Mr Wrong Read Online Free

sweet is separately wrapped. He was so long getting a sweet out of
the packet and then starting to peel off the sticky paper that she couldn’t wait.
    ‘Another thing. When she put out her arm to open the door, I saw her throat –’
    His fingers stopped unwrapping the paper. She glanced at them: he had huge, ugly hands that looked the wrong scale beside the small sweet –
    ‘She had a large sort of birth mark at the bottom of her throat, poor thing.’
    He dropped the sweet: bent forward in the car to find it. When, at last, he had done so, he put it straight into his mouth without attempting to get any more paper off. Briefly, the smell of
peppermint dominated the other, less pleasant odours. Meg said, ‘Of course, I don’t suppose for a moment you could have seen
that
.’
    Finally, he said: ‘I cannot imagine who, or what, you are talking about. I didn’t see any
girl
in the back of
your
car.’
    ‘But there couldn’t be someone in the back of my car without my knowing!’
    There seemed to Meg to be something wrong about his behaviour. Not just that it was unpleasant; wrong in a different way; she felt that he knew perfectly well about the girl, but wouldn’t
admit it – to frighten her, she supposed.
    ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
    He seemed to be very bad at lighting it. Two matches wavered out in his shaky hands before he got an evil-smelling fag going.
    Meg, because she still felt a mixture of terror and confusion about what had or had not happened, decided to try being very reasonable with him.
    ‘When you got into the car,’ she began carefully, ‘you kept saying “we” and talking about your secretary.
That’s
why I thought she must be.’
    ‘Must be what?’
    A mechanical response; sort of playing-for-time stuff, Meg thought.
    ‘You must excuse me, but I really don’t know what you are talking about.’
    ‘Well, I think you
do
. And before you can say “do what?” I mean
do
know what you are talking about.’
    She felt, rather than saw him glance sharply at her, but she kept her eyes on the road.
    Then he seemed to make up his mind. ‘I have a suggestion to make. Supposing we stop at the next service area and you tell me all about everything? You have clearly got a great deal on your
mind; in fact, you show distinct symptoms of being upset. Perhaps if we—’
    ‘No thank you.’ The idea of his being the slightest use to talk to was both nauseating and absurd. She heard him suck in his breath through his teeth with a small hissing sound: once
more she found him reminding her of a snake. Meg hated snakes.
    Then he began to fumble about again, to produce a torch and to ask for a map. After some ruminating aloud as to where they were, and indeed where his garage was likely to be, he suggested
stopping again ‘to give my, I fear, sadly weakened eyes an opportunity to discover my garage’.
    Something woke up in Meg, an early warning or premonition of more, and different trouble. Garages were not marked on her map. She increased their speed, stayed in the middle lane until a service
station that she had noticed marked earlier at half a mile away loomed and glittered in the wet darkness. She drove straight in and said:
    ‘I don’t like you very much. I’d rather you got out now.’ Again she heard him suck his breath in through his teeth. The attendant had seen the car, and was slowly getting
into his anorak to come out to them.
    ‘How cruel!’ he said, but she sensed his anger. ‘What a pity! What a chance lost!’
    ‘Please get out at once, or I’ll get the man to turn you out.’
    With his usual agility, he opened the door at once, and slithered out.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Meg said weakly: ‘I’m sure you did know about the girl. I just don’t trust you.’
    He poked his head in through the window. ‘I’m far from sure that
I
trust
you
.’ There were little bits of scum at the ends of his mouth. ‘I really feel that
you oughtn’t to drive alone if you are subject to