Alison sat in her seat properly as her mother closed the door and reached for her seat belt.

“Here,” said Pam.

She gave Alison the Nesquik.

“I wanted Coke,” Alison said.

Pam looked at her in the rear-view mirror. “Coke will keep you awake. Drink your milk. It’ll make you sleepy.”

“I don’t want to sleep.”

“We’ve got a long drive ahead of us. It’s going to take all night. You don’t want to get to Auntie Mo’s house and need to go to bed, do you?”

Alison popped her straw into the drink. “No.”

“Good girl.” Pam twisted the bottle cap off and took several deep swigs. She didn’t like Lucozade, but apparently it was an energy drink, and Pam was feeling tired.

When she’d drunk almost half the bottle she put the cap back on and dropped the bottle onto the passenger seat. The bottle rolled down the slick laminated pages of the road atlas and lodged itself against the back of the seat. The road atlas was opened at the page for southern Scotland. Pam had traced the route she was planning to take. It disappeared off the page in Dumfries, but to continued on several others all the way to Leeds.

“Okay, are you buckled up?” Pam asked.

Alison continued sucking on her straw as she nodded.

Pam turned the ignition. The fuel gauge swiftly swept to full. She released the hand-brake and pushed her foot gently down on the accelerator. The car pulled off the forecourt and onto the main road out of Glasgow. Pam followed it until the first turning heading south, which she took.

Alison slurped her drink. “Finished.”

“Good girl. Put the carton in the plastic bag and try and get some sleep, okay?”

“I haven’t brushed my teeth.”

“Well, I won’t tell the dentist if you won’t.”

“I have to brush my teeth before I go to sleep.”

“Then just take a nap, not a proper sleep, and when we stop again you can brush your teeth then.”

“Okay.” Alison closed her eyes.

She was quickly asleep. Pam looked back periodically and found Alison slumped inside her seat belt, her mouth slightly open. Pam was soon able to pull onto the M74 toward Motherwell, and with speed came smoothness.

When they had gone about five miles, Pam’s mobile phone suddenly rang. She jumped and a hot wave sank through her body and left her sweating. She thought she’d set it to silent, but in her tiredness she’d forgotten that plugging the charger into the cigarette lighter cancelled the silent mode out. The phone was sitting in a cradle pinned to the dashboard.

“Mummy?” Alison said.

Pam shot a look in the rear-view mirror. The phone had woken Alison up. It was still ringing.

“It’s Daddy!” Alison cried.

Gordon’s name was indeed on the screen. So that was it, Pam thought. He had noticed. In all honesty she thought they would have been further away first.

“Answer it, Mummy!” said Alison.

“I-I can’t,” Pam said. “You know I’m not supposed to use the phone when I’m driving. It’s dangerous.”

“Then let me answer it.”

The phone stopped ringing.

Alison stopped straining against her seat belt and sat back in her seat in a huff.

“We’ll call him when we get to Auntie Mo’s,” said Pam. “Now go back to sleep.”

Alison turned her head and said nothing, as if adamant to stay awake. She looked out the window, but it was dark and there were hardly any other cars on the road at this time. When Pam glanced back again she found Alison asleep.

Pam unplugged the phone from the charger and turned it off. Then without looking she reached over to the glove box, keeping one hand on the wheel, and slipped the phone inside and shut it again.

It was a long night. The motorway followed the River Clyde - not that Pam noticed. She was driving through the Lanark mountains, but they were veiled in darkness and she only knew they were there at all because road signs indicated the turn-offs for their visitors. In the distance she saw lights of cities and towns, like Biggar, and Lanark itself. An almost radioactive glow hung over the skyline above them. They were silent, but not asleep. Pam kept on driving through 1am, 2am.

Pam reached Gretna Green shortly before 3am. It was right on the border between Dumfries and Cumbria. Pam slowed down. A sign caught the light from her headlights about fifty yards ahead. It said: ‘You are now leaving Scotland’ in a large font, and something else in smaller letters beneath. By the time she was close enough to read them, Pam was driving right past. About thirty yards further was another sign, welcoming them to England. For a moment, Pam was in neither Scotland nor England. She expected to feel more as they went past the second sign, but all she felt was the pain in her back where she’d been sitting in the same position for hours.

Pam followed the road signs for Carlisle. It was roughly halfway through their journey. At this rate they would be well into Yorkshire by dawn and should arrive in West Riding for breakfast. That’s if they didn’t stop. Pam looked in the mirror. Alison had shifted to the other side of her seat. The seat belt was holding her up. Even if her daughter didn’t wake up, Pam knew she would have to stop herself eventually. The later, the better.

The River Eden stretched for over seventy kilometres inland from Solway Firth. It almost joined up with the River Lune, which stretched an almost equal distance into Lancashire. Pam used to come to the Lake District as a child. She remembered her grandfather telling her that if the sea levels rose, the two rivers would join up and swell outwards, turning most of Cumbria into an island. Pam had liked the idea of that, though she suspected now he’d just made it up. To join up, the River Eden and the River Lune would have to start flowing uphill.

The M6 crossed the River Eden just outside Carlisle. Pam looked out over the water running beneath the bridge, silent and oily-looking. The moon was high and large in the sky and the moonlight streaked across wide ripples in the stream. Then she was on the motorway again.

“Mummy?”

Pam looked in the mirror.

“Go back to sleep, honey,” she said.

Alison was stirring, rubbing her fingers across her eyes. She sat up slowly and looked out the window frowning.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“We’re in England. Go back to sleep.”

“Are we nearly there?”

“No. It’s a long way to go.”

“I’m cold.”

Pam spied the rucksack in the seat beside Alison. Most of their things were in the boot, but she’d anticipated this. “I put your blanket in that rucksack.”

Alison’s tired, weak hands took about a minute to undo the clasps and pull teh tightly rolled woolen blanket out.

“Wrap yourself up in that,” Pam said.

Alison pulled it around her, tucking it under her chin.

“Now try and go back to sleep. With any luck, the next time you wake up, we’ll be at Auntie Mo’s.”

“I need the toilet.”

Pam sighed. “How badly?”

“Really badly!”

“Do you want me to stop by the side of the road?”

Alison glared. “No!”

“Well, you can’t want to go that badly, then. Can you wait until we get to a motorway service station?”

After a moment, Alison nodded.

Pam wasn’t even sure if any service stations would be open at this time. It was the first time Alison had been awake at 4am, but it was perhaps only the second or third time for Pam herself. When she looked back at Alison a few miles later, she was asleep again.

Pam drove past one motorway service station, though the lights were on and cars were parked outside. She hoped it was an all-night place, or that it had just opened. She decided as she passed it that she would definitely stop at the next one, and didn’t want to get there and find it had just closed.

The motorway skirted around Penrith and a few miles further on there were signs for another service station. Pam’s back was killing her. Alison was still asleep, but Pam slowed down and pulled the car into the service station car park. She found an empty space amongst several hundred empty spaces near the main building and turned off the engine. She had been listening to its noise for so long the silence was odd.

It wasn’t warm inside the car, but it was colder outside, cold and brisk. Pam got out and pushed the door shut. When she opened the back door, Alison was waking up.

“Are we there?” she said sleepily.

“Do you still need to go to the toilet?”

Alison nodded. Pam held out her hand.

After locking the car, they headed into the service station, which was a bit like an airport terminal crossed with a shopping mall. There were rows of shops leading toward an open-plan food court. The shutters were down over the shop fronts but the lights were on behind them.

The toilets were on the other side of the food court. Pam led Alison through. There were five or six people sitting at separate tables, huddled over drinks with their outdoor coats done up to the collars. Pam could only see one member of staff on duty, a twenty-something girl, blond and petite, but as they went into the toilets a black man in a blue security uniform came out of the gents.

“I’m going to get a coffee before we go,” Pam said as they washed their hands afterwards.

“Can I have another milkshake?” asked Alison.

“If they do them, yes.”

The same people were sitting at the same tables. Pam guessed most of them were probably HGV drivers. The security guard was sitting on a tall stool at the counter, talking to the blond girl as Pam and Alison went up.

“Can we call Daddy now?” Alison said.

“No, not now,” said Pam. “Can I have a coffee and a small raspberry milkshake please?”

The girl nodded and went off to pour them.

“Why not?” said Alison.

“It’s 4.30 in the morning. He’s probably asleep.”

“You said I could talk to him.”

Pam saw the security guard was cradling his mug in both hands and looking over at them blankly.

“I left the phone in the car.”

“Can I phone him when we go back?”

“Can you go and sit down at the table please?”

The girl came back with the drinks. “£4.40, please.”

“Why can’t I talk to him?” Alison said. “He’ll be worried. You didn’t tell him where we were going.”

Pam dropped a few coins on the counter accidentally and closed her eyes, took a deep breath.

“It’s all right,” said the girl behind the counter.

Pam opened her eyes. The blond girl was smiling, and helping herself to the dropped coins. Pam smiled back. She suddenly saw Alison in fifteen years time in the blond girl’s face, and hoped it never came to pass, else why the hell was she doing this?

She handed over the rest of the money.

NOTES:
Pam has, of course, run away from her husband, though I did initially want to maybe hint that Alison had been kidnapped. Though I suppose in a way she has been. Though far from the longest vignette, this one covers the longest period of time. I originally planned to write the entire story within the space of twenty four hours but by now had realised there was no way I could cram everything in and get to where I wanted to get to before that much time had elapsed. So it ends up more like twenty seven or twenty eight hours. I was going to try and get as far away from Scotland in one burst as I could, but it would have been stretching it to stick with Pam and Allison for another four or five hours in which all they do is drive down a motorway. So I decided to split the journey up between characters.