SERVICE STATION RENDEVOUZ

It was 2001 and things had changed. Joanie knew this because sitting in a service station with three of her grandkids all screaming impatiently for their McDonalds happy meals to be served she remembered the days when such places were just like heaven and you'd rarely encounter so much as a whisper about these motorway hideaways.

Stirring her cup of foamy coffee which was as tepid as dishwater while the grandchildren were caked in ketchup and mustard, Joanie was now remembering the heady times meeting her secret lover, Paul, every Thursday at their Newport Pagnell service station rendezvous once a month back in the late 1960s. There was a sense of freedom in meeting outside of normal society in this sort of consumer island for the upwardly mobile. The irony had often occurred to her that while she was enjoying her secret tryst, her husband Robert (also a salesman) would be in some other part of the country staying over in another service station and, who knows, perhaps even enjoying an affair himself. Paul had made the point (which Joanie mostly agreed with) that as long as a person conducted their secret liaisons in service stations then in a way they were exempt from the usual terms and conditions of society's rules. These were places that existed in between departure points and destinations, no man's lands and no woman's either.

"It's like a holiday escape from our mundane lives," Paul would say as he topped up her cup of tea and lit the end of her cigarette.

"It's bliss."

This wasn't anarchy but a civilized dalliance with hedonism served with a plate of cod in parsley sauce and occasionally if they were feeling especially fancy, oysters.

Dabbing the blobs of red and yellow condiment off the kids' grubby faces, she wondered when the decline of such civilised times set in. Come to think of it now, it was probably around the time in '71 that she and Paul finally ended their service station affair. She sighed. How she missed those times of making passionate love on Thursday afternoons after lunch in the Travel Lodge, the sound of passing traffic whizzing past their window in perfect sync with Paul's steady thrusts.

"All good things come to an end," he'd said pragmatically as they enjoyed their last prawn cocktails together, as she remembered the warm tears that fell from her eyes splashing onto the Marie Rose sauce drizzled over the prawn and lettuce leaves in her coupe glass below.

Joanie had been spotted at the Newport Pagnell service station by a friend who was on holiday with her husband and children and who had spied her enjoying a banana flambé with Paul, sharing the contents between them off the same spoon. Word had got back to her husband Robert and now she'd had to come clean about her Thursday afternoons. Paul, not prepared to uproot and leave his wife and kids for Joanie decided it was for the best that they end things where they'd started what was only ever meant to be a brief encounter.

"What was it Bogie said in Casablanca? We'll always have Paris?"

Joanie couldn't resist a riposte to his movie reference.

"We'll always have Newport Pagnell. Not quite as glamorous though, I suppose."

"Oh, I don't know."

And with that, Paul raised his arm so the waiter dressed like an air steward, could bring him the cheque as Joanie stirred the cream into her coffee.

"We found our Eden for a while back there. And just like Adam and Eve, we've been cast out of our paradise."

Looking surprised at Joanie's biblical analogy it was now Paul's turn to counter.

"The way of all flesh my dear. The way of all flesh," he proffered, dabbing at the spot of creamy pink sauce on her cheek with his napkin.

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The grandkids had all devoured their McDonalds and they were now just restlessly waiting for their mum to return from making her call outside.

"When's mum coming back, nanna?"

"Soon. She'll be back soon."

And as soon as she said it, Jane reappeared amongst the heaving hoards of people entering and exiting the main foyer of the service station.

Then, as she approached the table where they were all sitting, it suddenly occurred to Joanie just how much she looked like Paul. It was as if she'd been in denial about it all these past decades, however, seeing her now under the strip lighting of the service station made the similarity seem clearer than day and it made her blush to think that she might in fact not be Robert's child after all.

"You okay, mum? You look like you've seen a ghost."

And in a way she had;  she could hear Paul's parting words come back to haunt her as Jane put her arm around her shoulder and she accidentally muttered them under her coffee-scented breath.

"The way of all flesh."

"What's that?"

And as Joannie reflected once more on those illicit days with Paul on the M1, she suddenly thought of that famous L.P Hartley line - "the past is a foreign country."

"They used to serve prawn cocktails, here you know."