A drama. This is a cheat because this story is really The Last Winter, written five years before and with an utterly different ending. Here is a taster though;
15th October Thursday
It was going to be the perfect end to a perfect week’s holiday. I’d come to Cornwall, or as Rachel, my daughter called it, ‘Hay, noony, noony land’, with great expectations, thinking it would give my daughter and I time to mend our differences. OK, I needed a rest as well but it was mainly for her because the last few years had caught up with us both. I thought Penzance would be affordable enough in the autumn because the season was about to close and in that, I had, at least been right.
Now I had one evening on my own. A date on our last day here. It was my fault. I had dropped four liters of semi-skimmed milk on this man’s foot at the supermarket but when he had returned my accident with a smile, I think I had been hooked at that point. He was older by a good few years but that doesn't matter so much does it? I admit it; The romantic part of me had been attracted by his mature attitude and kind face and had been pleased when he’d asked me out for a drink because it’s been a long time for me. It’s hard to get over the break up of a marriage isn’t it? and there had been nobody else since Bobby.
As I drove along at speed to meet him, the evening was just at the stage which forced me to switch on my lights. At the time I was trying to do everything at once, putting the finishing touches to my makeup and, crazily, steering with my knees. Madonna added to my lack of concentration to the road. In fact, I had her on so loud that I couldn’t even hear my own squeaky version over hers.
Again and again, I had to adjust the car cigarette lighter in and out because it wasn’t working right. Rachel joked about it often saying one day it would kill me, not the cigarettes. Anyway trying to light one while driving was getting to be a complete bother. One day, I’d have to get it fixed.
I was late because my best friend who was sharing the self-catering cottage with us who was to have babysat, had backed out that morning and it was only because the landlady’s daughter had stepped in that I managed to get away at all. I felt no guilt at leaving Rachel because we had enjoyed a good week together. If anything, she would keep the girl amused for the evening. That’s just the kind of bubbly girl Rachel was.
I haven’t been lucky with men. I married Bobby, my ex husband when I was a shy nineteen. That was seven years ago now and feels like another lifetime. He thought he was going to be a good father but found that parenting was above his tolerance level. He had tried for five years but then had found a woman whom he thought did not want to have children. The last time I spoke to him, about four months ago, he had been complaining about his second venture into parenthood. It looked as if Rachel would one day have a half brother.
I love driving down here. Although the B road was unmarked, it was so clear of other traffic that I could put my foot down with confidence enjoying the swish of speed as the car swept down the narrow lanes. And I needed to because the baby-sitter had turned up late and that’s the reason I was trying to do so many things at once. A tractor piled high with hay had delayed me for a full three minutes at one point but it did allow me time to finish my face by the internal light with some sort of safety.
Lights controlling the traffic at some new sort of bypass expecting to be open next year in 1999 had delayed me once more but, with only about ten minutes to go before the pub, I was soon off again. Spots of rain started to dot my windscreen causing me to switch on the wipers. It was only because I soon had to set them to double-time which stopped me from pushing my old Ford Escort even faster.
I tried to light another cigarette from the lighter but I was doing about sixty at the time and the lighter problem was getting to me so badly that I had to make a choice whether to keep looking at the road or keep my eyes on the lighter. Stupidly, I made the wrong decision and only at the last moment did I see the bend. I pushed my foot to the floor as hard as I could then, sending the car into a one and a half spin and, thankfully came to rest just before it pushed itself into a ditch. With the engine still revving, I took a deep breath, released my grip on the wheel and sank back into the chair. God! No man was worth that!
I think what first made me look up was a movement. Some bird perhaps. What I saw was a flickering light of increasing intensity floating some way above me. I kept it in view through the sunroof.
The light was bright. It appeared as a grayish white at first but I couldn't see it properly because of the rain. As it descended toward me, it had started to pulse to the same beat pattern as the track I had been listening to, something I noticed straight away. But soon I was wide-eyed at the white light hovering above me.
I wound down my side window, even more curiosity getting the better of me but when my engine sputtered and died and every electrical device stopped including dear old Madonna, I felt more than a touch of panic. Going from sound, light and music to darkness and the unknown was frightening. Because my face and hair were getting wet, I quickly spun the handle to close the window again.
The light was, as far as I could tell, about fifty feet in the air but although it was so bright, it didn’t illuminate the road as it properly should have done. All I could perceive, in the dark twilight, was my dashboard, a bridge in the road ahead, two huge trees each to my left and right and some kind of Celtic Cross by the roadside. It was partly this queer lighting circumstance which induced the first tingling of fear but when the light began to grow brighter, as if coming down on top of me, I had to force myself into doing something.
I turned the ignition key with increasing furiousness but the car was dead. A high-pitched crackle of noise began to buzz me which got louder with the increase of the light and that only added to my growing panic. Now I could only look at the descending light as I tugged at my seat-belt but it remained stuck as if held in place by glue.
A prickly heat which I completely felt over my neck, head and shoulders combined with the electric noise become awful. It was all I could do to grip the wheel with both hands and close my eyes, my date now completely forgotten. The air became saturated with tension as all the hairs on my arms began to rise. My breathing came in sharp bursts and I could only look upwards as if hypnotized and with each everlasting moment, found myself reaching toward absolute terror. Microscopic beads of sweat began to form on my forehead as I just shook. I think I wet myself then but I’m not sure. When the light did what it did, I had no idea how high above the car it was, but I felt a wave of nausea jump into my throat and as my neck muscles tightened, throwing my head backwards causing me to groan, and, before I could finely scream, I became aware that my gold ring on my little finger was becoming hot but beyond that, I remembered nothing.