Mute

Chapter 35. Peaky blinders

Since their enforced departure from Hoxley House, Georgie and Ant had communicated in grunts, nods and the odd monosyllable. They were on the road for half an hour before they had a proper conversation, and even that only barely qualified:

"I propose a new policy," said Ant in the passenger seat. "We don't stop for anything other than the necessaries now. No turn-offs, no distractions, we just keep going until we reach your folks' place."

Georgie kept her eyes on the road ahead. "I agree."

"Okay."

Ant, realising he wasn't going to get anything else out of Georgie for now, occupied himself by checking out the glove compartment. Inside he found a flat, resealable polythene bag that held all the official bumph about their brand-new Toyota. He fished out the owner's manual and went to work with the small, thick textbook, trying to get it to tell him how to operate the Sat-Nav. It didn't go well. As far as Ant could tell, the instructions in the manual bore no relation to what was on the display in front of him. He knew he must have been driving Georgie up the wall; stabbing at the screen with his huge fingers, and muttering in frustration when the result was the exact opposite of what he'd been trying to do, but Georgie didn't seem to be paying attention. She was busy somewhere inside her own head.

Ant gave up and sat back in his seat, his arms folded.

The initial shock of the attack on Hoxley House was starting to fade, and Ant had finally managed to force himself to stop picturing the range of gruesome fates that could have befallen the friends they had left behind. Instead his mind returned to the argument he had been having with Georgie. It had been rendered trivial by the attack but now it stepped out of the shadows and took centre stage in Ant's production of Things to Feel Uneasy About. He felt bad that he was worrying about a lovers' tiff when there was probably a massacre going on back at the estate, but he couldn't pretend it wasn't a big deal to him. And anyway, it was a lot more than a lovers' tiff. Where they had left it, it was clear that Georgie had been leaning very heavily towards them splitting up. Ant had no idea what the practicalities of splitting up would entail, what with them being joined at the hip for the sake of survival, but he knew it would mean at least three things:

1. No more sex.

2. A return to life in Awkwardville.

3. Ant's heart being smashed into a billion squillion pieces.

He knew he couldn't go back to how things had been before they had got together, it would be unbearable. He didn't want to overdramatise it, but in his eyes it was a matter of life and death. If he didn't fix things with Georgie his life simply wouldn't be worth living.

He knew he had to talk to Georgie but also knew that, right at that moment, talking was the absolute last thing that was needed. Ant was no expert on relationships but he had messed things up enough times with enough women to know that if he tried to rake it all up now he'd just be the guy making the whiny apologies, and that would push Georgie further into her bunker. He also knew that their argument was probably the last thing on Georgie's mind; she would be focused entirely on what was happening back at the estate, and would think Ant was unbelievably selfish, obscenely inconsiderate, or some kind of sociopath if he had the gall to think that their relationship was even worthy of a mention right now.

Ant turned his mind to more practical matters. When they had taken the car they had just started driving; they hadn't talked about which way to go. Ant had failed to get the Sat-Nav to work and he didn't know if Georgie was waiting for him to give her directions. He opened up the map that had been in his Shit Day bag. The rough location of the cabin was fairly easy to find; he remembered the name of the nearest town from when Georgie had marked it on their map from before, and there weren't too many towns near that stretch of west coast to search through. The destination wasn't a problem. The problem was finding where they were now. Ant, to use his own words, didn't have a bastard clue.