Nine and Three
(Lauren pulls out of the car park at Shane’s flat. Her licence is three weeks old, and this is her first time on the motorway.)
Shane: Seat belt.
Lauren: It’s on.
Shane: It is. Sorry. Twenty years of saying it.
Lauren: Which way at the roundabout?
Shane: Second exit. You don’t have to signal that early, but it isn’t wrong.
Lauren: I know it isn’t wrong. That’s why I did it.
Shane: Fair.
(They join the slip road.)
Shane: Now, you have to be at their speed before you’re in their lane. Not after.
Lauren: I know.
Shane: Mirror, though. Mirror. Good. That was lovely, actually.
Lauren: You sound surprised.
Shane: I sound relieved. There’s a difference.
Shane: Speed limit drops to fifty at the roadworks, by the way. Fifty for a reason, not for the cameras.
Lauren: There’s a lecture coming. I can hear it warming up.
Shane: There isn’t. I’ve retired.
Lauren: Sixty-eight.
Shane: What?
Lauren: You keep checking the speed. I’m doing sixty-eight. The limit’s seventy.
Shane: I’m not checking the speed.
Lauren: You’re looking at my hands.
Shane: I’m not.
Lauren: Shane. You’ve been looking at my hands since the traffic lights on Mill Street.
Shane: …They’re too high. Quarter to three, that’s all I’ll say. Ten to two is old-fashioned now.
Lauren: You taught ten to two for twenty years.
Shane: I did. I was wrong for about nine of them.
(A blue sign goes past.)
Lauren: Was that ours?
Shane: Was what ours?
Lauren: That sign.
Shane: …
Lauren: Shane.
Shane: Take the next one. We’ll come back down the other side. It adds about eleven minutes.
Lauren: You missed it.
Shane: I did.
Lauren: You should have been watching the signs.
Shane: I should. Do you want to know the worst part? I’ve told about four hundred people that the driver reads the road and the passenger reads the signs.
Lauren: And what were you reading?
Shane: Your hands.
Lauren: Both of them?
Shane: Both of them. All the way from Mill Street.