Disconnecting

"You're breaking up!" He yells this at the hands-free as if sheer lung power is going to overcome the combination of the foul weather and the road about to be swallowed by the tunnel ahead. The line goes dead as the final gossamer thread of the crackling conversation with his wife snaps leaving only the clatter of the rain and the rhythmic swoosh of the wipers as they endlessly fail to clear the windscreen. As the car enters the tunnel, the noise of the wipers and the rain ceases and suddenly, he is able to able to gather his thoughts.

He hates this job. Travelling, always travelling. Driving here, flying there, hotel rooms that all blend into one well-appointed, lonely cell. Yes, he is well paid - ridiculously so, some might say. This has enabled him to buy all the toys that allow him to 'play hard' when he isn't working his arse off: the joint ownership of the ski chalet (hardly manage to get there); the home gym (barely touched, his once toned body now seems to spread to fill the seat of the Merc); the golf club membership (not even sure where his clubs are); and the house in the Cotswolds (although he gets there fairly regularly, it just provides a change of scenery for emailing, business calls and report writing). Somewhere along the way, he seems to have managed to find the time to marry well (she's old money, terribly sweet and knows how to organise dinner parties although the sat-nav probably says more to him in the course of the week than she does) and to have two young children. When business colleagues ask about his family, he sometimes finds himself struggling to recall their ages. Hell, it was only a couple of weeks back, he even got one of their names wrong. Still, the job pays for them to have the best start that money can buy. They won't have to fight their way up the greasy pole in the way he has had to, no sir. Much as he hates the job, it pays for the perfect lifestyle, the lifestyle that others envy. Whenever he feels it all becoming a little too much, when he feels a tingle in the left arm, the racing pulse, the shortness of breath, he tells himself that it is all worth it in the end.

His reverie breaks as he realises that he is out of the tunnel and the storm has mostly blown itself out. The console display suddenly flashes and the soothing female voice of the car's comms system purrs "You have voicemail". The network must be up again after the storm he thinks and, pressing a button on the steering wheel, he settles back to listen to the message from his wife and over the course of the next one minute and twelve seconds, he finds that the message is still breaking up: his family, his world, his hard shell of success. One too many parents' evenings missed, one too many dinner parties not attended, leaving his wife to hold the babies once too often. All in a voicemail. One minute and twelve seconds. Disconnected.