Driving

Crowley was doing a hundred and twenty miles an hour down Oxford Street.

He reached into the glove compartment for his spare pair of sunglasses, and found only cassettes.

Irritably he grabbed one at random and pushed it into the slot.

He wanted Bach, but he would settle for The Travelling Wilburys.

All we need is, Radio Gaga, sang Freddie Mercury.

All I need is out, thought Crowley.

He swung around the Marble Arch Roundabout the wrong way, doing ninety. Lightning made the London skies flicker like a malfunctioning fluorescent tube.

A livid sky on London, Crowley thought, And I knew the end was near. Who had written that?

Chesterton, wasn't it? The only poet in the twentieth century to even come close to the Truth.

The Bentley headed out of London while Crowley sat back in the driver's seat and thumbed through the singed copy of The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter.

Near the end of the book he found a folded sheet of paper covered in Aziraphale's neat copperplate handwriting. He unfolded it (while the Bentley's gearstick shifted itself down to third and the car accelerated around a fruit lorry, which had unexpectedly backed out of aside street), and then he read it again.

Then he read it one more time, with a slow sinking feeling at the base of his stomach.

The car changed direction suddenly. It was now heading for the village of Tadfield, in Oxfordshire. He could be there in an hour if he hurried.

Anyway, there wasn't really anywhere else to go.

***

Good Omens - Saturday