WHIRLPOOL 

By Tessa Harvey


    Aaron's windscreen wipers were struggling with the deluge. Lights stretched endlessly in front and beyond. With relief he saw his turn-off coming up and slowed, indicating. A huge truck honked as it passed, like some massive snorting leviathan and the high tyre wash threatened to captize his tiny vehicle.
    I need a new car, he thought, for Anna and Sandra, but money was always needed for other things. He peered ahead and slewed recklessly to one side. His idiot neighbour was flagging him down, standing drenched in the road, hair plastered to his head, water flooding everywhere. Dimly, he saw two children peering out the car window, faces pale and blurred.
    Aaron just wanted to go home. His last call-out had been awful. A battered wife, husband drunk, sobbing. "I didn't mean it - she burned the meat!" The woman was slight, badly battered. She saw his face, saw love and empathy and smiled luminously and was gone. He had felt gutted.

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