Andy’s not been himself today. He seems very quiet and still but when I look across at him, I can see his lips moving as if he’s talking to somebody or silently reciting something. When I ask him what’s the matter, he says ‘Nothing’ and looks all surprised. I get the feeling he’s not really here with me at all, that he’d rather be with someone else. He won’t talk about it.

I’m here, aren’t I? he says, as if just being here is enough.

If you don’t want to be with me, you only have to say so, I say.

He says nothing. Then, later on, he says, Don’t you want me here? And on it goes. I can see we’ll end up going stir crazy in this car. Perhaps it was a mistake to think we could make it out here. The further we go, the more we are haunted by the choices we’ve made, the routes we’ve taken and the places we’ll never go. All these unfulfilled journeys live with us now, filling the space with never-ending recriminations – ‘What if... what if...’

It was never like this before. Back then every choice we made was the right choice. Wherever we went, we had green lights all the way; whenever we wanted to stop, there was always a parking space for us.  We got a good table in every restaurant and the best tickets for all the shows. Everything worked perfectly for us then. We were always on the move, never meeting in the same place twice, so eager to go on to the next location we were constantly leaving almost before we had arrived. We were famous for it. Look at those two, people said, so much to do, so many places to go.

We met in foyers and on street corners, in doorways and at bus stops. We parted when the lights turned red and always left the engine running while we talked. Often when he saw me, he would start moving off before I arrived so that no time was wasted in getting going. We were cool, light and off-hand with each other because the time we had together was simply what we could spare between being in one place or another.

When we wanted to relax, we drove out to look at the new suburbs, places that were still waiting to be spoilt. We loved to admire the crushed gravel driveways, the various types of traffic calming devices, and the variegated shades of paving stone used to separate pedestrian and non-pedestrian areas. We cruised the avenues of low-lying bungalows – safe houses, we called them, because they looked like places where people on the run could hide out, maybe even assume a new identity. There were times when we felt in need of some witness protection.

We never went home. If we wanted to sleep, we checked into a motel or stayed over at a party, although we never knew whose party it was or who lived there. Breakfast was on the run, lunch was drive-thru and dinner was take-away. We were always on the point of departure but never getting anywhere. I suppose we were too busy running away to notice what was going on and then, after a while, it was too late to change direction. We had to keep on going.

Now when I think about it, it all seems like such a long time ago. I can’t help wondering if it really happened. Everything about it reminds me of a film I once saw but can’t remember seeing.

It's easier to think about the man and the woman, even though I find them odd and baffling, like somebody else’s children. They exist in a closed dark world governed by the steady routine of work, bodily functions, chores and the slowly evolving pattern of the TV schedules. Every day they try to sleep and when they can’t, they watch TV, the next best thing or possibly even better. When they see something on TV which they like, they say ‘That’s good’ and seem genuinely pleased to have seen it. When something they like comes to an end, they search for something else, or re-watch something which they know is good, or watch something bad in hope that it will get better, or even watch something which they know is irredeemably bad simply because it is better than having nothing to watch at all.

Everything runs like clockwork around them. The garbos arrive punctually at 5 am on Mondays. The nature strip is tidied on Fridays and the Seventh Day Adventists call fortnightly. On Tuesdays, a neighbour plays old rock ’n’ roll records and on Sundays there is piano practice. All afternoon, the man and the woman listen to the slow, stumbling attempts at scales, rising and falling. One day, the neighbour goes away and doesn’t come back. A radio has been left on and at any time of day or night, the tinkle of classical music can be heard through the wall like a faint, never-ending film score.

Sometimes the man and the woman talk about finding a new place to live, a place where they can make a fresh start, where things will be better for them and they can build a new life. But nothing ever happens. They lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling without touching one another. The black cat blinks and licks. And licks. And licks. The cat licks so much, it is starting to lose its fur. Tiny black tufts are blown through the house, rolling across the floor like tumbleweed. The cat is a mess, bald and scrawny like a dissident, but still it continues to lick bare patches of skin. It won’t give in. The man and the woman talk to the cat. Don’t do it, they say, you’ll only make it worse for yourself. But the cat doesn’t understand.

The man gets up to make some tea. Kettle, water, cups, stove, gas, match. Two tea bags. The man doesn’t have to think about what he does. His body remembers the daily rituals and carries them out with an unswerving devotion to duty. He looks at the tea bags lying at the bottom of the cups. Something is wrong. There is something different about these tea bags. Instead of the familiar purple tags, these tea bags have blue ones. What happened to the purple ones? Nobody knows. One day they were there and the next they were gone. Sometimes that happens.

Soon it will be time to go to work.

The man sits alone on a train stranded between stations, waiting for the clanking and jolting of the carriage to start up again. Outside it is perfectly black. The man presses his face against the window. In the distance, a few lonely street lights cast an orange glow, but it is hard to tell where they are. The man sit and waits.

Suddenly, he hears a cough. At first it is quite soft. Ahem. The man can’t tell if it is in his carriage or not. Uuurhum. There it is again. The man tries to ignore it but this time it is louder. Perhaps it is coming closer. The man listens to the cough. It sounds like a male cough but he can’t be sure. It could be somebody impersonating a male cough, although it sounds more like somebody pretending to impersonate a male cough. Huhhuhrumph. The cough becomes more persistent and vigorous. It is still a cough but faster now and almost continuous. It is not a fake cough but neither is it a real cough, a cough with purpose. It is merely somebody making a coughing noise.

The man wishes the cough would go away. It makes him feel lonely.

When the man gets off the train, he walks down the road towards the service station. As usual the man is alone but tonight he stops in the middle of the road and listens, holding his breath. Then he quickens his pace and looks over his shoulder as he walks along. Shadows of trees sway across the brick walls of derelict buildings. There is rustling in the undergrowth. A loose sheet of roofing is banging in the wind. The man walks on.

Suddenly he sees something coming towards him down the middle of the road, a pale, silvery shape floating rapidly through the shadows, disappearing from view and then reappearing, flickering like an old black and white film or the lights from a passing train. The shape appears human but unformed, like the disjointed body parts of a skeleton suit moving together without any apparent means of connection. The shape moves in and out of the pools of light, skirting the edges of the shadows like an animal, drawing ever closer. Whatever it is, there is no time for the man to escape. He stops and waits for the shape to approach him.

As it gets closer, the nebulous shape starts to assume a distinct identity. The man sees it is in fact a young boy, thin and scrawny like an escapee from a camp, nearly naked. His skin is luminous like the delicate flesh of a sea creature never before exposed to sunlight, and he is running as hard as he can, panting heavily, arms flailing wildly as if blown from behind. Before the man can move, the boy is past him without even glancing in his direction, veering off course to one side like a plane sliding out of control. He leaps through a gap in the fence and disappears on to a patch of lightly-wooded waste ground littered with the dark shapes of rusting car bodies.

The man stands alone on the street again. He listens to the sound of the boy crashing through the undergrowth. Then everything goes silent. Moments later, he hears a car speeding towards him, the engine racing hard in low gear. The man looks up and sees the car bearing down on him, headlights on full beam. He steps aside and the car screams past. The driver is hunched over the steering wheel, peering through the windscreen, his face illuminated by the glow of the dashboard lights. The man knows that the driver is looking for the young boy. The reasons why are irrelevant, a matter for the boy and the driver alone, although dozens of scenarios are possible. As far as the man is concerned, it is a question of the boy versus the driver, the runner versus the car, man against machine. What are the chances of a boy outrunning a car? He has no chance. Not unless he stays on the waste ground. So long as he stays there, he has a chance.

The man wonders if he should do something.

He continues walking towards the orange glow of the service station.

Hey, mate...

Suddenly the man is awake – but was he really asleep? It feels as if he’s been staring at the highway for hours – maybe days – without realising it. Perhaps he only dreamt it? It unnerves him to think that he might be dreaming about watching an empty highway...

Hey, mate...

The man is shocked to discover two people standing at the counter – just kids really, a boy and a girl, breathless and pale, bright-eyed like road kill caught in the headlights. He realises too late that he has left the door unlocked. He wasn’t expecting anybody. He didn’t hear them come in and there is no car on the forecourt.

The man is so surprised to find somebody actually standing there in his glass box, his first impulse is to call for help. The service station has an alarm system which is activated by a big red button underneath the counter. It is linked to the local police station, enabling help to be summoned within minutes. The control panel for the alarm system is on the wall behind him. It has a blinking green light and makes a loud whirring noise which drives the man crazy. Sometimes he turns the alarm off simply to get some peace. The man listens for the whirring noise. It is not there. In its place he can hear the rapid breathing of the boy and the girl. He thinks he can hear his own heart beating painfully fast. He wonders if he should do something and if so, what it might be.

The boy does a rapid sideways glance and leans towards the man, balancing on the edge of the counter with his feet off the ground. He has watery eyes which protrude slightly and a tiny white scar in the middle of his forehead, perhaps the legacy of a childhood accident, the result of falling through a window while playing.

Hey, mate...

The boy looks as if he wants to tell the man something confidential but is too embarrassed to spit it out. His head drops and he starts to giggle. The girl continues to stare at the man, unmoving. She looks sullen and shocked as if somebody just woke her up for no good reason. She is chewing carefully and regularly, her jaw moving up and down like a piston caught in slow motion.

Hey, mate, says the boy, as if finally making up his mind what he wants to say. We were wondering if you might be able to help us...

The boy looks up at the man and gives him a small wink and – what was that? – a smile? He slides off the counter and takes a step backwards, watching the man all the time. Nobody says anything. The only thing moving is the girl’s jaw, up and down, round and round. She has a way of snapping her teeth together at the end of each chew as if biting into something hard.

For a long time, the man stares at the boy and the girl. They are wearing identical tracksuits and joggers. Standing next to each other, they look remarkably alike. They could be brother and sister. They could almost be mistaken for the same person. The man wants to do something but is powerless to move, to escape, to take control. If only he had a dog, a big black dog which spent all its time sleeping behind the counter, oblivious to everything that happened, but always ready to be roused in an instant at his command to bark and snarl and rip at the soft flesh...

But there is no dog. The man is disappointed. This wasn’t what he was expecting at all. He always knew that he was there for a purpose, to fulfil a specific role, but he never really imagined that he would become a bit player in a service station heist, the softest of targets, a faceless figure whose only function is to open the till on demand. And yet what did he expect? Wasn’t it obvious all along? So obvious that anybody would think that this is what he wanted to happen.

The man feels a spasm of rage like a bad cramp. He has found the strength needed to wield an iron bar, to leap from behind the counter and bring the blunt instrument crashing down on the boy’s skull, hearing the whoosh of the bar through the air, feeling it jar in his hands as it smashes into the bone, watching the boy’s legs buckle and then hold, then sway sideways as his body starts to topple... If only he had an iron bar.

Or a gun. Already the man can feel the weight of it in his hand, heavier than he expected so that when he raises it, the end of the barrel wobbles slightly and he has difficulty aiming it straight. The sound of the gun in that tiny glass box is shattering. For a moment, all the man can feel is the pain in his ears and the wrench of his arm and the smell in his nostrils of a well-oiled machine exploding in a controlled, precise, efficient manner. And then there is more sound, screaming and cries of pain, the bullet smashing into the girl’s jaw – maybe on a downstroke – and exiting via her cheek before coming to rest somewhere among the sweet packets. Blood splatters onto the white tiles – too many to count – and for a moment, everything goes slo-mo as if to make the most of it, to stop it from accelerating out of sight.

The man sighs. He stares at the boy and girl and they stare back impassively, waiting for whatever must happen to run its course. So far there has been no intimidation, no swearing, no violent scattering of the counter-top displays, but all of these things are possible, perhaps even expected. On the other hand, it could be that the boy and the girl are also victims, the products of broken homes and an uncaring society. All they really want is the man’s help, a lucky break to put them back on course, an act of kindness from a total stranger to restore their faith in humankind. Either way, this is a pivotal moment for the man and the boy and the girl. Whatever happens next will set the pattern for the events that follow.

Moving very slowly, like an astronaut experiencing his first taste of true weightlessness, the man goes over to the till and opens it.

When the boy and girl are gone – spilling onto the forecourt, hooting with laughter, disappearing into the darkness at a steady jog – the man switches on the alarm and summons the police. The whirring noise seems even louder now. The man looks out at the empty highway. Half an hour later, a white car rolls onto the forecourt and two sleepy cops wander over to the office. What’s up, they say. What’s going on?

Soon it will be time to stop again. It’s been one of the longest days so far and I know we’ve made some progress, although where it is leading us remains a mystery. Do I really care about the man and the woman? I want them to continue, to exist and survive but maybe that’s only because I want to find out what happens to them in the end. If I already knew then there wouldn’t be any point to it, apart from knowing what was going to happen to them and then watching it happen like in a re-run, but that’s something different altogether, not the same thing at all.

Lately I’ve taken to deciding when and where we stop. At first I did it to get back at Andy and his map reading, but I soon discovered that it made no difference to him at all. It was easy to convince him that we were where he thought we were. Soon he started to believe that wherever we stopped was the right place. It didn’t matter where we went, if I made wrong turnings or drove dead slow, we always ended up where we were supposed to be. Nothing I did could throw him off course; it’s almost as if he no longer cares.

And in some ways that’s even worse than before. Now I have no idea where we are, and he has an idea which is totally wrong.