’s rage seemed to block her throat; a barricade of fury that stopped her from venting verbally and she let her hand fly into her husband’s face. The force of the slap stung his cheek as the manicured tip of a red-painted fingernail raked the surface of his left eyeball.
Dan cried out, his left hand shooting up to cover his wounded eye, leaving the steering wheel without a supporting grip for a split second.
A split second was all it took.
From the back of the van, Sam screamed as the vehicle clipped the frozen verge, bouncing back across the carriageway before Dan had a chance to bring it under control. Thrusting panic-cursed hands onto the wheel, he twisted into the skid, fighting to control the Transit as it slewed across the tarmac and crunched into the mud of the opposite bank.
Sam was screaming hysterically now. Her cries bounced off the metal walls, every echo joining with its brethren in a burgeoning cacophony of terror.
Maria’s face was frozen; eyes and mouth stretched wide in a scream that was as shrill in its silence as her daughter’s in its vociferous glory.
Dan was silent; teeth clenched to cracking point. A million thoughts a second were racing through his mind, stretching the moment into eternity as he battled to regain control.
Thoughts of screeching rubber; jarring metal.
Thoughts of impact; shattered windscreens.
Thoughts of bloody rivers pouring down Sam’s glass-shredded face…
He wrenched the steering wheel in the opposite direction.
No effect.
The wheel felt light and slack in his hands as the van’s tyres glided, almost frictionless, on a patch of black ice. Dan knew the battle was lost. He relaxed; the action fully subconscious - his mind had given up the fight and his muscles let go. Ahead, the road curved to the right, the van heading straight for the tree-lined bank.
Dan barely noticed the car rounding the bend, headed straight towards them. A sigh slipped his dry lips, accompanying the almost imperceptible whisper of the warm stream of urine that darkened the crotch of his jeans.
*
This D.J’s got bloody awful taste, thought Roger.
The music was an unwanted companion even at low volume. He tried another station, reaching to press the second of the stereo’s five pre-set buttons. A phone-in show seemed to be sharing a frequency with a dance music station, each programme gaining or fading as he negotiated the curves in the road.
Roger decided he’d had enough. He was only a few minutes from home, the sound of tyres on tarmac would be music enough for that short time. His left index finger groped blindly for the OFF button and he glanced down momentarily to coordinate the fumbling digit. Momentarily distracted, he only partially registered the white van that was sliding towards him, sideways on, as it exited the bend in front of him. His heart and stomach lurched as his feet slammed the clutch and brake pedals to the floor. Tyres shrieked, hot rubber melting onto the freezing tarmac. The Transit was spinning, the rear twisting round to take the lead, crunching into Roger’s car just behind his seat. The collision punched his vehicle into the side of the road, sending it careering up the grass bank into the solid trunk of an oak tree.
Roger experienced the impact in slow motion. The tree crawling its way towards him, inch by terrifying inch. He heard no sound and even the silence went unnoticed as his unblinking, petrified eyes filled with the solid wall of wood that loomed in his windscreen.
Closer and closer, until he could make out every ridge and furrow in the rough bark.
Closer and closer until the soundless crash of its greeting threw him forward as if launched from a cannon.
He felt no pain.
No searing agony.
Not even a mild discomfort as the steering wheel crushed his ribcage. He thought he vaguely heard the splinter of bone, but it was gone in an instant. He was dimly aware of the ignition key shattering his right knee-cap as his legs slammed into the underside of the steering column, but that too was away before he could pay it much attention. He even felt nothing as his face kissed the windscreen, mashing his nose to a pulp.
The only thing that registered was a thought: pretty. Just after the hard bone of his forehead slammed into the laminate, causing it to spider-web so that the reflected glare from the dying headlights twinkled like Christmas lights through the dark red of blood and mucus that slicked the broken glass.
The lights went out.
Everything was darkness.
5
The scene below him looked like a battlefield.
Twisted and buckled chunks of metal were strewn over the road, interspersed with lumps of plastic and broken glass. All this debris seemed to radiate from a point beneath him. He looked down at the dark vehicle, its
