The Road Trip Read online

  Also by Beth O’Leary

  The Flatshare

  The Switch

  This ebook published in 2021 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2021 Beth O’Leary Ltd

  The moral right of Beth O’Leary to be

  identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any

  information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  HB ISBN 978 1 52940 905 5

  TPB ISBN 978 1 52940 906 2

  EB ISBN 978 1 52940 908 6

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  businesses, organizations, places and events are

  either the product of the author’s imagination

  or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events or

  locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook by CC Book Production

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  For my bridesmaids

  Contents

  The Road Trip

  Also By

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  NOW

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  THEN

  Addie

  Dylan

  NOW

  Addie

  Dylan

  THEN

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  NOW

  Dylan

  Addie

  THEN

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  NOW

  Dylan

  Addie

  THEN

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  NOW

  Addie

  Dylan

  THEN

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  NOW

  Dylan

  THEN

  Addie

  Dylan

  NOW

  Addie

  Dylan

  THEN

  Addie

  Dylan

  NOW

  Addie

  THEN

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  NOW

  Dylan

  Addie

  THEN

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  NOW

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Addie

  Dylan

  Acknowledgements

  NOW

  Dylan

  ‘The road of friendship never did run smooth, is what I’m saying,’ Marcus tells me, fidgeting with his seat belt.

  This is my first experience of a heartfelt apology from Marcus, and so far it has involved six clichés, two butchered literary references and no eye contact. The word sorry did feature, but it was preceded by I’m not very good at saying, which somewhat undermined its sincerity.

  I shift up a gear. ‘Isn’t it the course of true love that never runs smooth? A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I believe.’

  We’re by the twenty-four-hour Tesco. It’s half four in the morning, the air thick with duvet-darkness, but the bland yellow light from the shop illuminates the three people in the car in front as if they’ve just moved into a spotlight. We’re close behind them, both following the slow, rattling path of a lorry ahead.

  For a flash of a second I see the driver’s face in the rear-view mirror. She reminds me of Addie – if you think about someone enough, you start to see them everywhere.

  Marcus huffs. ‘I’m talking about my feelings, Dylan. This is agony. Please get your head out of your arse so that you can actually listen.’

  I smile at that. ‘All right. I’m listening.’

  I drive on, past the bakery. The eyes of the driver in front are lit again in the mirror, her eyebrows slightly raised behind squarish glasses.

  ‘I’m just saying, we hit some bumps, I get that, and I didn’t handle things well, and that’s – that’s really unfortunate that that happened.’

  Astonishing, really, the linguistic knots in which he will tie himself to avoid a simple I’m sorry. I stay silent. Marcus coughs and fidgets some more, and I almost take pity and tell him it’s all right, he doesn’t have to say it if he’s not ready, but as we idle past the bookie’s another flash of light hits the car in front and Marcus is forgotten. The driver has wound the window down, and she’s stretched an arm out, gripping the roof of the car. Her wrist is looped with bracelets, glimmering silver-red in the car lights’ glare. The gesture is so achingly familiar – the arm, slender and pale, the assertion of it, and those bracelets, the round, childish beads stacked up her wrist. I’d know them anywhere. My heart jolts like I’ve missed a step because it is her, it’s Addie, her eyes meeting mine in the rear-view mirror.

  And then Marcus screams.

  Earlier, Marcus gave a similarly horrified scream when we passed a Greggs advertising vegan sausage rolls, so I don’t react as fast as I perhaps otherwise would. As the car in front stops sharply, and I fail to hit the brakes on the seventy-thousand-pound Mercedes that belongs to Marcus’s father, I have just enough time to regret this.

  Addie

  Bang.

  My head whips up so fast my glasses go flying backwards off my ears and over the headrest. Someone screams. Oww, fuck – a pain shoots up my neck, and all I’m thinking is God, what did I do? Did I hit something?

  ‘Shit the bed,’ Deb says beside me. ‘Are you all right?’

  I fumble for my glasses. They’re not there, obviously.

  ‘What the hell just happened?’ I manage.

  My shaking hands go to the steering wheel, then the handbrake, then the rear-view mirror. Getting my bearings.

  I see him in the mirror. A little blurred without my glasses. A little unreal. It’s him, though, no question. He’s so familiar that for a moment I feel as if I’m looking at my own reflection. Suddenly my heart’s beating like it’s shoving for space.

  Deb’s getting out of the car. Ahead, the bin lorry moves off and its headlights catch the tail of the fox they braked for. It’s moving on to the pavement at a saunter. Slowly, the scene pieces itself together: lorry stops for fox, I stop for lorry, an
d behind me Dylan doesn’t stop at all. Then – bang.

  I look back at Dylan in the mirror; he’s still looking at me. Everything seems to slow or quieten or fade, like someone’s dialled the world down.

  I haven’t seen Dylan for twenty months. He should have changed somehow. Everything else has. But even from here, even in half darkness, I know the exact line of his nose, his long eyelashes, his snakeskin yellow-green eyes. I know those eyes will be as wide and shocked as they were when he left me.

  ‘Well,’ my sister says. ‘The Mini’s done us proud.’

  The Mini. The car. Everything comes rushing back in and I unclick my seat belt. It takes three goes. My hands are shaking. When I next glance at the rear-view mirror my eyes focus on the foreground instead of the background and there’s Rodney, crouched forward on our back seat with his hands over his head and his nose touching his knees.

  Shit. I forgot all about Rodney.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I ask him, just as Deb says,

  ‘Addie? Are you OK?’ She pokes her head back in the car, then grimaces. ‘Your neck hurting too?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, because as soon as she asks I realise it does, loads.

  ‘Gosh,’ Rodney says, tentatively shifting out of the brace position. ‘What happened?’

  Rodney posted on the ‘Cherry & Krish are Getting Hitched’ Facebook group yesterday evening asking for a lift to the wedding from the Chichester area. Nobody else replied, so Deb and I took pity. All I know about Rodney is that he has a Weetabix On The Go for breakfast, he’s always hunching and his T-shirt says, I keep pressing Esc but I’m still here, but I think I’ve pretty much got the gist.

  ‘Some arsehole in a Mercedes went into the back of us,’ Deb tells him, straightening up to look at the car behind again.

  ‘Deb . . .’ I say.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I think that’s Dylan. In that car.’

  She scrunches up her nose, ducking down to see me again. ‘Dylan Abbott?’

  I swallow. ‘Yeah.’

  I risk a glance over my shoulder. My neck protests. It’s then that I notice the man stepping out of the Mercedes passenger seat. Slim-built and ghostly pale in the dark street, his curly hair just catching the light of the shopfronts behind him. There goes my heart again, beating way too fast.

  ‘He’s with Marcus,’ I say.

  ‘Marcus?’ Deb says, eyes going wide.

  ‘Yeah. Oh, God.’ This is awful. What am I meant to do now? Something about insurance? ‘Is the car OK?’ I ask.

  I climb out just as Dylan gets out of the Mercedes. He’s dressed in a white tee and chino shorts with battered boat shoes on his feet. There’s a carabiner on his belt loop, disappearing into his pocket. It was my idea, that, to stop him always losing his keys.

  He steps forward into the path of the Mercedes’ headlights. He looks so handsome it aches in my chest. Seeing him is even harder than I expected it to be. I want to do everything at once: run to him, run away, curl up, cry. And beneath all that I have this totally ridiculous feeling that someone’s messed up, like something didn’t get filed when it should have up there in the universe, because I was supposed to see Dylan this weekend, for the first time in almost two years, but it should have been at the wedding.

  ‘Addie?’ he says.

  ‘Dylan,’ I manage.

  ‘Did a Mini really just total my dad’s Mercedes?’ says Marcus.

  My hand goes self-consciously to my fringe. No make-up, scruffy dungarees, no mousse in my hair. I’ve spent bloody months planning the outfit I was supposed to be wearing when I saw Dylan again, and this was not it. But he doesn’t scan me up and down, doesn’t even seem to clock my new hair colour – he meets my gaze and holds it. I feel like the whole world just stumbled and had to catch its breath.

  ‘Fuck me,’ says Marcus. ‘A Mini! The indignity of it!’

  ‘What the hell?’ Deb says. ‘What were you doing? You just drove into the back of us!’

  Dylan looks around in bewilderment. I pull myself together.

  ‘Is anyone hurt?’ I ask, rubbing my aching neck. ‘Rodney?’

  ‘Who?’ says Marcus.

  ‘I’m OK!’ calls Rodney, who’s still in the back seat of the car.

  Deb helps him climb out. I should have done that. My brain feels kind of scrambled.

  ‘Shit,’ says Dylan, finally registering the crumpled bumper of the Mercedes. ‘Sorry, Marcus.’

  ‘Oh, mate, honestly, don’t worry about it,’ Marcus says. ‘Do you know how many times I’ve totalled one of my dad’s cars? He won’t even notice.’

  I step forward and check out the back of Deb’s battered Mini. It’s actually not looking too bad – that bang was so loud I would’ve assumed something serious had fallen off. Like a wheel.

  Before I’ve registered what she’s doing, Deb’s in the driving seat, starting the engine again.

  ‘She’s all good!’ she says. ‘What a car. Best money I ever spent.’ She drives forward a little, up on to the curb, and hits the hazard lights.

  Dylan’s back in the Mercedes, rifling through the glove box. He and Marcus talk about roadside accident assist, Marcus forwards him an email off his phone, and I think to myself . . . that’s it, Dylan’s hair’s shorter. That’s what it is. I know I should be thinking about this whole car crash thing but all I’m doing is playing a game of spot-the-difference, looking at Dylan and going, What’s missing? What’s new?

  His eyes flick to mine again. I go hot. There’s something about Dylan’s eyes – they kind of catch you up, like cobweb. I force myself to look away.

  ‘So . . . you’re on your way to Cherry’s wedding, I’m guessing?’ I say to Marcus. My voice shakes. I can’t look at him. I’m suddenly thankful for the dented rear bumper to examine on the Mini.

  ‘Well, we were,’ Marcus drawls, eyeing the Mercedes. Maybe he can’t bring himself to look at me either. ‘But there’s no way we’re driving this baby four hundred miles now. It needs to get to a garage. Yours should, too.’

  Deb makes a dismissive noise, already out of the car again and rubbing a scratch with the sleeve of her ratty old hoody. ‘Ah, she’s fine,’ she says, opening and closing the boot experimentally. ‘Dented, that’s all.’

  ‘Marcus, it’s going ballistic,’ Dylan calls.

  I can see the Mercedes’ screen flashing warning lights even from here. The hazards are too bright. I turn my face away. Isn’t it typical that when Marcus’s car breaks, Dylan’s the one sorting it?

  ‘The tow will be here in thirty minutes to take it to the garage,’ Dylan says.

  ‘Thirty minutes?’ Deb says, disbelieving.

  ‘All part of the service,’ Marcus tells her, pointing to the car. ‘Mercedes, darling.’

  ‘It’s Deb. Not darling. We’ve met several times before.’

  ‘Sure. I remember,’ Marcus says lightly. Not very convincing.

  I can feel Dylan’s eyes pulling at me as we all try to get the insurance stuff sorted. I’m fumbling around with my phone, Deb’s digging in the glove box for paperwork, and all the while I’m so aware of Dylan, like he’s taking up ten times more space than everyone else.

  ‘And how are we getting to the wedding?’ Marcus asks once we’re done.

  ‘We’ll just get public transport,’ Dylan says.

  ‘Public transport?’ Marcus says, as though someone’s just suggested he get to Cherry’s wedding by toboggan. Still a bit of a wanker, then, Marcus. No surprises there.

  Rodney clears his throat. He’s leaning against the side of the Mini, eyes fixed on his phone. I feel bad – I keep forgetting him. Right now my brain doesn’t have room for Rodney.

  ‘If you set off now,’ he says, ‘then according to Google you would arrive . . . at thirteen minutes past two.’

  Marcus checks his watch.

>   ‘All right,’ says Dylan. ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘On Tuesday,’ Rodney finishes.

  ‘What?’ chorus Dylan and Marcus.

  Rodney pulls an apologetic face. ‘It’s half four in the morning on a Sunday on a bank holiday weekend and you’re trying to get from Chichester to rural Scotland.’

  Marcus throws his hands in the air. ‘This country is a shambles.’

  Deb and I look at each other. No, no no no—

  ‘Let’s go,’ I say, moving for the Mini. ‘Will you drive?’

  ‘Addie . . .’ Deb begins as I climb into the passenger seat.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ calls Marcus.

  I slam the car door.

  ‘Hey!’ Marcus says as Deb gets into the driver’s seat. ‘You have to take us to the wedding!’

  ‘No,’ I say to Deb. ‘Ignore him. Rodney! Get in!’

  Rodney obliges. Which is kind. I really don’t know the man well enough to yell at him.

  ‘What the fuck? Addie. Come on. If you don’t drive us, we won’t get there in time,’ Marcus says.

  He’s by my window now. He knocks on the glass with the back of his knuckles. I don’t roll it down.

  ‘Addie, come on! Christ, surely you owe Dylan a favour.’

  Dylan says something to Marcus. I don’t catch it.

  ‘God, he’s an arse,’ Deb says with a frown.

  I close my eyes.

  ‘Do you think you can do it?’ Deb asks me. ‘Give them a lift?’

  ‘No. Not – not both of them.’

  ‘Then ignore him. Let’s just go.’

  Marcus taps on the window again. I clench my teeth, neck still aching, and keep my eyes straight ahead.

  ‘Our road trip was meant to be fun,’ I say.

  This is Deb’s first weekend away from her baby boy, Riley. It’s all we’ve talked about for months. She’s planned every stop-off, every snack.

  ‘It would still be fun,’ Deb says.

  ‘We don’t have room,’ I try.

  ‘I can squeeze up!’ Rodney says.

  I’m really going off Rodney.

  ‘It’s such a long journey, Deb,’ I say, pressing my fists to my eyes. ‘Hours and hours stuck in the same car with Dylan. I’ve spent almost two years tiptoeing around Chichester trying not to bump into this man for even a second, let alone eight hours.’