She glanced down at her phone. She had obviously managed to pick up some kind of signal while she was in the pub, and her e-mail had come through. At the top was one from the district council.
Dear Ms. Redmond
We wish to inform you that your application for a parking permit Class 2(b) (Vending and Trading, Non-Catering) has been turned down, due to height restrictions in the area. There is no appeal to this decision.
Nina swore. Loudly.
There was more in an official vein, but she couldn’t read it through her tears. It seemed that whatever she did, she couldn’t get a break. The one thing she had never thought there would be a problem with was parking the van outside her house. Now, looking at it in the rapidly fading light of day, she realized how enormous it was. It would block out the light from the downstairs windows, and their neighbors’, too. What had she been thinking?
She’d spent all her severance money—she couldn’t imagine for a second going back to the men in the pub and saying she’d changed her mind. She was out of a job, and she knew she hadn’t prepared as well as she might have for the interview because she’d been so distracted thinking about other possibilities. And now she’d failed at the most basic, obvious hurdle.
She’d have to move. Somewhere she could park the van. She’d have to tell Surinder. But what if she couldn’t afford to move? Who’d let her rent a property without a job? Oh my God, she’d end up living in the van.
Her tears dripped down and she felt very panicky. She glanced around. Nobody there, of course. The village was completely deserted, and very cold. Nina felt completely and utterly alone.
She tried to think of what Nancy Drew would do. Or Elizabeth Bennet, or Moll Flanders. But none of them seemed quite prepared for such a moment. No heroine she could think of had ever found herself crouching beside a gigantic unsaleable van in the middle of nowhere, not knowing where she was going to live, shivering in the bitter cold.
She straightened up carefully and painfully. Her hands were shaking. She simply didn’t know where to go. She tried to think of places where she could park the van, and wondered if she’d be safe there or whether she could just abandon it.
In the absence of a better idea, she got into the cab and turned the key.
There are plenty of warnings about driving when you are tired, and Nina was normally a careful driver who paid attention to all of them. Normally.
But now, shocked and worried to the core, and driving a huge vehicle she wasn’t used to, she felt very frightened indeed. She knew she should come off the road, but where? She couldn’t afford to waste money on a hotel, even if she knew where there was one up here in this wilderness.
She didn’t have satnav and her phone wasn’t getting a signal and in any case was running out of charge. She put her headlights on full beam and carried on along endless country roads, none of which seemed to be taking her anywhere useful. She had fuel in the tank, which for now seemed to be enough, and she wiped the tears from her cheeks with her right hand and tried not to panic. She’d find somewhere. She’d find somewhere.
She spotted the lights of the train crossing ahead but drove on; the barriers weren’t coming down yet so she’d have plenty of time to get through. She didn’t see the deer until it was too late. It was hopping and bouncing away from the red lights and ran straight into her path. She saw the huge black eyes flash in front of her face, startled, beautiful and terrified, and without even thinking, she slammed on the brakes. The van skidded and juddered to an immediate halt on the crossing, at a sideways angle to the road.
The deer jumped away from the vehicle, its hooves tapping on the side, then vanished into the trees, unscathed. As Nina caught her breath, she heard the dinging of a bell and looked up, horrified, to see the barrier coming down across the road in front of her.
Unable to think straight, she turned the key in the ignition, panicking, forgetting to put her foot on the clutch, unable to understand why she couldn’t start the engine.
The lights of the train were clearly visible, looming closer and closer and stronger and stronger. She knew she should get out, but somehow, although she tried, the door seemed to be locked. She scrabbled around with the ignition, trying to start the van again, and again she failed.
The radio wouldn’t stop playing. Her hands wouldn’t work. Her fight-or-flight instinct had let her down completely. She stared at the train again as a great screeching noise filled the air, and was struck by the oddest, most ridiculous thought: how embarrassed her mother would be having to tell people that her university-educated daughter had done something as stupid as getting herself trapped on a train crossing and being killed by a train.
By a train.
Her mouth slowly opened in what she realized was a scream, and as the ground shook and the train thundered and shrieked toward her, she closed her eyes and awaited the awful inevitable.
Chapter Eight
There was a dark and deathly silence. The radio had somehow turned itself off; she didn’t know how. The lights had gone out, too. Nina blinked. Was this the afterlife? She hadn’t felt anything, no impact, no pain. Maybe this was it and it was all over. The blackness was all-encompassing.
But no: she was still in the van. She could see the handle, and she reached and pulled it. The door was unlocked. It had been unlocked the entire time. What on earth had happened?
Carefully she stepped down onto the ground. Then she stumbled over to the side of the track, her legs refusing to obey her, and was promptly sick in a hedge.
She found a half-empty bottle of mineral water in her bag and drank some of it, then stopped in case she threw up again. She couldn’t stop trembling. Gradually, after trying hard to sort out her breathing, she dared to look up.
Mere inches away from the untouched van on the crossing was the engine of a huge freight train, heaving like a living thing. Nina thought she was going to throw up again.
A man was leaning against the side of the engine, also breathing heavily. When he saw her, he started to move forward.
“What . . . ,” he said. His voice was so trembly he could hardly speak. “What the f . . .” He made a huge effort to stop himself swearing. “What . . . what the bloody hell . . .” His throat wheezed. “WHAT the BLOODY HELL!?”
“I . . .” Nina heard her voice break. “There was a deer . . . and I braked . . .”
“A DEER! You nearly killed the bloody lot of us for a DEER? You STUPID BLOODY . . . What were you THINKING?!”