Surprise!

Surprise!

I drove through a fog made denser by the smoke from the bonfires. There was something about this particular year which seemed to have brought out in people an insane urge for pyrotechnics, filling-dislodging bonfire toffee and quaint nostalgic penny for the guy stuff. Or maybe it was because I hadn’t been back home for a while.

I'd deliberately booked something at the Royal Exchange so that I could escape. It was my last night in the old country, and would be my last trip home.

My shock, in the aftermath of the pile up ahead, was partly owing to the smash itself and partly to what I saw when I left the car and walked the few yards to the scene of the accident.

There was horror, mingled with a desperate urge to laugh my head off, when I saw the blood streaked face of the driver of the car at the end of the pile up, by which time I had located the useful little torch on my phone, so got a good old gawp. 

When I approached the driver’s window, I stood, staring and smiling at what I saw, or, rather, who I saw; the last sixty years came crowding and clamouring back, the years since he and I worked together in the cloakroom at the Halle Orchestra, and how I'd said we should always keep in touch, as we'd had such a laugh, and old friends were good friends.

And how last Christmas, a cheap and thoroughly nasty Christmas card, featuring a robin with a tartan scarf around its neck, had landed on the door mat in my house in Melbourne, announcing, "I have decided not to send Christmas cards to anybody whom I will not see again. I apologise if this causes any offence."

"Hello, Ronnie," I said, as the police sirens sounded in the distance. "What a surprise." His eyes closed, he shuddered, and went still. I hopped, to the extent that hopping is in my repertoire of movements, onto the hard shoulder, as the engine exploded and flames swallowed the car.

I hoped that I wasn't going to be detained too long, having paramedics check me over, because my flight left in six hours' time and I had to return the hire car.

Marie Hartley.