One misty morning, my father was driving his old Morris down a quiet lane towards work when he noticed his petrol gauge nearly empty. He stopped off at a small, slightly crooked filling station, its gables strangely tilted, as if bending over to listen to secrets whispered between cars. Standing outside, leaning on the wall, was a young pregnant girl. She looked about nineteen, with a face both faded and luminous, as if drawn in pastel chalk on fogged glass.
She approached my father and softly asked if he might spare a few coins. My father, feeling the cold jangling emptiness of his pockets, apologised, saying he didnt have any change and turned away, the door of his old car creaking like the groan of distant thunder.
Yet, as he started the engine, something peculiar tickled at the back of his mindthe odd fuzzy logic of dreamsurging him back outside. He walked up to the girl, and in the odd, echo-filled silence asked: How did you find yourself here, in the dawn mist among these petrol pumps? Her voice was like a lost nursery rhyme as she told how shed argued with her parentsstrict, unyielding folk from a small Dorset villagewho couldnt countenance the choices shed made. After she fell pregnant out of wedlock, theyd sent her away, and no hand had reached for hers since.
He asked if she was working, if some odd shilling or pound ever found its way to her. With a sigh, she shook her head; even the coins seemed to float away in dreams. After their conversation, my father handed her his crumpled business cardits edges worn and ink a little blurredand said: Ring me tomorrow, if you please.
True to the surreal rhythm of dreams, she called the very next day. As if following a path through mist, he invited her to his officea place that, in dreams, was half familiar and half twisty labyrinth. She had an interview that felt like a play acted in reverse, and a week drifted by in a blink. Soon, she was answering phones that sang and buzzed with hollow voices and running peculiar errands across shadowy corridors.
In the contorted logic of this dream, days rolled by like marbles, and she became assistant to the directors, gradually blossoming into herself. Now, she has a little familya home of laughter and marmalade morningsand her world is wondrously, impossibly bright, as if the entire countryside had been doused in golden tea. Family games are played in sunny back gardens where everything is possible and nothing is quite real.
