Moving On

That same Friday night Dani was having a rather less pleasurable experience. Once the majority of her things were packed she got into the shower, leaving Sophie sitting in the living room, scrolling through her phone in silence. The anger Dani had been bottling up melted away as the water rushed over her. Was I being selfish she wondered? After all, Sophie was just following a well-trodden routine that had been established on her many visits to London.

She reversed the roles in mind. What if she made the long journey to visit Sophie, who then refused to have sex with her unless she joined a harem without so much as even meeting the man she would be dedicating herself to? There’s no way in hell Dani would ever have agreed to that. When Jessica put the idea to her she had the opportunity to have a date with James and test the waters, an option she didn’t afford to Sophie. Pangs of guilt developed in Dani’s stomach, reminding her of the butterflies she got as a young girl when she knew she’d done something wrong and her mother was sure to find out.

She gave herself a little leeway though. If she was in Sophie’s shoes she would have at least congratulated her for finding an exciting new relationship of sorts and would have been genuinely interested in how it all came about. But Sophie didn’t seem in the least bit bothered. The nonchalant way she gave in and said ‘Okay, I’ll do it’ was what angered Dani the most. Still, given time to reflect, she thought her treatment of Sophie to be harsh and resolved to apologise.

She got out of the shower, quickly dried herself off then wrapped a towel around her head and another around her body and went out to the living room, but Sophie was nowhere to be seen.

“SHIT,” she yelled aloud.

Dani got her phone out and sent Sophie a text:

‘Soph, I’m sorry. Please come back’

She waited for a few minutes but when there was no reply she dried and brushed her hair and got into her pyjamas. As the night wore on Dani stared at her phone while nursing a glass of wine, but by the time she went to bed there was still no reply from Sophie.

Motorway driving was something Emily loathed, every mile of the journey up the M1 was **** for her that Saturday morning, especially given that she was in an unfamiliar hire car. She’d only passed her test a little over a year ago so she gave herself credit for getting this far without crashing, albeit very slowly and with excessive caution. The satnav told her that the journey north to her parent's house would take just under four hours from the starting point at her now vacated bedsit in London. She’d wondered if she could make the trip in one go but two hours after setting off her bladder **** her to stop at a motorway service station.

The last time she had been to one of these was when she was a young teenager on a field trip with the school. Back then they were exciting places that broke the monotony of the slow crawl up the motorway in an aging minibus. All she saw now was a drab, overpriced place full of screaming kids running about as they burnt off the excess energy from being cooped up in their cars. Once she had answered her call of nature she grabbed a coffee and a sandwich from the Starbucks outlet and called her mother to let her know she was about two hours away.

She checked the map on her phone again, her journey had taken her north on the M1 past Milton Keynes and Northampton. Coventry was the next big city, and beyond that Birmingham and its dreaded spaghetti junction, which was difficult enough to navigate even for experienced drivers. After Birmingham, she would be on familiar roads with place names she knew as she got closer to the small village near Telford where her family home was. She drained the last of her coffee and was about to get up when her phone rang, the screen shone brightly with the name ‘Craig’.

As her heart rate increased her instinct was to reject the call, but he’d only keep calling her until she answered and she didn’t want that distraction while driving on the motorway. She took a deep breath and pressed the green button.

“Hi,” she said as nonchalantly as she could.

“A little birdy tells me that you’re coming home.”

It wasn’t difficult to figure out who the little birdy was.

“You’ve been speaking to my mother?”

“I bumped into her the other day, she told me that things had gone tits up in London and that you were coming home. Something about getting the sack from your job.”

“I didn’t get the sack, the company went bust, I was made redundant.”

“If you say so.”

“What do you want Craig?”

“I thought maybe we could have a drink?”

“No, I don’t want to have a drink with you.”

“Oh come on, just one, for old time's sake.”

“I said no, and I meant it.”

“You know that I don’t take no for an answer.”

“Unfortunately I know that all too well. Craig, you need to stop this. Please don’t contact me again,” she said and then hung up without waiting for a reply.

She had planned to avoid Craig when she got back home, but thanks to her mother that was not going to happen. Which added yet another layer of dread to her homecoming. She got in the car and gingerly pulled out of the service station. Near the exit, there was a fork in the road and a sign, the arrow pointing left said ‘M1, Birmingham, the North’, the arrow pointing to the right said ‘M1, London, the South’.

She stared at the sign until a car behind her beeped its horn.

“Fuck this,” she said and sped off.