Chapter 14

She drove around the small handful of tiny villages in the area around the shop. Two of them had pubs and the slightly larger village had a church with overgrown graveyard.

The day was barely into the afternoon and despite the quiet nature of the place, people were out and about, mostly expensive tractors driving around the country roads and retired people shuffling around the main streets of the villages.

She hoped to stay in the area and find somewhere very secluded to hide for the evening, although outside of the villages she worried that anywhere she managed to park would be private land.

squeezing the car tight into a layby, she began trying to use her phone maps to find somewhere public property but guaranteed to be private.

This time she spotted a disused railway bridge. Street View helped find potential access to what looked to be a crumbling gravel road going through an arch, just branching off from a country road. With the lights off, she could probably be invisible.

She set the sat nav and made her way in that direction. If she could camp out here for the day unnoticed, she felt like she would be safe for the night.

She arrived. The car struggled a little as it climbed the steep, crumbling path away from the road towards the archway. She realised the arch was blocked at the other end as she pulled in. No chance of it being used. She thought to herself in the unlikely chance of her car being spotted at night, they would probably just assume someone pulled over to sleep and not to bother her.

For the first time in a while, she felt some level of motivation. She logged into her game and tried to pass the time.

Over the next few hours she joined in with the group chat and her character levelled up, a minor feeling of accomplishment, at least starting to enjoy herself.

She barely noticed it was getting dark, she had also not been aware of a single car passing on the road below. The only thing which snapped her back to reality was a hollow rumble from her stomach. She had forgotten to eat.

She reached into the back seat for a pack of crisps and suddenly noticed the dark outside. With the snacks open on her lap she took a look outside in all directions. No traffic, no lights on. With some level of trepidation she reached back again and pulled out a bottle of the red wine.

Cautiously she unscrewed the top, took another scan of the area, put the bottle to her lips and took a long drink.

It had been so long now since she touched alcohol and perhaps with the empty stomach, she felt it hit her head almost immediately.

She started to feel very warm inside and slightly light headed. For the first time in a long time she smiled and took another long drink.

She kept playing her game as she drank more and worked her way through the crisps. She caught herself making silly mistakes as she tried PvP and was starting to make awkward typos as she was talking. Time to log off, before she had real damage to her account.

With nothing much to do, she watched short videos for a while, finishing the first bottle and fumbling to open a second.

Hiccuping to herself and starting to get bored she opened her e-girl app. She didn't need the money from this anymore, but she did want some attention again.

There was a couple of small payments for the very old photosets and a couple of messages, but the account was pretty much dead.

Trying, but probably failing to look attractive she managed to hold up her phone and take a couple of selfies with herself holding the bottle. She made pouting and kissing expressions trying not to giggle and uploaded them.

Almost immediately she had a small handful of likes from strangers who were following her account, so she opened the chat.

There was nobody in her room, but the one account in her personal friends list showed Drake to be online.

She typed to him. "Hi. How are you?"

She stared at the screen waiting to see the reply. This took a while before she saw he was typing back.

"Hi. Im ok, its been a while. You're drinking?"

"Yes lmao. I need one so badly."

Long pause. "Probably should do that at home, not in the car, ok?"

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Are you at home?"

"No. Just parked somewhere quiet."

Again, a long gap. "We should talk properly."

She didn't like how serious he sounded, but did want to talk. She opened the voice chat and added him, then waited for him to join.

"Carpool? Hello?" He said as the chat connected.

Evie belched, she propped the phone up against the dashboard so the camera faced her and smiled. "Hi Drake." The phone fell down.

"Oh damn. You are drunk. What's going on?"