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A man walks across a dark, rainy car-park to his small family hatchback and settles into the nondescript interior with a sigh.

It has been a long day. A woman went insane in the dairy aisle and the smell of fermented dairy produce has somehow followed him to the car. He leans forward to start the engine and with a grimace realises his shoes are still coated in stinking, fruit yoghurt. He opens the window a little and then puts the blowers on to try and keep condensation off the windscreen. As the car pulls away into the rain, he thinks he sees a Japanese schoolgirl standing beside the hedgerow, but as the car headlights round on the space it turns out to be nothing more than a collection of plastic bags, dumped beside an already full recycling bin.

The deputy manager is late to collect his wife from the gymnasium where she works on the other side of the out of town retail park. He drives diagonally across the empty car park spaces, taking a short cut the wrong way across a roundabout to reach the gym quicker. Approaching the imposing grey composite and neon frontage, he is shocked to see his wife, sharing a cigarette with one of the other gym instructors. Pascal, the Frenchman, he sees with a mixture of anger and despair. They lean in toward each other and the deputy manager grips the steering wheel tightly, anticipating intimacy which doesn't come. He pulls the car round in a tight arc in front of the gym and brakes hard, surprising them. The deputy manager's wife slides into the passenger seat and wrinkles her nose at the smell. The deputy manager stares into the rear-view mirror in trembling fury as Pascal gets into the back. The smell of yoghurt mixes with the smell of high tar unfiltered French tobacco.

'We're giving Pascal a lift home.” says his wife, latching her seatbelt.

The deputy manager says nothing, but lets his gaze linger over her toned thighs as he thumps the car clumsily into first gear and pulls away, the rhythm of the windscreen wipers slowly dulling his anger, pulling him back into a coma-like driving trance where he can ignore his wife flirting and the sleazy replies of the Frenchman still looming in the rear view mirror.

As they roll onto the bypass, he notices distantly the Frenchman's hand, rubbing his wife's buttock, massaging slowly, murmuring strongly accented words amid the wanton laughter of his wife. The deputy manager is suddenly overwhelmed by the smell of rotting dairy produce and French tobacco. He slews the car onto the hard shoulder and stumbles out of the car into blasting spray and honking horns. He staggers to the hard shoulder and across the barrier, vomiting hard, hot sick fountaining into the unkempt grass. The effort makes him sink to his knees, where he vomits again, the puke pouring out across his knees. He no longer cares. He has lost his wife to the Frenchman. He begins to sob.

A hand is laid on his shoulder. Through the rain and hot tears he sees it is the Frenchman, his face a knot of genuine concern. Beyond him, he can see his wife, still in the car, texting. The deputy manager stares at this tableau as an articulated lorry carrying stainless steel pilings meant for a new out of town development jack-knifes in the rain. The truck envelopes the small family hatchback containing his wife like a wave taking a sandcastle, shearing the top of the car away before it is lost in screaming, sparking metal and a spray of oily rain. The screeching of brakes and sound of more collisions reaches the deputy manager as he slowly curls up in the grass. Guiltily, he notes with satisfaction that the Frenchman has a high pitched, almost female scream.

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