The Hitchhiker Got Out Before I Stopped

I picked him up in the rain, which was my first mistake, and I picked him up because he was old, which is not a defence, only an explanation.

He was maybe seventy. Flat cap. Wet through. He said thank you and got in the back, which I thought was odd, but old men are odd, and I am not the police.

He did not speak for twenty miles.

Then he said, "You can let me out here."

There was nothing there. Motorway. Hard shoulder. Rain.

I said I could not stop on a motorway and I would take him to the services, eight miles on, and he said, again, in the same flat voice: "You can let me out here."

I said no. I want that on the record: I refused. I kept driving.

The interior light came on.

You know the little chime — the one that says a door is open. It went. At just under sixty miles an hour, on a motorway, in the rain, the light came on and the chime went and I felt the change in the air on the back of my neck.

I did not look. I have thought a thousand times about the fact that I did not look, and I have never decided whether it was cowardice or the most sensible thing I have ever done.

I pulled over about a mile later, on the hard shoulder, with my hazards on, and I sat with my hands on the wheel for a long time, and then I turned round.

The back seat was empty. The door was shut. Properly shut — you can tell, the light was off.

The seat was warm and damp.

I drove to the services and I bought a coffee I did not drink and I sat in the car park until it was light.

Here is my note of doubt, and it is a real one: it was raining, I was tired, and a door can be ajar and re-seat itself.

But a man was in my car, and then he was not, at sixty miles an hour, and my back seat was wet exactly in the shape of a man.