‘It’s horrible.’
‘Then all
you have to do is say, “Darling husband, I’m not enjoying this music – shall we change it to something we both like?” Et voilà. Problem solved.’
‘You were yelling your head off. You wouldn’t have heard me.’
‘Yelling? I was singing, Pip. Singing.’
‘You’d never have changed the CD.’
‘You’d never have asked. You just go straight for the off button. No “I don’t like this”, no “what about a different CD?” Just nought to pissed off, with nothing in between. It’s … look.’
He hit the indicator, to my surprise, and then I saw that we were leaving the motorway and heading towards a roadside service area.
‘We don’t need petrol,’ I said with alarm, suddenly awfully conscious of that cane in the back seat.
‘I’m not getting petrol.’ He parked at the edge of the services, near a pine wood, and turned to me. ‘Isn’t this what we’re trying to change?’ he said. ‘Bad temper, flying off the handle, overreacting?’
‘All I did was turn off the CD player.’ But I knew he had a valid point. I could have mentioned that I didn’t like the music. He wasn’t so unreasonable that he would have carried on listening to it. Why hadn’t I done that?
He smiled at me and tickled my cheek. I tried to duck away, tried to hide my shame and dread and … my God, I must be blushing fit to light up the dark forest behind us.
‘All you did was turn off the CD player with attitude,’ he said. ‘If I let this pass, you won’t thank me for it. You’ll think you’ve got one over on me and congratulate yourself and push things further and further until we fall out seriously. Do you want me to let that happen?’
I swallowed. I didn’t. Actually, I really didn’t. But I couldn’t tell him that – my pride stood in the way.
‘It’s so trivial,’ I muttered.
‘Come on, Philippa, be fair. This is exactly what you wanted. You can’t pick it up and put it down when it suits you. I wouldn’t be doing this properly if I let it go. And you know I want to do this properly. Don’t you?’
This was much too deep a question to be asked in a motorway service area on a hot day with lazy summer grooves blaring out of a car window in the next row of parking spaces. It felt so unreal, I couldn’t even work out how I felt.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘What are you going to do? You are going to wait till we get home, aren’t you?’
‘The book recommends that discipline be administered swiftly. It says that letting a lot of time pass reduces the effectiveness of the punishment. And I can see that. It pisses me off that the villains I catch don’t go to trial for months on end. Makes me wonder if they even remember what they did by then, let alone feel guilt. But now I don’t have to complain about the justice system. I am the justice system. And justice will be done.’
His smile was dazzling. You’d think I’d just given him a blowjob, rather than bickered over Whitesnake on the M3.
‘Here?’ I stammered, for clarification. ‘In the car?’
I tried to imagine how that would be possible.
‘No, not in the car. Come on. Let’s go for a walk.’
He got out and opened my door for me.
Outside, the sun was fierce and I looked around at all the hot, grumpy, burger-eating people in the car park. What the hell did Dan have in mind? And could it be achieved in Burger King or WH Smith’s?
Apparently not, because he took my hand and led me into the pine wood. A few picnic tables hosted families squabbling over food and squirrels lurking hopefully at their feet. There was a small swing park and beyond that – just trees and the soft, needle-strewn ground.
‘You’re seriously going to do this?’
Pine needles prickled my feet in their flip-flops. We were deeper in and the light was half-gone.
‘Yes, seriously. And that’s how you have to take me, Pip. Seriously.’
‘I do.’