We Who Are Jaded

Chapter Twelve

It did not take long for me to establish, that despite the impression I had had of the three surrounding Indigos, they were actually a rather solitary bunch. Though we had not been bundled together in the Mercedes for all that long, in that time, none of us seemed to know what to say. I was uncomfortably surprised. I supposed that with Andrea's instruments for communication secured to the wheel and Mack transfixed by a packet of biscuits he'd pilferd from a stray nook of the kitchen, it left only Jessica and I to talk. However, from the way she was glaring at the navigator on her phone, I decided trivial conversation was unwise.

"I'm sure we should have taken a left back there," she muttered to herself, following one of the lines on the map with her finger. Although I had offered direction she had assured me before stepping into the car that her phone was more than capable and I should sit back and enjoy the ride.

I held my tongue despite knowing I could have told Jessica that she was supposed to have taken the left she didn't, or the right she could have taken if she'd wanted to take a shortcut. I pressed my lips together and swallowed my words.

Jessica grunted and tapped the phone screen, vexed.

"Or maybe we should have taken the right before that." I gathered my courage to say something, raising my finger with unarguable purpose but hesitated in my advance as Andrea started banging her head on the steering wheel. She'd been driving round in an unsure frenzy, obeying the ballsy, backseat driver for an hour and still we weren't close to our destination.

I sat back in my seat and wished, like Mack, I had a biscuit to pacify myself with.

Eventually the car turned onto a street I knew. I brought myself forward, clenching Jessica's seat in my hand. If we took and right at the next possible opportunity it would led us almost directly to the care home.

"We need to go right in a second." Jessica glowered at her phone and then the road ahead.

"Not according to-"

Andrea, glad of some sort of order plausible direction, spun the wheel so we sped swiftly down the street in question, narrowly missing a collision with a lorry in the meantime.

"My map." Jessica scrutinised the screen, rotating the map upside down and then upright again. She looked round at the quaint little bungalows and the neat flower beds and then back to the map.

"I've spent more than half my life walking through these streets, I'm certain we're in the right place. Trust me." Jessica only studied her phone harder, the furrow in her brow questioning my judgement.

"Remember the days where yae relied on instinct and, y'know people, Jessy?" Mack mumbled through a mouthful of biscuit. Jessica eyed him threateningly which only encouraged him to wink saucily at her.

"They called those the Dark Ages, Mack."

While Mack and Jessica continued staring one another down, Andrea drank in the quaintness of the neighbourhood, relieved to be getting somewhere. Though she did steal a moment to shake her head as she witnesed Mack helped himself to his eleventh shortbread. I couldn't say the big friendly giant's occassional crude smirk between munches settled me.

"I didn't even know this part of Edinburgh existed," Jessica said. "It's lovely here Chris." She placed her phone on her knee, map finally forgotten. I smiled a little, not able to find the words to express what this world of regimental lawns and at attention trees meant to me.

I have no unhappy memories here.

I faltered, my hand curling into my shirt.

No unhappy memories, yet.