‘We lost fifteen minutes while Rona was checking her shoes hadn’t frozen.’ Noah rolled his eyes.
‘Were you not worried about your equipment?’ asked Midge.
‘Oh. No, I’ve wrapped that all up in towels,’ replied Noah, seriously. ‘Twice.’
When Harold opened the door and stepped up back into his seat, the accompanying blast of icy air was so ferocious it made its way all along the aisle to nip at Midge’s bloated ankles. ‘Brutal out there!’ he said to no one in particular, placing his fingers over the heater for several minutes before switching the engine fully back on.
‘Enjoy your cosy chit-chat?’ Harold was talking to the doctor, who had just climbed on board. Mortimer swept past without acknowledging the comment and made his way down the aisle, Harold’s eyes following him in the mirror.
‘Woop, woop!’ called Rona, climbing back up the steps and into the coach. She was an easily excitable person, Midge noted, which was confirmed moments later by Rona’s applause at the crunching of the chains as the coach wheels began to move forward.
Midge took the opportunity to retrieve a new embroidery from her handbag and began to stitch. This time she was working on a set of hedgehogs for Christmas.
‘For Christ’s sake, Harold, keep it on the road, will you?’ said Rendell. An unexpected jolt caused Midge to prick herself with the needle. The wheels were skidding, even with the new chains, as they struggled to grip through the snow.
‘Road?’ grunted Harold, while he struggled to keep control of the wheel. ‘This must be a poxy track full of potholes at the best of times.’
‘You snore a lot.’ Noah was looking at her. ‘Quite spectacularly. I was debating whether to record it for one of my audio effects.’
Midge considered this. ‘It’s illegal to record someone without their permission,’ she said.
‘Calm down,’ said Noah. ‘I’m only joking.’
‘Oh.’ She didn’t think she knew Noah well enough yet to ask if she had dribbled as well. Lately, Bridie had been complaining more oftenabout the condition of their pillows. In fact, not that Midge would ever say it out loud, Bridie had been doing a lot more complaining about everything lately, in a way that was quite out of character.
She sighed and gazed out of the window as the hedgerows gave way to surrounding moorland, its vastness so overwhelming that Midge felt herself being swallowed up bit by bit as they travelled.
‘Is listening to people snoring even athinganyway?’ Mrs Mortimer asked. To Midge’s surprise, both of the Mortimers had turned round to join in the conversation.
‘You mean, a “fetish” thing?’ Andrew Mortimer answered his wife. ‘Probably. They’ll pay for anything on these sites nowadays... won’t they?’ He turned back to Noah.
‘How would I know?’ Noah looked annoyed now. ‘Do I look like a weirdo?’ This prompted Rendell to shout back that in his experience deviants and perverts were well-turned-out and successful professionals, a comment which was seconded by Rona but produced an extraordinary amount of huffing and puffing from Dr Mortimer.
‘Oh God, yeah...anythingyou can think of.’ Rona moved along the aisle before plonking herself down on the seat in front of Noah. ‘You think of it, there’s a site for it.’ Which for some reason immediately made Midge think of kittens in glittery shoes dancing beneath a disco ball.
‘I produce podcasts... not videos,’ sighed Noah, but Rona continued anyway.
‘There’s even a woman who films herself sucking her own toes – can you imagine doing that?’ she asked him. Midge wondered if it was more acceptable to be sucking someone else’s toes, and besides, Noah didn’t look bendy enough to generate much cash. However, she kept this to herself because he didn’t strike her as an overly confident person even at the best of times.
‘Imagine, her grandkids digging up all that stuff during their IT lessons.’
‘Grandchildren?’ murmured the doctor.
‘And that’s the problem with the internet, isn’t it?’ said Rona. ‘All that stuff never really goes away. It’s like those photos the paparazzi took of my tits in St-Tropez... they’re out there somewhere’ – she grabbed at her breasts with both hands – ‘floating around.’
At which point, Noah’s face flushed the colour of the coach seats while Dr Mortimer suddenly found several things to show his wife out of the window, despite the almost total whiteout. And Midge was left visualizing hundreds of bare bosoms bouncing through the sky, which probably wasn’t what Rona had meant at all.
They were saved by Rendell on the microphone. ‘If you look out the windows, you will be able to see the fencing and flags of the firing range that surrounds the estate. Unfortunately, that means those areas are off-limits, so please stick only to the estate grounds. Rest assured there are no exercises this weekend, though.’
Midge put her embroidery back into her bag and looked out of the window. They had driven through a set of imposing gates, topped with razor-sharp wire, that stood within the fencing. Beside them was a small, abandoned guard station with a single window, keeping watch over the entrance.
Rendell continued, ‘It’s just a couple more miles up this track – we’ll soon be at the house.’
‘Bit odd, having an estate in the middle of a firing range,’ murmured Noah, waving a hand at the flags as they trundled past.
‘There’s not much of it left now – the military seem to buy up more land each year,’ said Rendell. ‘And the house is empty most of the time.’
A few minutes later, Rendell made another speaker announcement.
