The services themselves were a perfect microcosm of how a well-functioning Western society should operate. All the basic human needs were catered for here: the need to communicate (there was a shop selling mobile phones and accessories) and the need to amuse yourself (there was a gaming area full of slot machines); the need to consume food and drink, and the need to shit or piss it out again; and, of course, the eternal, fundamental need simply to buy a whole load of stuff: magazines, CDs, cuddly toys, chocolate bars, DVDs, wine gums, books, gadgets of every description. What with the Days Inn located just across the car park, with its offer of cheap beds for the night, you could theoretically move into this service station and never need to leave. You could spend your whole life here, if you wanted to. Even the design was good. I’m old enough to remember what service stations used to be like in the 1970s and early 1980s. Horrible cheap plastic tables and unspeakable food outlets selling runny eggs and burgers swimming in grease. Here we had big picture windows looking out over a paved area with fountains tinkling away attractively; the tables were clean and modern-looking and some of them even had individual table lamps mounted on elegantly curved supports. Some thought had gone into all this. And the choice of food! There was Burger King, of course, and KFC, but if you were a bit more health-conscious than that, a big sign announced that ‘I ♥ Healthy Food’, and directed you towards counters where all manner of salads and fresh-looking sandwiches were available. Not to mention an outlet called Coffee Primo, which offered latte, cappuccino, mocha, hot chocolate, espresso, americano, vanilla cream frappe, caramel cream frappe, Twinings teas, a couple of dozen other caffeine-laden options, and of course the ubiquitous paninis.
Despite this plethora of choice, unimaginable (when you think about it) a generation ago, before Thatcher and Blair set about transforming our society, I decided to have a hamburger. Sometimes a burger is exactly what you need. No extras, no frills. What’s more, at this place, you didn’t even have to talk to anyone to get your hamburger. You did it all on your debit card, selecting your order on a machine, putting your card into the terminal and then taking the receipt to a collection point. Worked very well, too. My burger was ready within about thirty seconds. When I saw it, though, I felt a bit guilty for not ordering something a bit more healthy so I went and stood in the queue at the sandwich counter and bought myself a bottle of pomegranate- and lychee-flavoured spring water, which cost £2.75. Then I took my dinner over to one of the tables next to the big picture windows.
I had brought a fair amount of reading matter with me. First of all there were the manuals for the Prius – one for the car itself, and one devoted entirely to the onboard SatNav. There were also the instructions for the bluetooth headset I had been provided with, which connected up to the car somehow and could be controlled from the steering wheel. Trevor and Lindsay had been especially keen that I should get this up and running as soon as possible, because they wanted to be able to keep in regular contact. I wondered, in fact, if it was too early to phone Lindsay right now. Perhaps it was. There was hardly an urgent need for her to know that I had reached Oxford Services after an hour and a quarter’s driving. And then I had to study the manual for my video camera, which looked pretty complicated too. I would keep that for later, probably. Best to concentrate on the SatNav for the time being. I sat and read the manual for about ten minutes, until I felt reasonably sure that I had grasped all of the essentials. I felt confident now that I understood enough to use it on the next stage of the journey, as far as Birmingham.
When I got back into the car, I turned on the ignition and pressed the ‘I Agree’ icon as soon as it flashed up on the map screen. Then I pressed the ‘Destination’ button and rather laboriously entered the address of Mr and Mrs Byrne on the touchscreen display. Within a couple of seconds the computer had located their house and was offering me a choice of three different routes from my current position. I chose what seemed to be the quickest one, straight up the M40 and then northbound into Birmingham along the Bristol Road. And then, as soon as I had made this selection, I heard a female voice say:
– Please proceed to the highlighted route, and the route guidance will start.
It wasn’t so much what she said, it was the way that she said it.
Most people, I would say, are attracted to other people on the basis of their looks. And of course, I’m as susceptible to that as anybody else. But the first thing I find really attractive in a woman, nine times out of ten, is her voice. That was what I noticed about Lindsay Ashworth, the first time we met – her lovely Scottish accent. And, going back further than that, it was the first thing I’d noticed about Caroline, as well – her flat Lancastrian vowels, which were completely unlike anything I was expecting to hear from someone who in every other way appeared to be so elegant and posh and metropolitan. Now, this may sound ridiculous, but even those two women, even Lindsay and Caroline, did not have voices as appealing as the one that came out of this machine. This was, quite simply, a beautiful voice. Breathtakingly beautiful. Probably the most beautiful I had ever heard. Don’t ask me to describe it. You’ll have realized by now that I’m not great at this sort of thing. It was an English voice – not classless, exactly – more what used to be called Received Pronunciation or ‘BBC English’. There was something slightly haughty about it, I suppose. It had an undertone that might even be described as a little bit bossy. But at the same time, it was calm, measured and infinitely reassuring. It was impossible to imagine this voice sounding angry. It was impossible to imagine hearing it without feeling soothed and comforted. It was a voice that told you everything was right in the world – your world, at any rate. It was a voice without a single note of ambiguity or self-doubt: a voice you could trust. Perhaps that was what I liked about it so much. It was a voice you could trust.
I put the car into Drive mode and made my way out of the car park. As I left the service station I passed a notice which said: ‘Thank you for visiting Oxford Services. Your visit and registration number have been captured on CCTV.’ More evidence, if any was needed, that I was not as alone as I’d thought.
‘What do you think of that, then?’ I found myself saying to the voice on the map. ‘Bit sinister, isn’t it?’
And she answered:
– Exit coming up. Then, two hundred yards later, straight on at the roundabout.
For the time being, I forgot all about my desire to phone Lindsay.
I continued to drive slowly, trying to save petrol, so it was another hour and a half before I reached Junction 1 of the M42.
– In half a mile, exit left, towards Birmingham South.
It was the first time she had spoken to me for about ten minutes. I had worked out, by now, that I could summon up her voice whenever I wanted by pressing the ‘Map’ button on my steering wheel. If you did that, she would usually tell you to carry on doing whatever you were doing at that moment. So every few minutes, I would press the button, and she would tell me to ‘Proceed on the current motorway’. I wasn’t listening to the radio. I had tried a bit of Radio 2 and a bit of Radio 4 but I didn’t want to listen to other people chattering away. I wanted to be left alone with my thoughts, and with Emma’s voice whenever I felt like hearing it.
Oh – did I not tell you that she was called Emma? I’d spent most of the last hour trying to decide what I was going to call her. Finally I chose Emma because it had always been one of my favourite names. Partly it was a memory of having to read Jane Austen’s novel for English O-Level at schooclass="underline" I hated the book (which was one of Caroline’s favourites, by the way) and only got a ‘D’ in the exam, but for some reason the heroine’s name had stuck in my mind as a sort of emblem of classiness and sophistication. Also, I used to have a bit of a crush on Emma Thompson, the actress – going back a bit, to the late 1980s, when she looked really boyish and did that film where she had an amazing sex scene with Jeff Goldblum. So, what with one thing and another, Emma seemed an appropriate choice.