Love You Dead

43 Sunday 1 March

Shelby clipped on his seat belt then reversed his Fiat Panda out of the driveway and onto the street. Normally Angi would stand in the doorway to wave him off, but tonight, angry at him, she’d even turned her head sideways when he’d kissed her goodbye.

He struggled with the gear lever, crunching the gears loudly as he tried to engage first. Then the car bunny-hopped forward and stalled. He pressed the clutch in and twisted the key. The engine turned over and fired. As he started forward, the car bunny-hopping again, he heard the almost deafening blast of a horn as a van shot past him, nearly taking out a car coming in the opposite direction.

Shit. He checked his mirrors. Nothing behind him now. He accelerated and again the car jerked forward. Handbrake, he realized, and released it. Then he drove on, winding down past a pub called The Long Man of Wilmington, his vision blurry. He leaned forward in the darkness, peering through the windscreen, and switched on the wipers. But the screen was clear. Headlights came towards him. Two of them suddenly became four. He swerved slightly to the left and the car juddered over the kerb and on to the pavement.

Shit, shit, shit. He steered back onto the road, missing a tree by inches. He was clammy with perspiration. Ahead was a mini-roundabout, and suddenly he could not remember where he was supposed to be going.

Roedean. Kemptown. He halted at the roundabout. There was nothing coming to his right. But he stayed there, eyes trying to focus. Checking then double-checking the road was clear. Then he heard an impatient toot behind him.

He wound down his window, pushed his arm out and gave the car behind two fingers. ‘Fuck you!’ he said.

Suddenly a shadow loomed towards him. A man, towering over him. Shelby smashed the gear lever into first and jerked forward, turning left into London Road, accelerating hard. He saw red tail lights ahead. Bright headlights coming towards him, one set after another. Each so bright they felt like they were burning his retinas, as he if was staring at the sun through binoculars. ‘Dim your lights!’ he shouted. ‘Dim your lights, bastards! Dim your lights!’

Then red lights in front were growing brighter. Brighter. Brighter still. Shittttt! He stamped as hard as he could on the brake pedal. The little Fiat slewed forward, its tyres squealing, and came to a halt just inches from the tail-gate of the lorry right in front of him.

He sat still, his whole body palpitating, his head swimming. After a minute or so the lorry moved forward again, over the green traffic light and on past Preston Park. He ought to turn round, he knew, he wasn’t up to this — turn round, go back to Angi, go back to bed. But he drove on, fighting it, trying desperately to concentrate, to focus. ‘Focus!’ he shouted at himself.

His voice sounded strange. Sort of echoing around inside his skull.

He stared at the tail lights of the lorry, imagining it was towing him, that there was a long rope between them he needed to keep taut. No slack. He was safe all the time he stayed behind this vehicle. Just follow it. Follow it. He braked when it braked, accelerated when it accelerated. They crossed over more green traffic lights. Stopped at a red. Moved on. Keeping that rope taut.

But the lorry indicated right.

‘Gooshbye,’ Shelby slurred. He was going the other way. Left. East.

Then he frowned.

He was at a roundabout. Right in front of him were the dazzling lights of Brighton Pier. Shit. He’d come too far, totally missed the earlier turn-off he’d intended taking into Edward Street.

Bugger. Shit. But no matter. He could go along Marine Parade instead.

He continued to stare at the lights of the pier — and of the Brighton Wheel to the left. So many lights. Like a thousand torches all beaming straight into his eyes.

He heard the toot of a horn behind him. He put the car into gear and stalled it. He pushed in the clutch and the engine turned over without firing. There was another toot behind him, louder and longer. He twisted the key in the ignition and the engine again turned over without firing.

No, don’t do this to me. Do not fucking do this to me.

Headlights flashed behind him now, flooding the interior of the car with a light so bright it was blinding him. Another blare of the horn. He tried again and the engine stuttered into life, backfired, then caught.

Drenched in perspiration, he crunched the car into gear and jerked forward, then stalled again. He was losing track of where he was and why he was here.

He’d engaged third instead of first. The lights behind him again flashed angrily. He started the car once more, got first, then shot forward, right in front of a taxi coming across the roundabout which also flashed its lights and hooted angrily at him. He accelerated hard onto Marine Parade, the front of the taxi filling his mirrors, still flashing its lights and hooting at him in fury.

He changed up a gear, holding the accelerator pedal to the floor, looking at the lights behind him, in front of him, all around him. Mesmerized. Two big orange globes like setting suns loomed ahead.

Then, right in front of him, almost in silhouette, he saw a woman pushing a buggy.

Zebra crossing.

The orange globes.

The woman staring at him. Frozen.

He was closing on her.

His foot stamped on the brake pedal. But it wasn’t the brake, it was the accelerator.

He swung the steering wheel wildly to the left. Almost instantly the car stopped dead, with a massive jolt, a metallic boom and, simultaneously, a loud bang, like a gunshot.

He smelled cordite.

Had he been shot?

He could see nothing through the windscreen except for the buckled bonnet pushed right up. Had he killed the woman and the child?

He stared, bewildered, around him, his ears popping. Then, in the moments before he passed out, he noticed what looked like a large spent condom hanging out of the steering wheel.

Or it could have been an octopus.

He heard someone shouting.

Then a massive bang above him sent his head crashing forward into the wheel.