Better Luck Next Time

by Allison Whitehead

"Right, turn left at the next corner," said Phil, leaning forwards and looking out of the windscreen at the junction ahead.

I glanced at him. "I thought you said right."

"No Jane, I said left."

I changed gear and slammed on the brakes as a pedestrian decided to try and cross the road at the zebra crossing in front of us.

"Typical!" I glared at the purple haired old lady as she fled back onto the relative safety of the pavement. "Can’t make their minds up!"

The old lady was staring at us as I tried to put the car in first gear to get going again. I wrinkled my nose at her as the car lurched forwards in reluctant fits and hops.

I wondered if Phil was going to moan at me for not being observant enough, but he didn’t say anything. I crunched the gearbox from first gear into second. I’m not a bad driver; I just get nervous when someone’s watching me. Which at the moment, everyone in the street appeared to be doing.

"Watch the road!" Phil bellowed as I shot an angry look at a cyclist, who for some reason had turned off the road and bumped up onto the pavement just as I drew level with him.

"I am watching the road!" I shouted back at him, giving him a prolonged glare to make my point.

Phil was watching the cyclist in his side mirror. "Poor bloke," he said, shaking his head and turning back to me. "Don’t you think you went a bit close to him?" He was obviously trying to sound tactful, but to my ears it sounded suspiciously like sarcasm. "You’re supposed to give them enough room to wobble."

I looked in the rear view mirror. "Looked like he was wobbling quite nicely to me." I changed up from second to third and turned left as Phil had asked. I reached for the indicator, and the windscreen wipers slid gracefully across the screen.

"Ooh, squealy wheels!" I said, unable to stop myself from smiling. The corner was a bit sharper than I remembered from my attempt the previous week. I changed down into second and the car grudgingly carried on going in a straight line. Or near enough, anyway.

Phil was rubbing his head. "You’re supposed to change down through the gears before you turn the corner, not after."

I shrugged and drove through a traffic light just as it turned to red. "Does it make much difference?"

"Yes it does! You’re not supposed to have squealy wheels going round corners, you’re not supposed to take your eyes off the road, and you’re not supposed to go through red traffic lights."

I glanced at him. He was looking very sweaty. A grubby builder stared at us as we weaved our way down the road in Phil’s poor old battered car.

"The traffic light was only just changing to red," I said in a small voice, trying to make nice. "I couldn’t stop in time so I kept going. What’s wrong with that?"

"What’s wrong is that you were doing forty two miles an hour!" He leaned over and pointed at the speedometer. "If you’d been within the speed limit you’d have stopped easily."

"Oh well, not to worry," I replied, but my stomach was starting to churn. I knew I had to persevere with this route until I could drive round it competently and safely, but it seemed so difficult. All the junctions and crossings and roundabouts, right round the edge of the city centre and culminating in that dreaded one way system.

And I knew every single person in the area was staring at me as we went past. It made me even more self conscious than I was already.

I tried slowing down, but my right foot seemed to have developed cramp, and it wouldn’t move. And we were getting nearer to the one way system.

"Can’t we go a different route this time?" I wondered aloud as the road split into lanes approaching a roundabout. I wasn’t sure which lane I ought to be in, so I decided to hedge my bets and straddle the white line instead. I turned to look at Phil and the car drifted into the left hand lane.

"We always turn right here," said Phil. "You should be in the right hand lane."

"Oh well," I said, staying put. "I’ll move over when we go round the roundabout. There are no lanes to stay in there so it won’t matter." I tried to sound casual, but the nerves were beginning to make my hands shake. Once we were past the roundabout, we would be almost on top of the one way system, and that dreaded left hand bend.

I tried to cover up my nerves, but I knew Phil could see right through me. He knew exactly what I was thinking.

"You didn’t answer my question," I said, ignoring all the people who brought their cars to a sharp halt and gawped at us as I slung Phil’s car painfully round the roundabout. "Why can’t we go a different route?"

"You know why."

I pulled the wheel to the left and entered the one way system. Phil stared out of the windscreen. "Don’t forget to slow down this time." His voice was high and panicky. "You’re going too fast!"

I glared at him. "Stop criticising."

"Jane, watch the road – "

I looked back towards the windscreen just in time to see the same traffic island I’d seen the week before. Phil grabbed the wheel and the car slewed to one side, but I’d been going too fast for us to get away with it.

The car spun and tilted, sliding onto its roof in a twist of shrieking metal. I watched through the shattered windscreen. I could still see the wreaths attached to the railings we were about to hit. They’d been there for a few weeks now, and had about as much life left in them as we did.

"Great," said Phil. "Now we have to come back and try again next week."

I shrugged and smiled as another old lady gaped at us sitting in our ghostly car. "Back up to Heaven, then? You can test me on the Highway Code…"

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