Page 24 of The Second Chance Bus Stop

‘That’s fine with me. We’ll wait for the truck to finish loading my car and then—let’s go.’

As we drive off I keep my eyes firmly at the window. I wish it was legal to travel in the living area of the mobile home,

but it turns out even dogs aren’t allowed to do that in Sweden so I’m doomed to sit in the front. Next to Blade. I knew this

was a mistake the minute we set out. I’m meant to be unmasking with the help of my book and Twitter, and now I’m suddenly

finding myself in great proximity to a stranger.

My hands finally make work with the seat belt, releasing it so I’m not strapped in like I’m on a rollercoaster. He studies

me, as if he can’t figure out why I’m here, inside his car. And in the meantime, I’m wondering exactly the same thing.

‘Plug your phone in, if you need to charge. Once it’s parked up we won’t have power.’ I do as I’m told. The seats are large

and leather-clad, and luckily there is a gap between them wide enough to enable walking to the back of the home. It means

almost a metre’s distance between me and Blade.

I message Lina, because I had an idea whilst waiting for the tow-truck.

I’m next to British stranger heading north. Sharing my location so that you can alert authorities if I divert from route. Which I will send you shortly.

We have been driving for what feels like the longest hour of my life when I decide I can’t take it any longer. Even the limited

amount of small talk I’m capable of producing must be better than this. If I don’t say something soon, I’ll have to jump out

of the car.

‘So you are heading to J o nk o ping?’ My words sound loud falling into the small space that is the front-seat compartment.

A nod in reply.

Okay. If he doesn’t start talking, say anything at all to help me fill this silence, I’m going to have to push him out of the moving

car...

‘So if it’s not your dad you’re looking for, who’s the person?’ I try. He considers this question long enough that I start

to believe I really will have to shove him out.

His fingers grip the steering wheel tighter; it was impossible to miss because, well, I have been carefully watching him for

the past couple of minutes.

‘My mum lost someone. Many years ago. And now I’m trying to find him. She, well, both of us, have been in a bad place lately

and I hope this might help.’

‘You went to a different country to find someone for your mum?’ I think this new information softens me. But then on second

thought, it hardens me. Because would I ever do something like that for my mum? I doubt she would trust me to look for her misplaced reading glasses, never mind a lost person.

I sit quietly. I watch Blade’s hands move up and down the steering wheel, his muscles tensing and my mind wanders off with

the same weird sensation I had when he came into my shop.

I’m distracted by him . A stranger. His presence and his proximity.

I take my pack of anti-bacterial wipes out of my pocket and begin wiping down the door and glove compartment, creating a faint citrus smell around me. I feel more at ease immediately.

‘Gum?’ he asks me, holding out a pack of Extra.

‘No thanks. Spicy mint somehow seeps through my eyeballs and makes me sneeze at the same time. I prefer the fruity ones.’

‘They don’t make you feel clean though.’ He pops one, two, three gums into his mouth and closes his lips around them.

‘It’s not the mint that kills off bacteria. It’s the fluoride and they all have that.’ I consider his mouth and all the bacteria

dying slowly as he chews, quite a satisfying thought, and whether very hypothetically— of course —I could kiss a mouth if there’d just been, let’s say, three pieces of gum with fluoride inside it. Perhaps there’d be a window

of a few minutes until the bacteria built up again.

Blade is quiet, and I turn my head back to the window, but the glass just reflects his face in it. I sneak a peek at him again.

His jaw moving with every chew.

‘It just tastes like toothpaste,’ he says.

‘Exactly. I use children’s toothpaste. The strawberry one is nice.’

Apparently that was what we could manage in terms of small talk. Toothpaste. Kill me now. But no, I’m in for a long slow death. Close to a thousand kilometres long, to be precise.

‘Let’s put some ground rules down,’ I say. ‘Number one, the bed is mine.’

‘Okay. I’ve brought a tent.’ Blade continues. ‘Number two, we split the driving.’

‘Deal,’ I say. ‘Number three. You help at markets with unloading and reloading.’

‘Then, you keep me company in at least one care home. While I’m looking for this person.’

‘No deal. Don’t like chatting to strangers.’

He shrugs, arguing doesn’t seem to be in his nature. ‘Happy to help.’

‘So based on our route and schedules, you have more free time than me, or at least your schedule is more flexible. So we should

set up camp for the night close to where I need to be the next day and then you can drive from there,’ I say. Then I stop

talking because there’s something at the side of the road and—oh no. Oh. No.

Blade turns to me.

‘Oh God, what is wrong. Sophia? I’ll turn around right now. You don’t have to come anywhere. Or if you still want to, then

I will help with everything. I’ll even agree to clean the van bi-weekly. I’ll make your bed. Complete with the pillow-fluffing.

Please don’t cry.’

‘Not crying,’ I lie badly.

‘Okay. We may be experiencing some cultural differences then because in England that thing when wet drops roll down your cheeks

and sulking sounds come from your throat? That would constitute crying.’

‘Fine. If you must know, it was a cat. At the side of the road.’ I start sobbing again, big ugly crying with my sleeve pressed

against my mouth, just thinking about it. ‘Run over.’

‘Oh.’

‘I have issues with dead animals.’ I sniff.

‘Issues?’

‘Animals are cute and innocent, and I’ve never understood how humans relate to humans but not other species.

Like bears, they like to sleep and enjoy quiet nature time.

I relate to that. Or a giraffe. They pay attention to what’s ahead and are extremely gentle.

They also have unusually long necks. I can relate to that as well.

Sometimes I’ll relate to objects too. How could you not buy the display item because it’s been scratched?

How would you feel if someone rejected you that way? ’

I stop because I realise that I’ve explained enough. Over-shared. More than I ever shared with Ed. Blade doesn’t look a bit

uncomfortable though.

‘I’m sorry. I would have stopped,’ he tells me, whilst looking in the back mirror.

‘And what if the cat was a mother ? Think of the sweet kittens waiting for mummy to come home.’

‘Sure you’re not projecting a human family structure on the deceased cat?’ He steals a look at my face and decides to stop.

He settles on, ‘It’s very sad.’

‘I’m okay. This was nothing.’ A scratch on my knee, sun in my eyes, a dead animal. My dad’s voice: This is nothing, Sophia!

I sit for a moment before adding quietly, ‘My dad used to stop the car and make me look at them. The animals. He said it would

toughen me up. To see what real life was like. There were three boys and me in the car on our school run. Eventually my brothers

let me sit between them in the middle of the backseat so I wouldn’t see anything dead at the side of the road. They didn’t

want to be late to the hockey training just because I had to be phobia-trained with a cadaver, they said.’ Mattias never liked

seeing the dead animals either—that’s why he became a vet. So maybe I wasn’t totally a freak, yet I can still remember every

word my dad said when showing me roadkill.

Blade looks at me in disbelief and I shrink down, embarrassed. This is not Autistic Twitter, this is real life and real life

prefers women like me to keep their mask on and be the high-functioning level-1 end-of-the-spectrum mildly Autistic women we’re diagnosed as.

‘Do you want to stop for a break?’

‘No, I’m fine. I’m an adult now and have a heart of stone.’ I laugh as I say it, trying to lighten the mood, but it’s probably, most definitely, true.

‘Still, I can’t help thinking that the cat might have been very old. He may have chosen this very spot for sentimental reasons

and drew his last breath here entirely peacefully,’ Blade says.

‘At the side of the dual carriageway? That’s his sentimental spot?’

‘Maybe it was where he met his cat partner for the first time. Yes, I feel sure of it. That was a peaceful end-of-life death

you witnessed.’

I shake my head. Hopeless. This man is hopeless. But then I can feel a smile spreading across my face.

The navigation voice speaks and drowns out any thoughts I’d had. Ten days, 2,521 kilometres in total. But our first stop is

only a quarter of that distance away.

I can do this.