The Severn Bridge didn't just carry the car over water; it felt like a surgical extraction. Behind us lay the heavy, Victorian weight of Greenwich—the tea cups that clinked with the sound of a thousand unspoken judgments, the way her father's eyes always seemed to land just to the left of my face, and the suffocating "politeness" that felt like being slowly buried in expensive linen.
We had spent a week there, a week of trying to look like adults while being treated like a regrettable mistake. Before that, the world had been different. Before London, there had been the salt-cracked cliffs of Polperro and the sun-bleached freedom of the summer. Now, every mile of the M4 was a layer of skin we were growing back.
Peter's car, a battered toyota that smelled of old tobacco and damp upholstery, rattled with a rhythmic, metallic cough as we hit the apex of the bridge. The wind off the estuary buffeted the frame, making the steering wheel vibrate in Peter's hands.
"Nearly there," Peter muttered, more to the car than to us. He reached out and slapped the dashboard. "Keep your knickers on, Vera. Just ten more miles of English tarmac and then you can breathe."
In the passenger seat, she was curled into herself, her knees tucked up as much as the swelling of her belly would allow. Her hand was rested on the curve of her stomach, fingers absentmindedly tracing the fabric of her oversized jumper.
I leaned forward from the backseat, resting my arms on the headrests. I could see the side of her face—the way her jaw was set. I knew the quietness that had settled over her. It wasn't just silence; it was a retreat. Sometimes, when the world got too sharp, she seemed to drift back into a space where I couldn't quite reach her—a place where others within her took the wheel to keep the peace.
"Still thinking about the scones?" I whispered, trying to break the spell.
She didn't turn, but her fingers tightened on her jumper. "I'm thinking about the sea," she said, her voice small. "Polperro felt like a hundred years ago. Why does London make everything feel so... grey?"
"Because London is a business meeting," Peter said, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. "And Polperro was a dream. But the Valleys? That's the reality. It's got more iron in the air. Toughens the soul."
As the "Welcome to Wales" sign flashed past in a blur of brown and green, the landscape began to buckle and fold. The flat, industrial stretches of the outskirts of Bristol gave way to the rising silhouettes of the Gwent levels. The sky wasn't just grey anymore; it was a bruised, heavy purple that seemed to hang low enough to touch the tops of the telegraph poles.
"We're not going back for a long time," she said suddenly. It wasn't a question.