The Whole World: A Novel - By Emily Winslow Page 0,52

around to my side.

“No, Lesley, I don’t …” I don’t know why I felt such an aversion to the idea, but I really didn’t want to.

“I want to teach you,” she said. There was an absurd and irresistible sexual undertone to it. I shook my head and groaned, knowing I’d give in. “It’s dark. It’s muddy. I don’t know these roads.” Thank goodness the rains had stopped.

“I’ll lead you,” she said, right up in my face, through the open window. I kissed her again, I had to. “All right,” I said, getting out of the car. “All right.”

I strapped myself into the driver’s seat. I thought of the mechanics of the engine and the condition of the roads. I didn’t think of how I would face my parents, what Gretchen would do, whether police would be involved. I was grateful that the battery of Lesley’s mobile phone had expired en route from Pristina, preventing me from responsibly phoning home. There would be this privacy, this fantasy, for at least a while longer.

She pulled a map from a pocket behind the passenger seat, and showed me the route home. I objected to taking the M11 and insisted on village roads; they’re skinnier and windier, but much less likely to have other cars on at that time of night. I didn’t think I could face competition or confrontation. Bury Lane, Church Road, Crawley End … The names of the streets washed over me. Across the A505, then through Newton, Harston, and Haslingfield. Polly and Liv popped into my thoughts, and the way those street and town names would sound so English to them. Then I put the girls out of my mind. I wanted to stay in Lesley’s world as long as I could. Church Street, Brook Road, streets called after their towns, and then yet another Church Street. They all sounded familiar. Village streets tend to share the same names.

Lesley patiently explained the gears; I could manage the clutch if I squeezed my teeth together while my foot pressed down. I made the windscreen wipers whoosh and flashed the headlamps. I felt giddy like I had when visiting the war museum at Duxford with school, and had been allowed into the cockpit of a World War II T-6 Harvard Warbird.

“It’s going to feel different when it moves,” I said aloud, when I had only meant to think it. Somehow this too was a kind of double entendre. Everything was.

“Take me to Cambridge,” she said, like it was an outing. She’d always made me feel like a grown man.

I used the bright headlamps, because no other cars were out.

I dismissed the thatched cottages and fields as we passed them to concentrate on the road itself, but, really, I’ve always ignored them. My blindness to the picturesque had driven Liv crazy.

I braked to cross the A505, and, when I tried to start again, the engine made horrible screechings. I pushed down the clutch, winced, and changed gears, though apparently to a worse gear, which I quickly corrected. “You should take over,” I said.

“If you really want to switch with me you can pull in at the pub in Fowlmere. It’s not far.” She sounded tired, and her willingness to accept my surrender made me change my mind.

Driving was all right. I said it to myself over and over: It was all right. It all hummed along, between occasional dire gear changes. I even enjoyed it. We were almost to Newton, which sounded familiar, but most of them do. The road here was unusually long and straight. I looked over at Lesley, proud to be managing the car, to have accomplished something in this mess I’d made. She was fast asleep.

This is where things went wrong.

All along the way I’d been reassured by the signs pointing the direction toward nearby towns. I meant to be heading toward Harston. A sign in Newton assured me I was. Then a sign in Harston assured me I was heading for Haslingfield. This was all good. It was where I was supposed to be.

On the Haslingfield High Street, a sign for Harston pointed me up New Road. I couldn’t remember if I’d been through Harston yet. All the place names had become a jumble. Was New Road somewhere I’d meant to go? It was too common a name for its familiarity to warrant confidence.

I took it anyway, and then a singular name stood out to me in the light of New Road’s yellow streetlamps: Cantelupe Road. Like cantaloupes.