Anyway, this year, Helena had a New Year’s Eve party to go to in Madrid, organized by the Spanish publisher she works for. She was planning on spending New Year’s Day and the following days up to the 6th January with Mikey in his flat in one of the newer Madrid suburbs. I stayed at home in Benihogar as Tommo was driving down on the evening of the 31st December from Barcelona to stay with me for a long weekend. He’d been dumped by his latest girlfriend some three days before. As a result, he didn’t feel at all like celebrating the year’s end.

So it was that I went out for a drive – wearing my best Christmas jumper as the day was chilly – on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. I was bound for the nearby supermarket, to stock up on meat, bacon, serrano ham, meatballs, and sausages for Tommo’s sake. Helena and I have gone vegetarian since the boys left home, but Tommo has remained fiercely carnivore. Mikey has opted to be pescatarian – eating fish and vegetables, but excluding the meat of four-legged animals or birds from his diet – a sort of halfway house, I guess.

On my drive home from the supermarket in the late afternoon, I felt waves of tiredness wash over me, and my eyelids began to droop.

I had just reached the ring road around Benihogar, five minutes from home, when my eyes shut for a split second. During that brief moment of inattention, the Gold Bug slid over into the oncoming lane (mercifully empty of any approaching vehicles) and went off the road. I opened my eyes to find the car smashing through a low wire fence around a smallholding, and landing with a bump on the tilled earth three metres below road level. There, she careered onwards with pent up velocity, colliding crunchingly into seven low olive trees, one after the other, and ending up snagged on the split trunk of the last one. This halted my unexpected New Year’s Eve cross-country jaunt stone cold dead.

As the golden beetle ground to an abrupt halt, the windscreen shattered into a hundred little crystal particles which cascaded down onto the buckled bonnet. I stared ahead, numb but fully awake by now. The sudden stillness and silence around me, as the car jerked to a stop, was positively unnerving.

Automatically, I unbuckled the seatbelt and opened and stepped gingerly out of the driver’s door. The adrenaline was still pumping through my veins, so I didn’t feel any aches in my joints at that stage.

It was then that I saw the female figure walking towards me in the growing gloom. At first, I assumed she was the wife of the smallholder, which was slightly unusual because they usually only visited Benihogar in the spring or summer months. However, instead of rubber boots on her feet, a warm quilted top, sensible jeans on her legs, and her head sporting a woollen bobble hat, this woman’s outfit was wildly mismatched to the place and the season.

Her flame-red hair was caught up in a purple scarf, a colour-matched lavender cardigan and mauve blouse were draped stylishly over her slender upper body. A heather-hued, checked tweed skirt hugged her hips, and her feet were squeezed into elegant violet-coloured patent-leather high-heels.

‘Gertie!’ I blurted out. For it was my mother-in-law. However, she wasn’t drained of colour and energy as I had last seen her in her final illness during the pandemic. This was Gertie Greaves in her prime, as she had been when Helena first took me to meet her in her flat in Marine Drive, Brighton some forty years earlier.

‘You were going at quite a lick there, Dickie!’ she exclaimed.

‘Inadvertently!’ I answered.

‘And my poor old Gold Bug. She’s for the scrap heap, clearly. Precious little scarab.’

‘I’m sorry…,’ I began.

‘No matter. Nothing lasts for ever. But let’s not waste time talking about the car. We have a limited window of opportunity.’

‘For what?’

‘I wanted to let you know I intervened on your behalf.’

‘With who?’

‘The higher ups.’ She gave an exaggerated eye-roll.

‘And why?’

‘I always felt you should’ve dedicated yourself to writing, Dickie, not teaching!’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Those lovely poems you wrote for Helena when you first met. The cracking slice-of-life short stories you crafted around that time, too. I found them fun. And now that you’ve retired, I believe you should focus on literary pursuits in your final years. That’s why I asked the powers-that-be for an extension for you! You haven’t got round to it yet, so I put in a word for you!’

‘Well, thank you, Gertie!’

‘Don’t mention it. Now, message Tommo. He’ll be at your house very shortly and wondering where you are.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. Send him your location and he’ll come and take you to A&E tonight for a check up. Then he’ll help you with the tow truck and the insurance tomorrow.’

‘OK!’ I said. ‘But how do you know all of this?’

‘Dickie, What can I say? One has a different perspective after death. Now the donkey man will be along in a minute to open the gate to this property and let you out. So shake your stumps and pack up the food and the car papers, ready to go. And don’t forget to message Tommo.’

I suppose the adrenaline was still dulling the pain, and the shock also meant that I accepted what was happening unquestioningly. I mean it’s not every day that you have a lengthy converstion with your late mother-in-law. But it didn’t strike me as odd at the time.

On auto-pilot, I took the supermarket bag of food and the papers from the car and closed and locked the driver’s door carefully, although the passenger side was completely caved in. Then I walked over to the gate, while Gertie stayed with the Gold Bug. I guess she was bidding the car farewell.

Standing by the gate, I sent Tommo a WhatsApp explaining: ‘Just had a car accident. Here’s my location. Can you pick me up?’

‘Sure, Dad. On my way!’ came the reply. ‘Are you OK?’

Just then, Pepe-Luis arrived leading his donkey with a rope halter.