Apricot Press

The day I bought my first car, a blue 1966 Triumph Herald, Dad gave me a copy of his favourite book: Bartholomew’s Roadmaster Atlas of Great Britain.

‘Every road you’ll ever need,’ he said. ‘And you’ll be driving yourself when you go to university.’

He’d been a commercial traveller until promotion incarcerated him in an office outside Oxshott, where he yearned for the open tarmac. He was forever refining his commute or planning excursions in the Hillman with Mum. On every childhood trip, every seaside holiday or visit to relations, he’d test me on the sequence of bridges or roadside tea rooms, or which turning we’d need off which roundabout. Even before my eleven-plus, I could route us blindfolded around the trunk roads of the southern Home Counties.

My new girlfriend, Kay, was already eighteen and worked in a unisex boutique. She suggested a Sunday outing to the Silent Pool near Newlands Corner.

‘I’ll make a picnic,’ she said.

‘I’ll pick you up.’

‘Take the A24,’ Dad said. ‘Nice bit of dual carriageway.’

Kay opened her front door with a cigarette in her hand.

‘Don’t your parents mind you smoking?’ I said.

She laughed and gave me a smoky kiss.

‘College boy!’

The picnic was in a Co-op plastic bag: ham sandwiches, two packets of crisps, and a bottle of raspberry Corona. I thought of Mum’s wicker picnic basket, lined in red gingham, with melamine plates behind leather straps.

Kay’s dad came out and adjusted her seat belt for me.

‘Neat welding on these sills.’

‘First trip with a passenger.’

‘Look after her, son.’

I plonked the atlas on Kay’s mini-skirted lap and pulled down my sun visor. We turned off the A24 after twenty minutes, exactly as Dad had forecast.

‘How much further?’ I said ten minutes later, as the lane narrowed.

‘Haven’t a clue.’

I pulled over next to an open gate. She’d got the atlas open at the wrong page.

‘Let me look.’

I propped it against the steering wheel.

‘We should have taken that left fork a mile back. I’ll turn round and we can cut up to the B-road, then–’

Kay flicked the atlas shut, knocking it into the footwell.

‘Careful!’

‘Let’s have the picnic in this field.’

‘I didn’t bring the rug.’

‘We can sit in the back,’ she said, clambering through.

I followed and she handed me my sandwiches, snapping the rubber band against the greaseproof paper.

‘Don’t you like map-reading?’ I said.

Holding a gigantic crisp, she leaned across and circled the tip of her salty tongue slowly around my lips.

‘Do you want to make this work?’ she said.

‘What? Our outing?’

‘You and me. ’

‘Y-yes. Of course.’

‘Let’s try something new, then.’

‘What?’

‘Getting lost together.’

Photo credit: George Hiles