Free Weak at the Knees by Jo Kessel Page A

friend and keep her spiritual side with me as we head towards Dover.
     
    *****
     
    I steal a sideways peek at the man behind the steering wheel, admiring his physique and toned t-shirted arms. He’s wearing an elaborate diver’s watch. Hugo has something similar, but it’s all fake macho, because even a Mum doing the school run in a Land Rover stands more chance of one day using her vehicle for its actual purpose.  
     
    “Do you dive?” I ask
     
    He checks his watch.
     
    “Yes, it’s one of my passions. I’ve just come back from diving in Eilat as a matter of fact.”
     
    “Did that watch come in handy there?”
     
    “You bet. It stays waterproof even fifty meters below. I’ll have you know that this is no ordinary watch though. If you’re very lucky I might show you what it can do sometime.”
     
    We lapse into a silence during which I wonder what Rod makes of me. I’d thought carefully about what to wear, being honest enough with myself to realise that I actually wanted to make an impression. I’d settled on mixing and matching ski and street fashion. All Saints dark jeans, flatform Skecher trainers suitable for snow, a tight-fitting black jumper and a navy Quicksilver fleece knotted over my shoulders.
     
    Rod checks the time as we bomb down the M20. Our channel crossing’s booked for in an hour’s time. “We’re going to miss our ferry if we don’t speed up.” As he accelerates I note a police car in the left-hand lane. Our speedometer is pushing 95 mph.
     
    “Maybe you should slow down,” I warn him. “There’s a car full of coppers up ahead. I’m sure it’d be fine if we caught the ferry scheduled after ours.”
     
    “Nah Denny, we’re alright. I can do whatever speed I like in your country because your police can only fine people with a British address and seeing as I don’t actually live here, I’m kind of untouchable.”
     
    Rod’s knowledge of this legal loophole is impressive – I wonder if even Hugo knows this. We speed cockily past the police car and as we do I point towards my driver and mouth: “He’s Australian!”
     
    It’s delinquent, juvenile behaviour, admittedly, but I don’t care. I feel light and carefree which makes such a pleasant change from the constant overwhelming feeling of heaviness - heavy in the heart about Amber and heavy in my relationship with Hugo. For once I want to be wild and reckless, let my hair down, live life a little, love a little and not look back at my life constantly thinking ‘what if?’ Because something like your best friend dying makes you realise that life’s too short.
     
    *****
     
    Whenever I arrive in France, even if it’s only the northern coast, Calais or Boulogne, I get excited. It may only be a thin stretch of water dividing our country from theirs, but everything feels so much sexier to me as soon as I hit Gallic soil. Driving on the other side of the road, the architecture, French road signs, shop names. So far, because I was in charge of getting us straight to the motorway and mistakenly took us through Calais instead (map reading isn’t my forte) we’ve passed a boulangerie, a boucherie, a pharmacie and a supermarché. We’re now driving parallel to the TGV high-speed railway line. To me, the fact they’ve got the TGV across their whole country and we still don’t, says it all. Their whole system is fuelled by more energy and adrenaline than ours. Even their language is faster and perhaps a spot of living in the fast lane will do me good.
     
    It’s past midnight. We’ve already been driving on the right-hand side for a couple of hours, but it’s not till now that I get really excited, because I can see Paris in the distance. I spent a year there as part of my university degree and fell in love with the city. Amber and I had the best weekend there ever when she once came to stay. She’d taken the train from Rome, which is where she was at the time. We’d covered every inch and bridge of the city on