Fallout by Sadie Jones

him at his bed and breakfast and pronounced it, ‘Not bad.’
    ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said and asked her out for a drink.
    When they met at the bar, she asked for a pint. Paul had nearly fallen over in shock and had to stop himself from laughing at her as she drank it. It just looked unnatural to him, her woman’s hand around the glass. And she seemed so bad tempered.
    ‘Like bitter, do you?’ he asked and she glared at him. ‘Much of a beer drinker?’
    ‘Shouldn’t I be?’
    ‘Do what you like,’ he said, shrugging.
    ‘Thanks very much.’
    But then she smiled and he found himself telling her his car had packed it in – which was true – and would she happen to know of anyone who might be able to give him a lift to Seston to meet the playwright? He had seen her parking over the road in a bright blue Mini Cooper, noticed her bottom as she got out of it and took his chances.
    ‘I’ll take you, if you like,’ she’d said, and he felt such warmth that he smiled right into her frighteningly direct gaze, and she smiled back.
     
    Leigh’s hands gripped the wheel, pleased that she was driving and not Paul. Producer, know-all-seen-everything Paul Driscoll.
    She didn’t know how someone could be her age, and so sure of his place and his plan. Where she fitted in, Leigh had no idea. She was quite clear about the great many things that made her angry. Being called a bird , chick , love , darling , poppet , dear , darling , baby made her angry. Being called posh , soft , southern , blue-stocking , and asked if she’d like a sweet sherry and if she were an actress or a model made her furious. She didn’t like to be persuaded. She knew the things she loved. She was reading History, English Literature and French at Sheffield and loved all three of those. She loved Sheffield even though it had been very hard on her at first; the whole of the first year had felt like being in a boxing ring, on the ropes with her gloves up. She loved to write stories but she never told a single soul about that. She drank bitter although she hated it and left to herself it would be port and lemon every time. And she was shy. She was painfully shy; an unlikely affliction given her warrior heart. Guarded and untried, she was terrified of falling in love. The very term summed it up: falling in love , as if it were tripping over a brick into a chasm. Romantic love felt to her like the cheapest fairground con around; being dragged along for a ride on a wobbly circus bicycle and then falling flat on your face in a pie to the laughter of the cynical universe. Her childhood had been full of her mother’s tears over her father’s relentless faithlessness. She had seen clever girls turned into bleating sheep and reasonable boys unmanned by love, her own parents reduced to children. So Leigh decided a muscular intellect was the best defence against baseless weeping over someone you’d grow out of in a year anyway – someone like Paul Driscoll, apparently so impressive with his neat hair and man’s strong face, peering uselessly at the map in his hands.
    ‘Are you getting anywhere at all with that?’ she asked. ‘I think we should stop if you can’t manage.’
    She had the idea Paul took her for an idiot. She did not see that he quaked and had a suspicion she was a lesbian.
    ‘If you’d stop driving like a maniac I might have a chance.’
    ‘I don’t see how it makes any difference what speed I go. If you can’t read the thing, you can’t read it.’
    They had bickered the whole journey, quite easily. Paul came from a big bickering family, Leigh from a small bickering family; both felt quite at home.
    When the rain began to fall she pulled sharply into a sliding muddy track, switched off the engine and the headlights and turned on the light inside the car, above the rear-view mirror.
    ‘I have to turn the headlights off, the battery is a bit dicky,’ she said, ‘so don’t be too long. Apparently it’s the