The lift shuddered to a halt and the steel door slid open. Rupert stepped forward but Phoebe blocked him.
“You have to believe me. I’ve dreamt the correct weather for the past few months. And every following night on the six o’clock news you’ve given the weather report exactly how it’s been in my dreams, except for tonight’s program. Tonight you got it wrong. Profoundly wrong. Please, Rupert, people are going to die and it’s going to be on your watch. Are you going to be able to live with that?”
She’s mad, stark raving mad, Rupert thought, his mind now racing wildly. She was one of those psychos who only happen to other people, other more famous people who work at the Beeb, he concluded, pushing past her, but it was flattering—his very own stalker. Not even that guy from Blue Peter had one.
“Please, I have a bus to catch.”
“Yes, I know, your car got damaged by a tree.”
He stopped, shocked. “How did you know that?”
“I told you I care.”
She stepped aside, then followed him, running to keep up with the long stride of the meteorologist.
“I can drive you,” she insisted, her hand clawing at his jacket as he tried to ignore her.
They reached the entrance to the car park. To Rupert’s surprise rain had now begun to fall in angry squalls carried by sudden blasts of bitterly cold wind. The temperature had dropped at least five degrees since they’d left his office, Rupert calculated—now that hadn’t been predicted by the Met Office. He glanced down at Phoebe—she might be mad but she was sexy. She smiled, a lingering sensual appraisal that felt like fingers on his body, experienced fingers that wanted to give him pleasure, unlike the reluctant and clumsy fumbling of his fiancée, who always seemed happy to receive pleasure but not to give it. Why did this strange young woman look so familiar? And what if she was right? It was an extraordinary claim, this psychic meteorological connection, but Rupert, despite his assertion of scientific rationalism, was not opposed to the extraordinary. After all, he’d often felt that his interest in meteorology was more of a spiritual calling than a scientific interest. Was he not a little like a prophet? Was it not a noble crusade to inform the British of the weather, a subject that shaped both the nation’s lives and conversation?
A flicker of pride burst into flame somewhere below his belly button. It felt suspiciously sexual and he struggled to ignore it. But he liked the feeling—he liked to feel important, indispensable to the British public—and here was a woman offering him the opportunity to become heroic.
As if intuiting his thoughts, Phoebe leaned into him, the tips of her soft breasts pressing against his chest. He could not or did not want to move.
“You see, Rupert, you are a national treasure, the weather vane of the nation. Unlike Penelope, I really understand the quintessential power of both your talent and position. You must take action!” Her voice and eyes were mesmerizing, but even more seductive was the idea that if she were right, he would be the first to raise the alarm, an act bound to both immortalize him and place him onto the plinth of history.
“What have you got to lose by believing me? If I’m wrong, your original weather report will keep your reputation intact; if I’m right and you act, you will be famous.”
It was all too much for the weatherman, who’d only been promoted to the six o’clock news three months before, his previous posting being the Norfolk rural radio station.
“Okay, we’ll drive to the Met Office in Exeter. If the readings bear out your story, I’ll organize an emergency news bulletin.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth Rupert regretted them, but it was too late now. Phoebe flung her arms around him and pulled him into an embrace.
“You see, I knew we were destined to be together,” she murmured into his left ear.
• • •
It took over an hour to get out of London. The temperature had dropped another five degrees, and it had grown so blustery that Phoebe’s small Volvo kept getting pushed across the motorway. Rupert stared out the window, increasingly dismayed by the deteriorating weather. He already had an image of his producer berating him in the morning. He glanced at the clock set in the dashboard. It was already quarter to nine. He knew the Met Office was bound to be manned tonight (it always was in weather emergencies), but as the heavy rain rattled down onto the roof of the car he wondered how they could have got the predictions so wrong. Judging by the direction of the wind, the weather must have arrived from mainland Europe. Surely the Met had had warnings from Holland, France, and Germany. For one horrible moment Rupert wondered whether there wasn’t some sinister political motive for keeping England in the dark, a conspiracy to bring down the country.
They turned onto the M3, driving past an accident now hauled onto the emergency road. A truck had turned onto its side and several cars following it had crashed into it. The red and blue lights of the ambulances and police cars blinked like demented beacons in the thickening fog and increasingly Rupert had the uncomfortable sensation that the two of them were like pilgrims driving out into the great unknown.
There was also the undeniable erotic tension between him and Phoebe. It was inevitable that his long legs kept accidentally brushing against her hand as she worked the gear stick. Or was it accidental? Rupert had the impression that the strange but hypnotically attractive woman sitting next to him might be touching him deliberately. He sneaked a look across at her, her determined profile illuminated in splashes of blue and red light. She appeared to be enjoying the crisis, even relishing the way she accelerated through endless gushes of water. And yet Rupert, normally a conservative man, found her obvious enthusiasm for the appalling weather immensely exciting. He too had always found that storms released the animal in him (or perhaps the anima, as a good Jungian mate of his would have called it)—a kind of instinctive joy, a wild reveling in the knowledge that there was something bigger than man, something that could throw ordinary life into utter chaos. Had he found his soul mate after all? And if so, where did this leave Penelope?
Meanwhile, at the wheel for what seemed like the first time in her life, Phoebe felt as if she was in the right place at the right time and, for once, sitting next to the right man. She would prevail and he would see how perfectly they were suited, would have a sudden epiphany, and the secret recesses of his psyche would spring open and he’d realize how many times they had already made love in their imaginations. In the meantime she was determined to get the weatherman to the Met Office before midnight so at least Rupert could broadcast a warning for the next morning for areas yet to be hit by the storm. The most important thing, though, was that he believed her.
But it was difficult to drive without being distracted by his physical presence. It wasn’t just the unerring sense of finally being with someone you’d imagined making love to every night for months; it was also the way the weatherman smelt that was driving her crazy. His scent was a delicious combination of a dry lemony aftershave, faint sweat, and a whiff of old leather. She could almost taste him. And already she was convinced she knew how his mouth would feel, the soft shimmering texture of his skin, the long slim legs, his chest covered with feathery blond hair and, most distractingly of all, the fee
l of his cock inside her. Her fingers tightened around the knob of the gear stick, the bulbous hot plastic suddenly flesh in her palm. She swerved suddenly as a cat dashed across the road.
“Whoa! You don’t want to get us killed en route, Phoebe.” Rupert rested his hand over her hand on the steering wheel, and immediately a bolt of electricity shot through her. He’d used her name, he’d used her name! All those nights she’d imagined that voice whispering her name at the height of passion, legs straddled over each arm of the lounge chair, and now he had spoken it. Her erotic reverie was broken by an awkward cough from Rupert.
“Look, I think I should phone the Met Office to let them know we’re coming, and perhaps I should phone home; my fiancée will be waiting.”
“But we’ll be there within two hours.” Phoebe sped up the car hopefully.
Rupert peered out the side window. If anything the weather appeared to be worsening. Sheets of water were beating down and the trees on the bank opposite the freeway were now bending like palm trees in a hurricane. To Rupert’s horror, he suddenly realized they were elms—he’d never seen English trees so stressed. Now for the first time that evening he was afraid they wouldn’t reach the Met Office in time.
“Look, turn off the next country lane. I think we should at least try to find a phone booth. Please, Phoebe!”
Phoebe turned at a sign reading “DOGSWOOD VILLAGE—3 miles.” The road immediately narrowed into a bumpy country road, then narrowed again into a lane. Visibility was bad. On either side of the car there seemed to be nothing but the looming shadow of forest, which now appeared to lurch from side to side like drunken demons. Frightened she might blow a tire on the uneven surface, Phoebe slowed down. The car bumped and groaned over the road surface like a ship on a stormy ocean. Anxious, Rupert unwound his window slightly. The car was immediately filled with the sound of creaking and the loud roar of the wind. There was no sign of a phone booth or any other mark of civilization. Suddenly Phoebe screeched to a halt, jolting Rupert forward violently in his seat.