She didn’t reply.

Dropping down from the escarpment, she found herself driving just beneath the fog, like an eerie false ceiling. It was just a few feet overhead by the time Pax turned onto the M40, heading towards Birmingham, her radio tuned to rebellious anthems. The rusted exhaust was deafening now. She hoped it would hold out.

At least the noise drowned out the trills of yet more texts arriving from Mack.

He called as she joined the M42, the fog lower now, speed reduction warnings flashing from the electronic boards.

‘Where’ve you been?’ his slurred voice demanded through the speakers. There was ceilidh music and conversation in the background.

‘You know there’s no signal at the stud. Is Kes okay?’

‘Fine. Fast asleep. Pax, I…’ He started to cry.

So unexpected, so unlike him, it made her cry too. She almost side-swiped another car.

‘Don’t take Kes away from me,’ he sobbed.

‘You want to take him from me!’ She hid her tears from him, mouth full of marbles.

‘YOU want out of the MARRIAGE!’

She made it to the hard shoulder, hazards on, head in her arms on the wheel.

‘Mack, it can’t go on as it is, can it?’

‘Do you shtill love me?’ he demanded. He had to have been drinking for hours to ask something like that.

Yellow lights were flashing in her mirrors. She flinched as a shower of grit hit the roof of her car and the salting truck trundled by.

‘Are you shtill there?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And do you? Or washthat “yes” your answer?’

She found she couldn’t respond, tears blinding her, only a few ungainly snorts coming out. Damn her honesty. Damn her unflinching honesty.

‘I’ll make my own mind up, shall I?’

‘Let’s talk again tomorrow, Mack. When you’re sober.’ Oh, hollow victory. ‘Happy New Year.’ There she’d done it. Polite as a Forsyth. Calm as a Ledwell. Tough as a Percy.

‘Fuck you!’ He hung up.

She drove to the airport in a haze of tears and a plume of exhaust fumes, parking the raspberry-blowing Fiat in the pickup zone and dashing into the arrivals terminal, embarrassed to be late after all the hanging about waiting to set off.

A long row of delayeds greeted her on the board.

‘Everything’s affected by the fog,’ she was told by a uniformed official with funky sideburns at the information desk, his accent a sweet Brummy apology. ‘Dublin’s been out of action all afternoon, now Manchester’s grounded everything. Fog wasn’t supposed to get here until tomorrow, so it’s a ruddy nightmare. Where’s he flying from, love?’

‘Canada – no, Schiphol.’

The airport worker checked on his computer. ‘That’s still listed, but you’ll have a long wait. It’s not left Amsterdam yet. Likely as not, they’ll redirect it to London if it does.’

‘Which airport?’ she asked wearily.

‘Can’t tell yet. Quicker to wait. They usually lay on a coach. Could be the early hours before he gets here, I’m afraid. Do you live far? Great hair, by the way.’