Alaska stared at the road, her eyes blurring occasionally as the tarmac whizzed by and her head spun from the endless expanse of grey. They seemed to have given up on the car-spotting game when she had grown tired of keeping an eye out and Elver had tired of her yelling any time she saw one. Now they were driving with the radio on, tuned into a station Alaska had never heard of and had no intention of listening to again once the journey was over. She reached forward and searched through the channels, picking up static every now and then that rang in her ears.
“What’re you doing?” Elver asked.
“Just seeing what else is on,” Alaska said, fiddling with the buttons. She had mastered them far quicker than Elver had managed to, twirling them like a pro.
“Oh.”
“If you want that one, it’s fine,” Alaska said, trying to find the station they had been on. It appeared to have left the radio for good.
“No, it’s ok, I suppose,” Elver said. He sighed.
“How long now?” Alaska asked.
“Still another hour.” He sighed again.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Alaska frowned. “What’s up? Did I do something?”
“I just want to be there already,” he said. “I love driving, but it gets boring after the first hour.”
“It’s only sixty minutes,” Alaska said. She thought for a moment. “That’s only three thousand six hundred seconds. Nothing, right? It’s easy to count to three thousand six hundred.”
“Oh yeah?” Elver smirked. “Go on then.”
Alaska began to count out loud but by the time she got to thirty-four, Elver stopped her.
“Ok, I get it. You can count. I don’t really want to hear it though.”
“Oh. Ok.” She sniffed the mint and lavender again, bored. Her phone had run out of battery and she didn’t have a car charger so she couldn’t even play a game to distract herself, though looking down or concentrating for longer than two seconds always turned her stomach and have her a headache.
“Sorry. I know you’re bored,” Elver said.
“It’s alright. I’m just not used to such long journeys. I don’t remember the last time I was in a car for longer than an hour.”
“Really?”
Alaska nodded. “Even that one was only supposed to be half an hour but we got stuck in traffic.” She picked at her nails until Elver glanced down at her hands and she stopped, burying her fingers into the folds of the cardigan she had rooted out of her bag. It was getting colder by the minute, even with the heating blasting, and all she wanted was to get out of the car and into a warm house, to run herself a hot bath and relax. There was nothing relaxing about being in the car, always either too hot or too cold, no matter how flashy it was, when she so hated cars. She couldn’t lie down or stretch out but she daren’t ask Elver to stop again. His eyes were trained on the road ahead, his hands gripping the wheel as though the more he concentrated, the sooner they would get there. When a whole ten minutes of silence went by, she found herself hoping Elver would need the loo or have to take an emergency coffee break, but he didn’t.
“I just want to get there now,” he mumbled as though he had read her mind.
“I know.”
“It’ll be worth it.”
Alaska was beginning to doubt it. The rain overhead, incessantly crashing down on the roof of the car and drowning out the radio, was only to get stronger as they got closer to Devon, if she was to believe the weather woman. Another ten minutes passed and Alaska turned up the radio a few notches when one of her favourite songs came on.
“What is this?” Elver asked. Alaska told him the name and he wrinkled his nose. “You like it?”
“Yeah.” She fidgeted with the still damp hem of her dress. “You don’t?”
Elver shook his head and Alaska turned it down again.
“It’s a bit, I don’t know. It’s just not me,” he said, running his thumbs over the ridged leather seam on the steering wheel.
“What do you like?” she asked. He smiled and handed her his phone.
“Can you take instructions?”
“I guess.”
“Right, plug this into the cable coming out from under the armrest,” he said. Alaska duly did as she was told. “Now click the media button, under the heater control.”
She located the button after a little fumbling and pressed it, choosing phone from the list of options.
“If you scroll down, playlists should come up. Click on it.”
“Ok, what now?”
“There should be one called Good Bear. Shuffle it,” he said. Alaska frowned.
“Good bear?”
“I spelt beat wrong, never got round to changing it,” he explained with a smile. Alaska chose the playlist and sat back, glad to be off the phone. Even the two minutes she had been looking at the screen had given her a headache. Elver used a button behind the wheel to find the song he wanted. It was slow, a simple guitar tune that was built on by a man’s voice, and then another, and then a woman’s. It wasn’t really the sort of thing Alaska liked, but Elver looked happy. She left it.
“What do you think?” he asked when it was over.
“It was ok. Not really my cup of tea.”
“Ok? It was ok?” Elver exclaimed. “Lassie, that was a piece of lyrical genius. And the harmonies, don’t even get me started.”
“I won’t,” Alaska said. It was intended as a joke but it just came out harsh. The journey was getting to her. “How long now?”
Elver groaned. “Half an hour. Ok?” He tapped the clock. “When the two turns to a five, we should be there.”
“I can tell the time,” Alaska said, crossing her arms.
“Ok.” Elver didn’t look at her. It was getting hard to see again as the supposed summer was blanketed in a wintry scene, the torrent of relentless rain and whistling winds battering the lorries around them. It wasn’t the best start to their little vacation.