White sunlight flashes between the roadside trees. You smack the visor down but it's ineffective: the windscreen looks like the teenager at the traffic lights washed it with milk. It's a migraine waiting to happen. The little bastard short changed you too.
But it'll take more than a young waster to put a crimp in your day. You're the man. The arbitrator extraordinaire. Without making concessions to militant union leaders you've averted a strike and saved a company hundreds of thousands of pounds, not to mention a shitload of misery for the workforce. You're in the mood to celebrate. There's a bunch of flowers on the passenger seat and a bottle of white burgundy in the boot. It's just a pity Cherie won't be interested in stories of wily boardroom manoeuvres. This is the woman who feigned disinterest in your bedroom manoeuvres, remember, which goes a long way to explaining why she is now your ex-wife.
The first thing she'll ask is, how come -- seeing as you're such a big hotshot -- she's raising your kids in a crummy two-bedroom semi? You can see the turned-up lip already. The sneer that launched a thousand heartburns.
This is a bad idea. Go home, look up some old mates and ask them to come out for a celebratory drink. Go out on the tear. Like the old days before life became an interminable blur of negotiation, arbitration and Powerpoint presentations.
You indicate left and turn down a narrow lane. A shortcut. You'll give Cherie the flowers and ask her to share a bottle of wine for old time's sake. If she says no, that's cool. You're not here to fight.
Up ahead there's a guy leaning on a brick parapet, where the road bridges railway lines. He's dressed like you, office casual. White shirt, top button undone, tie loosely knotted and sleeves rolled up. But it's not his appearance so much as where he is: the arse end of nowhere at -- you check the clock on the dash -- eight thirty-three.
There's a notebook and pen in his hands. You picture him writing 'Life is a crock of shit,' clambering onto the wall and jumping to his death. The vision raises goosepimples on your arms. You ease off the accelerator as you glide past him, trying not to stare.
Once he's a receding silhouette in the rear view mirror, you rub your jaw and tell yourself to get real. He's probably a waiter or a barman from one of the local pubs, stopping off for a cigarette before clocking on. He could even be a trainspotter, the sad bastard.
So why do you feel this odd squirming in the pit of your belly? Why can't you rationalise away your worries?
Just because.
You slow down and execute a three point turn.
The guy doesn't move as you approach. Nor does he acknowledge your presence as your car mounts the grass verge a few feet away, its ticking hazard lights bathing him in an intermittent orange glow. Your shirt sticks to the seat as you climb out.
When you ask if he's okay your voice betrays your nervousness. You try again, injecting a touch of authority.
His eyes swivel to look at you. He says he's fine, thank you for asking, and uses your name.
You pat your chest, intending to remove your ID badge, but you took it off when you left the office. So now you're trying to figure if you know the guy.
There's a ghost of a smile on his lips as he points out that you thought he was going to jump.
Your face flushes. You root around for a witty reply but nothing comes. You start to back away, but he urges you to stay a moment. Hes sketching rapidly in his notepad. He flips a page and then sketches on the one below, then goes on to the one below that, and the one below that . . .
You take a step backwards, reiterating your desire to leave.
He says the flowers are a lie.
You glance at the car, trying to judge whether he can see the bouquet on the passenger seat. From where he's standing? Unlikely. A breeze dries the sweat patches on your shirt.
Without looking up from his notepad, he tells you Cherie doesn't hate you anymore. She's battle weary. What she feels could only be described as indifference. Then he goes on to explain how indifference can be worse than hate in some cases, because at least hate betokens passion.
Betokens? You snort to mask your confusion. What sort of bullshit word is that?
Then confusion gives way to fear as the stranger points out the irony of you making a living by evaluating others' motivations when you persist in this charade of wanting to see Cherie. After all, you hate her. In the privacy of your own head you often refer to her as 'the bitch,' the worst appellation you can think of.
He stops drawing and regards you carefully. You rub the muscle at your temple, the one that twitches when you're anxious, and stammer that you don't hate your ex-wife at all. You still love her, damn it.
He's not fooled.
And so he continues. Cherie got a court injunction to stop you seeing Poppy and Stefan. She did many things to hurt you. Maybe some of those things were a matter of carelessness, but depriving you of your children 24/7 was malice. A twisting of the knife. You know she's told them lies about you, poisoned their young minds.
You want to cover your ears as he goes on -- in his infuriating, reasonable tone -- that you don't want to see Cherie at all, that you're just hoping to catch a glimpse of your children. Maybe a quick hi kiddo, how's school? You need to hear their voices, touch their hair, to hug their little bodies and assure them Daddy is always thinking about them.
Your breathing quickens. You admit to hoping she hadn't put the children to bed yet.
There's no inflection in his voice, no expression on his face, when he asks if you really want Poppy and Stefan to see you like this. He says your desperation is a sour reek.
Your hands ball into fists as you stumble backwards to your car. Screw you, pal, and the horse you rode in on . . . whoever you are. Then you're in the driver's seat, fumbling for the ignition key.
He gently raps the windscreen with his knuckles and holds up the notepad. He's filled every page with near-identical drawings. Flicking through the pages creates the illusion of movement. The first sketch is of the back of a car. But not just any car, your car. And yet he was drawing these pictures before you arrived.
In a heartbeat you're out of the car and snatching the pad from him. He doesn't resist; he wanted you to take it. The second sketch is from an angle, as though the viewer has moved towards the driver's door. In stages, the view pans through 180 degrees until the final pages see the car head on. The movie lasts only a few seconds, but takes your present funk to new heights.
Every detail of the animation is seared onto your brain: the hose snaking from the exhaust pipe to the partly opened rear window, and the shifting image of you, slumped in the driver's seat with your head lolling over your left shoulder. In the last few frames Poppy is revealed as a front passenger, while Stefan, visible though the gap between the front seats, lies across the back. Their mouths are covered with broad strips of tape. The same tape binds their hands to the necks.
Terror and confusion manifest as a physical pressure behind the eyes. There's a keening noise in your ears. You pinch the bridge of your nose between trembling fingers. Then a rage you can't quell rises like magma in your chest and you grab him by the throat, swing him round and force his back against the parapet. Your thumbs are pressed into his Adam's apple. You shake him, scream: Who are you? What are you?
He raises a hand to wipe flecks of spittle from his face. You might as well be throttling a shop dummy. You let go and step back.
He stays where he is, arched backwards over the parapet like a broken doll, and tells you in his reasonable tone that you're both in the same line of work. He ventures no further explanation.
Not trusting your voice, you retrieve the notepad from the ground and thrust it at him.
He takes it from you and for the first time you see what could be a hint of sadness in his eyes. Why did you stop your car here? He puts it to you directly, but before you can speak he answers his own question: Because you have a highly developed sense of empathy, that's why. An arbitrator needs to see every facet of an argument to find the inevitable compromise. Every day you put yourself in other men's shoes. Today you saw a man on a railway bridge and you thought of suicide. Why? Because your life is all peaks and troughs, where the peaks are mere molehills compared to the abyssal depths of the troughs. The one thing that stays your hand on the exit door is the thought of leaving your children behind.
He stands straight, writes something in the notepad, tears out the page and hands it to you. He has written 'Life is a crock of shit' in a script remarkably close to your own handwriting.
You're gasping. This is all wrong. What if you were to drive home and swore never to go near your wife and children again? You could do that. You could cheat fate, couldn't you?
He shakes his head. It doesn't work like that.
You plead. Is he sure?
He looks away over the railway lines so you don't have to see the pity in his eyes. You realise then how much he hates his job. He has averted a tragedy, but at what cost? You rest a hand on his shoulder, as one professional to another. Arbitration is all about compromise. It's not necessarily the right course of action that wins the day, just the course of action that is least wrong for all the parties concerned.
He appears to appreciate your support.
You ask him again if he's absolutely sure there isn't another way out of this situation. When he assures you there is not, you know it isn't a response lightly considered; he has deliberated long and hard. You thank him for his integrity.
Then you fold the note away into a pocket, heave yourself up onto the parapet and regard the parallel lines of burnished steel curving towards the horizon.
You didn't hear any footsteps, but you know the Arbitrator has left you.
You close your eyes to feel the soothing breeze on your eyelids. You picture Poppy and Stefan, and reclassify what you are about to do as self-sacrifice. It sounds better than suicide. You open your eyes to focus on the far off joining of sky and land, and wonder if you should wait for a train or whether that would be overkill.
You smile at the phrasing, then let go.
