The A412 was depressingly quiet for a Sunday afternoon, and he would be back in no time, back to his cold and poky Uxbridge flat, empty now of the new woman, his palace of freedom turned prison of loneliness. But he couldn't face it, not just yet, not feeling like he did. Seeing the children had unsettled him – more so than usual – and he needed time to collect himself, to ready himself for the grim wretchedness of the flat.
There was the possibility of stopping for a drink. The analgesia of the alcohol had appeal, but the pubs he passed did not. The first had been crassly modernised and was now the haunt of local wide boys, drinking bottled lager and radiating aggression like gamma rays. The 'Whip and Collar' was usually OK, but at this time it would be full of happy families finishing off their Sunday lunches: not the place for a domestic pariah such as himself. There was nowhere else before the motorway.
He thought briefly about going back into the town centre, but he hadn't the energy to turn the car. And so he drove on, gripping the wheel and staring straight ahead, clenching his jaws against the rising tide of misery. Soon he had left the outskirts of the town and was approaching the motorway access roundabout, sucked forward by his own lassitude.
Suddenly something snatched his eye, a dazzle of white in the grass verge on the right. For a moment it fixed him, the shaft of brilliance piercing his brain like a silver blade. Then without warning his hands spun the wheel, swerving the car across the road in front of an oncoming BMW. He stamped the brake in a desperate reflex and the front left wheel bounced onto the verge. The car shuddered to a halt as the BMW screamed past, bellowing outrage. The whiteness vanished into the tall grass; it could have been a rabbit, but he wasn't sure.
Cadwallader was breathing hard. The car was slewed across the entrance to a small lane and the engine had stalled. He lifted his hands off the wheel: they were trembling. He felt a warm flush of self-pity. Was there nothing, not even his driving, that was safe from his own lunacy?
As he stared up the lane, letting the misery wash over him, recognition clicked into place: he'd been here before, with the children. There was a path at the end that led up to some woods beside the motorway. He started the engine and pulled forward. Although battered by the ceaseless roar of traffic, it would do for a time-killing stroll.
Cadwallader pulled up onto the verge and turned off the engine. For a long while he didn't move, but sat slumped over the wheel watching the fine drizzle settle on the windscreen.
When he eventually did get out of the car, he felt instantly cold in the chill easterly wind. He leaned across to the passenger seat and picked up the ski hat and scarf that he hadn't needed in the morning. His shoes, fawn slip-ons with absurd little zippers down the front, were unsuitable for November rambling but then he wasn't going far. Despite himself, he grinned. The shoes were comical, caricature old man's shoes, hand-me-downs from his ageing father. His wearing them was somehow symbolic, although of what he wasn't quite sure. He locked the car and headed up the lane, hat pulled down and scarf wrapped up to his chin.
His vision quickly blurred as the drizzle settled on his glasses. And although it wasn't late, the dim light was already fading. Enclosed by the hedges, the lane was in near nocturnal darkness and he began to walk faster.
As he emerged into the open, a track led off to the left to pass through a tunnel under the motorway spur road: this was the route leading up to the woods. The road itself ran straight ahead, plunging into a scrappy copse some fifty yards further on. He had intended to follow the track, but he now saw something in the trees, a flash of red. Pausing briefly, he was held by the sudden colour, and then set off towards it, making a diversion despite the inexorably advancing darkness.
What he had thought was a copse was in fact a clearing where the road ended, pitted hard-core surrounded by twisted damaged trees. There was a wire fence at the back, behind which the motorway thundered, blind, oblivious and eternal. Straight ahead of him, up against the fence, stood a derelict fire engine. Huge and imposing, it was bizarrely out of place, its massive engine lying half-disassembled on the ground beside it like the guts of a disembowelled beast. The ladders were missing, but the white hose reels were still intact, as were the water units, a mass of brass pipe-work and spigots. To the left of the fire engine was a decrepit caravan, chocked up on bricks with its wheels missing. It lay in a sea of detritus: Calor gas canisters, a doll's pram with a torn hood, two rusting bicycles and an electric cooker.
Then, in front of the caravan, he noticed a child, a small girl: he hadn't seen her at first, in the fading grey light. He had assumed he was alone and the sight of another person gave him a strange, shivering shock. She was his daughter's age, thin and pale, with dark hair hanging about her face in damp straggles. Apparently oblivious to the rain, she sat on a stained mattress with her arm around the neck of a large black dog, a greyhound cross of some sort. Neither the child nor the dog moved nor made a sound. For a moment he was transfixed by the stillness of their gaze, filled with a growing unease. Then he turned and walked quickly back along the road as if fleeing from some nameless danger.