Chapter One

Days Like These

"Questi giorni quando viene il bel sole" ran through his mind, accompanying his out-of-tune humming. He did so look forward to - indeed, live for - "days like these." These all too rare days of sunshine, swooping along deserted Esterel roads, enveloped by red mountainous vistas. Not that glorious sunshine was rare in these parts. The real rarity was taking a break from work, a care-free long weekend, alone. A chance to dust off the classic Jalpa and give them both the infrequent airing they deserved.

Of course, he wouldn't have to hum at all if he could muster a few more such days of leisure. He could've rewired the cassette player or installed a decent eighties stereo in a jiffy. At least this radio worked after a fashion, but today was left silent as modern super-rapid French jingles would spoil the timeless calm offered by delightfully picturesque mountain roads and impinge on his self-satisfaction. It even grated when a maniac on a superbike whizzed by in the other direction in suicidal fashion, or someone in an amorphous 'rice rocket' felt the need to overtake dangerously, whilst simultaneously smoking and texting, rushing around even on a Sunday afternoon. People nowadays hardly have time to live. Days like these were for taking slowly, for enjoying. Or maybe he was just getting old.

He remembered a time when he deluded himself into thinking he played the 'cool dude' to the letter, driving this luxurious anachronism of a car, standing out from the crowd. The intervening years had been unkind to him and in a surprisingly short time, the roles had reversed. When he bought 'Elena' in 2005, he was a junior electrical engineer, earning well, punching above his weight in a pan-European satellite broadcasting company. Elena was already 23 years old, then a few years his junior. She was bright green, incredibly low mileage due to petrol prices, and as the classified ad described her, a bargain à saisir. He, on the other hand, now had much 'higher mileage', looked rather worse for wear and was not à saisir by any stretch of the imagination. Elena was a timeless classic. He was becoming just plain old.

Still, she was his ticket into high society? Club soirées, continental alpine rallyes, hobnobbing with the jetset. Well, that was the plan. If he hadn't needed to work all the hours God sent to pay for her, he may just have mingled a little, but times changed. Petrol prices rose even beyond sky high. The market dropped out of satellite broadcasting with the rise in cheap digital cable. Television ratings tumbled likewise. Electric and alcohol-fuelled cars flooded the market from the Far East and the public wrinkled their collective noses at anyone driving anything louder than an egg whisk.

Swanning around the Côte d'Azur in a bright green, loud, garish eighties car whilst wearing long greying hair, a paunch, a denim shirt and tortoiseshell Rayban Wayfarers, saying "ciao" to everyone, suddenly struck Gary as perhaps less than a cool look, especially if you're from Swaffham originally and you can't really understand any replies from the 'beautiful people'. He imagined that he exuded a mysterious persona somewhat akin to that of the Man From Milk Tray when in fact he looked more like a first reserve for a Black Lace tribute band.

However, none of this bothered him right now. The sun was shining and things were touching on wonderful in his world.

It was one summer's day like this when, at a brocante somewhere in Avignon, he first met Maddalena. As the thin crowds dissipated into the sunset, Maddalena happened to bump into Gary at an automobilia stall. She was the typical, tall Mediterranean brunette on a brief sojourn from her native Liguria. At his habitual "ciao" opener, Maddalena disappointingly picked up on his Norfolk accent, and as she spoke English reasonably well, a conversation somehow broke out. Provoked by the Lancia postcard she happened to be holding, Gary took an educated guess.

Pointing at the photo, he said: "I saw one of those today. Rather playworn, but still lovely in red."

"Is mine. Ottantadue... eighty-two." she replied.

She had such a friendly smile and playful accent, Gary was instantly enamoured. They browsed the closing stalls some more together, strolled back to the car park finding that hardly any cars remained amongst the legion of casual car booters' pantechnicons, apart from their two vehicular rarities.

A few blissful hours together in a local bistro ensued, Maddalena's mobile rang and then all too suddenly, she dashed away. They almost met again in a traffic jam a few days later, where Maddalena mimed some kind of sign language through her window which Gary never quite understood. The lights changed and the traffic separated them once more.

From their brief time together, Gary learned that Maddalena worked as a marine biologist from somewhere near Imperia or Noli, and soon afterwards, found enigmatic scribble on a beermat slipped into his jacket pocket. It looked like a string of numbers in the broadest sense. Was that a 1 or 7? A 4 or a 2? Surely, that can't be an 8? Was the dialling code included? After annoying about twenty strangers, he did eventually phone someone who seemed to know a 'Lena and a stilted, infrequent, awkward affair over distance followed. They phoned each other occasionally, usually at an inopportune moment. They sent each other postcards every few months from holiday resorts. They were 'friends' on a variety of websites, but in time, their friendship somewhat inevitably dwindled away.

In the interim, somewhat encouraged by market forces, Gary gave up electrical engineering, instead renewing his interest in science, became zealously 'green' about recycling and politics, returned to studying - chemistry, botany, geology - subjects that Maddalena had been so passionate about. This newfound green idealism made him feel somehow a better person, but if he was honest with himself, it was the idea of relocating to Liguria that really instigated his atypical ecological fervour. Nevertheless, after a short while, he became genuinely interested in such matters.

Nine years had passed since he last heard from Maddalena, until recently when he left a photo on some website somewhere. Out of the blue, she had suddenly replied to it. It was a wonderful moment.

It was less wonderful when he resumed contact, only to find Maddalena had been swept off her feet by a lantern-jawed lothario - a scuba diving instructor called Paolo - who had since snorkelled off to oceans new, leaving her with a little bimba, Arianna, to look after. Even so, Gary hoped to at least rekindle their friendship. He didn't have multitudes of friends, and those he did have, were all boring with beards.

Further heartbreak was yet to follow, when he heard she had scrapped the Lancia!

Maddalena asked if he still had his beloved Jalpa? Yes, he did. Had he got around to painting it black yet? No. Replaced the handbrake? Not as such. Had he fixed the cassette player that used to whirr and smell peculiar? No, but funny, she should say that...

Suddenly, Gary was snapped from this reverie by a fast-approaching pick-up. This giant, roaring, road-going dreadnought loomed large in all his mirrors, flashed its lights, repeatedly blowing the horn with unusual urgency. More urgent even than the Ventimigliani did when he once dallied for a tenth of a second pulling away from a traffic light. No, this was real road rage.

The pick-up's windows were very dark and Gary could barely see the maniac driver inside. Roads here were too narrow to let the madman by just yet. Maybe at the next corner or layby? When is the next one? More horn. More flashing headlights.

"Ok, ok, I'm pulling over already!" he said to himself.

Sweating profusely, he panicked, not knowing what to do. Perhaps he could shake this lunatic off with a brave press on the loud pedal? He hadn't done that in years. The last time he had, the old girl sprang into life and he had nightmares for a week.

A gap in the mountains through which the road straightened was met with a sonorous whoosh, as the Jalpa stepped up a few cogs, blew off the cobwebs and thankfully reduced the malevolent pick-up to a distant dot. Through this corner, that bend, Elena handled like a dream - agile, quick and youthful as ever. The pick-up was soon nowhere to be seen. Gary calmed down.

On entering a tunnel, the exhaust note changed returning the smile to Gary's worried face that it always did. Dotted lights flashed by. For an intangibly brief instant, something of the opening scenes of The Italian Job - a film he had never managed to sit through due to the traumatic beginning - passed through Gary's mind. This was pleasantly different though. Radiant sunshine dazzled him on exiting with not a bulldozer in sight.

Kilometres came and went, night began to fall, and soon Gary realised that he seemed to have taken a wrong turn somewhere. He took one hand from the wheel and wrestled with the stiff glovebox door in the hope of a tattered map being somewhere therein behind sundry bulbs and fuses.

Nobody was around, so he pulled over to the edge of the road. The tiny posts that punctuate the fearful perimeter were a nod to the merest suggestion of road safety, considering the deep chasms that loomed all around. The mountains looked so majestic in this sunset, it was easy to see why only minor measures were in place so as not to mar such breathtaking views. Gary parked and clambered out for a moment. He took a deep breath, containing a distant whiff of sea air, and wished he had some kind of super camera that could capture this whole fleeting sensation for posterity. Life was meant for days like these.

After watching the sun dip slowly below the horizon, Gary climbed back aboard and unfolded the tattered map across the steering wheel. He needed to find a way back onto the La Provençale road toward Cagnes. In the dim light, he could see that he was probably somewhere along the edge of the map, where the hole in the crease was. Isn't that always the way? The sun had just set in the West, so he knew it was better to head in that direction. The map wouldn't fold correctly again, so he impatiently bunged it in the glovebox and at that instant, felt a colossal shunt to the back of the car.

Lights swept the cab. He was moving, being shoved towards the cliff edge. He fumbled for the keys, the brake, handbrake, anything. Another shunt. The rear window filled with a massive chrome grille. One of the posts dug into the front bumper, then soon gave way. The driver's door was already over the precipice, so Gary frantically scurried over to the passenger door. The car tilted. He stretched for the doorhandle.

The pick-up driver reversed, and then finding better traction, gave the Jalpa one last almighty shove, just as Gary opened the passenger door. On his knees, he crawled, reaching one arm out onto the sandy edge. The car tipped sideways and he fell back inside with a yell.

Over and over, the car careened and tumbled. An instantaneous shriek of horror, a fleeting vision of Maddalena, then nothing. Green scraps of metal whirled around. Glass crunched. Rocks followed, down, down, down.

On the road above, an emotionless blond onlooker stood, waiting for the bouncing wreckage to become still. He pulled from his pocket some small binoculars, and after ascertaining that there could be no survivors, retired from the precipice. He lit a cigarette and shuffled the sparse gravel with his feet, erasing any trace of tyre marks. A scrap of indicator lens remained, so he threw it energetically into the valley below, before climbing back into his cab and heading toward Cagnes.