across the new road. They both join at A171 to Whitby.’
I’m not sure what response is required of me. This fascination with routes, alternative routes and ‘the road we could have taken’ is definitely a boy thing. I nod, not committing, and turn to gaze out of the window.
I’m in a foreign land. Not least because of Richard’s accent but also because of the strangeness of the landscape. It’s an eclectic mix of the very modern (brand-new and impressive football stadiums, architecturally complex bridges), quaint, old-fashioned poverty (bingo halls and boarded-up shops) and stunning countryside (sheep). I notice that the women standing at the bus stops, in each village, look alike. They are fat and tired – don’t they ever work out? Richard’s Escort pauses at a red light for a couple of minutes and I look more closely. A woman is waiting at the bus stop; another shouts to her from a fifty-yard distance. The first one makes the bus wait whilst the other heaves her excessive weight and carrier bags to the stop. The driver of the bus becomes animated and jovial and doesn’t seem to be too irritated by the delay. As the woman hoists herself on to the bus all the other travellers shout and wave to her. Am I missing something? Is she famous? I don’t recognize her. But she must be because why else would they be so nice to her? The warmth they so obviously feel for one another momentarily sends a freak glow through me.
Which is a bloody miracle, considering that the temperatures I’m enduring are arctic.
As in a wartime era, the men on the streets are either very young or very old. They are malnourished. On the young men, this looks chippy and sexy; on the old men, it looks pathetic. I try to remember some facts from my geography A-level and the news in the eighties. North Yorkshire wasn’t a community annihilated by the closing of the mines, was it? No, definitely not. It was a community ravaged by the collapse of the ship-building industry. I wonder where the men of working age are. Have they got on their bikes? Or are they at the Cargo Fleet Social Club doing their best to support the Bass dynasty?
I sigh, bored, losing interest in my own line of thought. A new level of tedium. It must be this place. I light a cigarette. Richard stares at me through the driving mirror. So as not to be rude I wind the window down an inch, which I think is very considerate of me in these sub-zero climes.
‘Would you mind not smoking?’ asks Richard.
I shift uncomfortably and for a second I’m tempted to say that yes, I would mind very much. I have a thirty-a-day habit to feed. I have a metabolism to send into frenzy. Instead I smile, falsely, and throw the cigarette out of the window. Richard doesn’t congratulate me or thank me but simply nods curtly. I’m surprised. I thought he fancied me. The lust men normally experience when meeting me is, if not a licence to print money, at least a certificate which exonerates me from obeying the no-smoking signs. What is it with these Smith blokes? Don’t they have hormones?
The towns disappear and soon even the villages are spasmodic. The bleak warehouses and graffitied bus stops detailing that, despite the odds, ‘JEZ LUVS BREND 4EVER’, vanish and are replaced by wide open fields of mud, splashed with snow, ice and the odd farmhouse. The sky is still lavender but is now streaked with silver layers of light.
‘I can see the sea,’ shout Richard and Darren at once. Then they both laugh. ‘It’s sort of a family tradition,’ explains Darren. ‘Not a very unique one at that. I’m sure you know the thing.’ I don’t, but I follow their gaze anyway.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I sigh, despite myself. And I immediately regret saying so. My city platitude hardly captures the breath-taking splendour of the scene and I do try to make it a rule not to say anything unless it is original or cutting, yet I’m at a loss for words that are grandiose enough. I catch sight of Darren’s face in the wing mirror. He smiles at me as though he finds my lacklustre comment adequate.
‘You don’t think you’ll be too bored, then?’ he asks. Does he have a tent at a funfair to practise this mind-reading thing?
‘No, I think I’ll find enough to amuse me,’ I answer honestly, with only