What If I Just Kept On Driving?

I can’t do this anymore. Not at my age. Speeding around the country to endless meetings, trying to charm people whose names I can only just remember, so that I’ll meet my sales targets. And motorway service stations. I’m so unutterably sick of motorway service stations; of the crap, overpriced food and the staff who look as bored and apathetic as I feel. I’ve had enough of it. Leave this nonsense to the young turks who still think they can achieve something and be someone by flogging tat to strangers.

I woke up this morning with the prospect of a drive to Gillingham ahead of me. I mean, Gillingham. If ever a town was guaranteed to instil existential ennui in a man, Gillingham is it. And as I curse my way out of bed, I’m struck by a vague sense of low-grade pointlessness. I look around me. I survey my one-bedroom kingdom. Simple, functional, devoid of all the feminine trinkets that made the old place feel like home. I’m about to leave this expensive but soulless apartment to drive a featureless road to a depressing town, to do a job I no longer have any passion for. I’ll earn my money and give half of it away to a woman who treats me with cool, morally-superior politeness, so that a teenage girl who despises me can continue to feed her £200 a month retail habit. Is this what it’s all come to?

My mind begins to drift. I picture the journey to Gillingham in my mind, and I start to wonder, what if I just kept on driving? What if I carried on past Gillingham to Dover and got on a ferry? How difficult would it be to find a quiet little town somewhere in Brittany and start again? How long would it take before anyone noticed I was missing?

I’m still daydreaming when I slump into the driver’s seat and start the engine. Thin, wintry sunshine starts to struggle through the clouds, so I pull down the sun visor. As I do that, something drops onto the floor at my feet. I fumble around and find a folded piece of paper. When I open it up, I’m greeted by Camilla’s florid but precise handwriting:

Dear Dad,

Whatever Mum says, I still think you’re alright. Have a nice day.

Love

Camilla

She signed off with one of those colon-and-bracket things that’s supposed to look like a smiley face. And actually, I am smiling now. God knows why. It’s an off-hand one-line note, written on the back of an envelope. Hardly a warm and effusive hymn of praise from an adoring daughter. But for some reason, I find myself smiling. Even with Gillingham, motorway service stations and meaningless clients to contend with, for some reason that note makes it worth my trouble not to disappear.