All that soul-searching stuff was for the crazies. He'd always been the proactive type, a man of action who did what
he did, and knew what he did was right. In the distance he could see the beginnings of a traffic jam, brake lights
and hazard warning lights competing feebly against the bright sun. As he got closer he could make out a truck on
the opposite carriageway at an angle that trucks shouldn’t be at on the road. In the far distance he caught sight of
a blue flashing light coming towards the scene.
His heart seemed to miss a beat. This was where he’d left Rita and the kids, at exactly the point where the truck
was stopped at a crazy angle. Sweat broke out down the back of his neck and he found it hard to focus his eyes.
The roaring he heard was inside his head. It was inside the car. The noise he could hear was himself roaring. The
traffic on his side of the autobahn was moving, albeit slowly as it crept past the scene of the accident, well-
mannered drivers pretending they weren’t looking as they peered from the corners of their eyes, and those made
of cruder stuff hanging out of their windows, ogling, hoping for a sight of blood or gore. Max pulled onto the hard
shoulder in a daze, each action being carried out automatically, as if by some pre-programmed robot.
He got out of the car and realised that he was now further from the scene of the accident than if he had stayed in
the car. Why hadn’t he pulled over onto the central reservation and simply put on the hazard lights and damned
the obstruction he would be causing? What had made him pull over safely? A small, independently working part of
his brain suggested he had been protecting the car from damage while also arguing that he didn’t really want to
know the cause - or the result - of the accident and that if he’d really followed his instinct rather than his reflexes he
would have carried on driving, past the scene of the wreck. He stood, impotently, by the side of the road as a
steady wall of traffic passed him by. They might have been driving slowly if you were in your car and driving with
them, but as a pedestrian by the side of the road it was still a deadly rush that confronted him, and blocked his
access to the other side of the road where ...... where .....
The words from the radio screamed back into his head and he could hear once again the old man saying 'The
worst of it is that we never had the chance to say goodbye. Never had the chance to make amends. Never had the
chance...' The rush of words filled his head and the hot metal wall between him and the scene of the accident
dimmed and dissolved, and became gossamer thin as he stepped out to cross the road.
Rita and the kids had been observing with some interest the confusion about half a kilometre further down the
road. At least the traffic was now slowing to a point where they might conceivably get a lift and sure enough, before
long, a white van pulled up in the queue at exactly the point where Rita, Anna and iPod Peter were standing. ‘Hop
in,’ said Michelle after she’d heard their story. She kept the ‘bastard men’ thought to herself, but perhaps to share
later should the opportunity arise. ‘It’s going to be a long wait though’.
Eventually they managed to inch their way past the truck which had lost it hydraulics and blocked two lanes of the
highway. Something had happened which had caught the attention of the emergency services on the other side of
the autobahn, where an ambulance was in attendance
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