What became of us

didn’t,’ she said.

Chapter 35

    The lights of the service station were like the palm trees of an oasis to a desert traveller. Annie was hot, sweating profusely and so out of breath that her lungs felt as if they were full of sand. The last couple of hundred yards were downhill. Annie freewheeled gratefully down the dual carriageway. Ian was sitting on his bike at the entrance to the services. He waved at her. Unwilling to negotiate the roundabout, Annie got off her bike and pushed it across the road.
    ‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ Ian said, ‘it’s closed.’
    ‘Closed? It was always open all night...’
    ‘Apparently, the nearest all-night one is Cherwell Valley.’
    ‘Where’s Cherwell Valley?’
    ‘Fifteen minutes away.’
    ‘Fifteen minutes by car?’
    He nodded.
    ‘I can’t believe it,’ Annie felt close to tears. ‘The only thing that has kept me going is the thought of one of those huge cooked breakfasts drenched in fat that turns to little white circles on the plate which you mop up with piles of white toast...’
    She slumped over the handlebars. ‘I knew a bloke with a car and we came out here once and filched loads of sachets of brown sauce and teaspoons and things. I think I even got away with a sugar shaker...’
    ‘No wonder they had to close,’ Ian joked.
    ‘There must be something open,’ Annie said, looking round desperately.
    ‘The petrol bit is.’
    He had clearly done a full reconnaissance while waiting for her to arrive.
    The bright white light of the kiosk was intensely unflattering and accentuated the black pinpricks of stubble on Ian’s white chin, but Ursula was right, he did not have a moustache.
    Annie knew that her own face was shiny and pink after all the unaccustomed exercise, especially around the nose, which had in the past couple of years begun to behave like a beacon whenever she was hot, cold or drunk. She reached into her bag, and, as surreptitiously as she could, flicked open a compact and dabbed at her nose with powder, then reapplied her lipstick, checking with a quick grimace that there was none on her teeth.
    ‘So your mother is an Avon lady?’ Ian said, watching her hasty beauty routine. ‘I didn’t know that they really existed.’
    ‘What do you mean by that?’ Annie asked, snapping the compact shut.
    ‘Well, I thought they were just an advertising gimmick. You know, like the Michelin Man.’
    ‘He was made of spare tyres and had no idea how to make the best of himself,’ Annie said, ‘the complete antithesis of an Avon lady. What are we having?’
    ‘Twix, Mars, Lion Bar?’
    ‘Fine, and what do you want?’ she asked. ‘Will you get me a Diet Coke?’
    ‘Diet?’ Ian said, looking at the array of chocolate.
    ‘Of course.’

    ‘Well, this is nice,’ Annie said, with heavy sarcasm, as they sat down on some grass near the exit. The artificial light of the signs made it feel a bit like being in the studio. She tore the wrapper off her Mars Bar.
    ‘I’m going to start a diet on Monday,’ she said, before taking a large bite.
    ‘You don’t need to diet,’ he said.
    ‘Sweet of you,’ she smiled at him. ‘Anyway, I do need to load myself up with carbohydrate if I’m going to pedal all the way back to town. You assured me it was flat,’ she said in an accusatory tone.
    ‘I don’t think I ever came here on a bike,’ he said.
    ‘Now he tells me.’
    ‘Anyway, it’ll be downhill all the way back.’
    ‘No, it won’t. When you had this mad idea of becoming bicycle thieves, I had momentarily forgotten the two laws of cycling in Oxford.’
    ‘Which are?’
    ‘One, whichever road you take, it is always uphill, and two, the wind is always against you. So even though you’d expect the wind to be behind us on the way back, it will definitely have changed direction while we were here.’
    A blast of laughter.
    She struggled to her feet and marched over to the kiosk again, returning after a few minutes with a Wispa.
    ‘I had to sign an autograph,’ she told him.
    ‘Must be quite tiresome being famous.’ His face was a picture of mock sympathy.
    ‘Only when they insist I’m the one from East-Enders .’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘You must get bothered all the time too,’ she said, ‘when people hear that you’re a doctor. Do they start telling you about their ailments?’
    ‘Sometimes,’ he said cautiously.
    ‘Must be awful having to hear about someone’s fungal toe at a dinner party.’
    ‘I don’t seem to do as many dinner