The story behind the picture
Rainbow over the Marshwood Vale
One evening in late autumn last year, I was driving home after a day’s work in Bristol. It was cold, the sky was tar-dark and I was counting down the minutes, knowing my husband and eldest son were waiting and had hung on specially for us all to eat together.
The drive took an oft-travelled route, which I’d got in the habit of parcelling into sections. Ten minutes from the town I’d just passed through to the next and ten from there to home. I was well over halfway now.
This particular stretch was my least favourite, the road a thin and winding ribbon; unlit, bar the lights from an occasional village or farmhouse. Serving as the link between two small towns, drivers mostly want to get from one to the next as quickly as possible and, whilst there’s never much traffic, sometimes cars really bomb.
As I exited the next small village, a car came up close, itching to go faster. I kept to my speed, still in a 30-mph zone, as I steered into a long curving bend. Suddenly, in my rearview mirror, I saw the driver pull out to overtake, in spite of the double white lines and the blind corner ahead. The driver couldn’t see what I already could – the supermarket delivery van coming straight at us.
I couldn’t quite believe what was happening, Time immediately slowed into a frame-by-frame sequence, just like in the movies. The supermarket van driver slammed on his brakes and I did the same, instinctively swinging my car to the left. There was no pavement, ditch or bank and, as my car climbed a vertical hedge, I prayed to God it wouldn’t flip and that the hedge would hold. The coming disaster flashed before me. Metal and flesh. Glass and bone. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so powerless.
Somehow, all three drivers proved superhuman. Even the idiot, finally aware that his and his passengers’ lives were in danger – probably the greatest danger of all - sped up crazy fast, avoiding a head-on collision by the narrowest of hair’s-breadth margins, though unable to avoid my car, writing off the right wing as he headed for the gap.
When I stopped, all four wheels finally back on the tarmac, the silence was so loud, it hurt my ears. We all waited a few beats before getting out, with the van driver gently asking if I was alright, putting his hand to my shoulder and reassuring me his dashcam would have caught the incident in full.
Names and details were grimly exchanged. The lack of words said everything. Finally, as we turned to go, the incredulous van driver couldn’t help himself. ‘Aren’t you even going to say sorry?’ he asked the idiot, who shrugged and replied ‘It was just one of those things’. So absurd, I almost laughed.
My car was still driveable and, somehow, I got home, where I told my tale, hugged my family and ate dinner in a daze before filing a police report and informing the insurance company. For the next couple of days, as well as talking through the accident with my friends, I took time off work, checking in with the local health centre to assess my cricked neck and ask how best to handle the ongoing sense of shock.
By the time the weekend came around, I had nothing more to say, but I knew I wasn’t OK. I needed some solitude to face up to the unthinkable. What might have been. I had the strange feeling I’d cheated death, but that death hadn’t admitted defeat and was still inside me somewhere, keen to exact its due.
I went for a long walk, parking the car high up at a local vantage point. The weather was in flux. Navy-blue clouds, pregnant with the threat of rain, alternated with bursts of white light. Life and death were battling for dominance in the sky it seemed - a perfect reflection of my emotions.
Eventually, I returned to my car, but, within a few hundred yards, I had to pull over again because there, in front of my eyes, a rainbow was forming, rising directly out of the ground.
Could anyone else see this? There was no one around. In my heightened state, the rainbow was just for me, bringing a clear message of hope and joy. Life had won the cosmic battle and everything was going to be OK. With the lingering darkness finally evicted, I began to cry.