Needs Must When the Devil Drives

This week the unthinkable happened. Howard gave me a lift home. The nearest I’d been to his car was last Christmas Eve. As I walked through the car park he tried to run me over. He was joking…I’m pretty sure he was joking - kind of.

Anyway, Howard needed me to work late. I told him I couldn’t - I had a doctor’s appointment and I had to go home first. He offered the lift as a bargaining tool, which I’d been too busy to think through.

A car can tell you a lot about a person, or at least how they look after it. You would have been appalled at the interior of Howards’s car. It’s never been cleaned. Old newspapers, magazines and flyers littered the seats. There was a smear of melted chocolate on the passenger seat and, equally, the sweet/stale smell of melted Dairy Milk in the air. Amongst the crap on the floor lay an old, dried tea bag and a scattering of what could have been toe nail clippings. There was a shrivelled walnut in the inside groove of the door handle. There were photos, gym clothes, office ties…It was both thought provoking and chaotic. Tracy Emin could have driven Howard's car through the doors of the Tate and won the Turner prize before switching off the engine.

“I’ve named her after you,” Howard said, patting the steering wheel. “She doesn’t work properly and looks like shit.”

Maybe it was being outside the grey neon florescent of the office, but in the evening sun I saw him in a different light. His shave was uneven; his shirt un-ironed. He looked tired. He didn’t wear a watch. Nor did he wear aftershave, unless that was the melted Dairy Milk smell. For the remainder of the journey he talked to me about normal things, like his job and our colleagues. I listened.

“What a surprise,” he said, pulling up at the block of flats I live in. “You live in fucking sheltered accommodation.”

I realised that, while he laughs at where I live and my lack of transport, he doesn’t exude the trappings of success either. These are recessionary times. His wife may be wearing the Prada trousers but, to afford them, the devil wears ASDA and drives a second hand SKODA.

And, as I chose not to tell him, his tax disc is two months out of date.

See you next week,

Eva x