Siren song

All things considered that year was the crappiest year of my life. My father died suddenly in February. As hard as my father’s death was for me to accept it was incalculably worse when, three months later, a stroke took my mother. To top it all, four months after that my girlfriend decided we should start ‘seeing other people’.
So, I wasn’t feeling too great that stormy night driving along the quite road between the villages of Hollingdon and Carlford. I was about mid way between them when I saw her in the lights of my car. I stopped, not so much because I wanted to, but more because of an overwhelming compulsion. She climbed into the passenger seat beside me and in the most musical voice I’d ever heard thanked me for stopping and gave me a smile that instantly drove my dark mood away. She explained that she had stormed away from her boyfriend after a row, before it had started to rain.
I asked where home was, she said Carlford. So off we set, my bad mood gone with the easing rain. We talked freely as we drove, about everything and anything until we reached the petrol station on the outskirts of Carlford. I was getting low on petrol so I asked if she minded if I stopped to fill up. With another of those intoxicating smiles she said that she wasn’t in any hurry. So I pulled in. I remember, before I went in to pay asking if she wanted anything – she said no, she was fine. When I got back to the car it was empty. She was gone. I started to call out but realised that in the whole time we’d talked I’d never asked her name. I waited for a time; I even searched the petrol station for her. Then I thought maybe she’d decided to walk the rest of the way so I set out once more but there was no sign of her on the road. For the rest of the night I drove around Carlford desperate to see her again. There was no sign of her and eventually, with regret, I gave up and carried on home. Surprisingly though, in the days that followed my brightened mood remained and I was able to deal with the problems of my life, to move on with it. Still I couldn’t forget her and a couple of weeks later I found myself travelling that same road once more. Not surprisingly perhaps there was no sign of her, not on the road or in Carlford.
It’s funny but my life changed on that stormy night, I found something inside that made me want to go on. Still, every now and again I find myself on that road or driving around Carlford looking for the pale willowy girl with bright eyes and a smile that could drive the deepest of shadows away even though, deep down, I know I’ll never see her again.