Daddy's Here(18)
“I’m fine,” I replied. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know. Hold on, I’ll go and look.”
The bus driver answered my question before he was able to squeeze past me. “Sorry folks,” he shouted. “Engine trouble. Just stay where you are for now and we’ll soon be on our way.”
He was wrong. The bus hadn’t moved a muscle by the time sun set. We might have been all right if we were still on the dual carriageway but down a tiny rural road like this, things were very different.
We were stranded in the middle of nowhere and not a single bar of phone signal was to be found by anyone. In the end the driver wandered off to try and find a phone, leaving the rest of us to sit and wait. And wait. And wait.
Not long after the sun had set, I went to find Daddy. He was standing by the front of the bus, leaning back against it with his arms folded. “You all right?” he asked when I stepped off to find him.
“Bored,” I replied.
“Look, you stay here, I’ll be back soon.”
“Where are you going?”
“You’ll see,” he said in a voice that suggested I’d get nothing else out of him.
“I can’t believe no one else has driven down here all day,” I said.
“They have, you were asleep.”
“I was?”
“I found you draped over the seat earlier. You were snoring.”
“I don’t snore.”
“Must have been someone else then.”
“So, hang on? People have been driving past? How come none of them offered to help?”
“A few stopped but what could they do? It’d have to be a pretty big car to fit all seventeen of us in it.”
“But a replacement should be here by now?”
“You’d think. You stay here, I won’t be long.”
“What if a bus comes while you’re gone?”
“Then you get to escape.”
I thought about that as he walked away, his shoulders hunched against the growing wind. He soon vanished into the darkness and I was alone, all the other passengers still on the bus. I looked left, then right, then made a snap decision. I should run, get away from him. Someone like that wouldn’t stick to a deal. This was a trick while he got a car and then he was going to drag me home. I just knew it.
I had the perfect opportunity to get away from him. Making sure he’d really gone, I gave him another couple of minutes before heading off the road onto the verge. I tried to break into a run but almost at once I came up against a row of trees. I slowed, weaving between them, the bus disappearing from sight behind me. Almost at once, my chest began to tighten. The only noise was the wind through the branches and I felt scared, no, I felt terrified.
I’d never been good in the dark and in woods in the middle of nowhere, I felt like such an idiot for trying to run. I made it back to the bus after an awful couple of minutes of being certain I was going to die. I thought he was back when I saw someone with the passengers but I quickly realised it wasn’t him, it was the driver in the middle of a sentence.
“-offers its apologies but there is a guesthouse just half a mile up the road. The company’ll pay for you to stay the night and then the replacement will be here first thing tomorrow.”
I looked down the road as the passengers all began to gather their things. “Your Daddy’s back,” the salesman said as he stepped off the bus, pointing into the distance. From the gloom, a figure emerged, striding over to me without a care in the world.
“What’s happening?” he asked, looking at the huddle of people waiting for the driver to lead them onwards.
“We’re being put up for the night down the road. Bus company’s treat.”
“You’ll have a job. The place is booked up.”
“What? But the driver said.”
“Not a single room left for them.”
“Then there’s no point going.”
“I said no room for them.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I took the last room for us.”
“You did?”
“There’s only one problem.”
“Which is?”
“It’s a single. Reckon you’ll be all right sharing with Daddy?”
He looked like he was smiling but in the dark it was hard to tell. “You want me to keep calling you that?”
“Doesn’t bother me.”
“Well, I haven’t got much choice. You haven’t told me your name yet.”
“Jake. Jake Murdoch.”
“I prefer Daddy.”
“I thought you might. Well let’s get moving. It’s time for Daddy to put his little girl to bed.”