The Road Trip: The heart-warming new novel from the author of The Flatshare and The Switch by Beth O'Leary (books to read now TXT) 📕

He pulls a face. ‘Yes. That. The rest of them bailed, I’m afraid, so you’ve just got me. Thank you for fixing my shutters, by the way. You’re a miracle worker.’

‘They just . . .’ I trail off. ‘You’re welcome.’

We look at one another. I’m very aware of myself: how I’m holding my shoulders, the wet bikini soaking through my dress. He’s watching me steadily. A slow, confident stare, the sort that snares you across a bar as you wait for a drink. It’s a little bit too practised, a little too deliberate. Like he’s seen someone else do it but never actually given it a go himself.

‘What can I help you with?’

I adjust my dress. It clings to my bikini.

‘Well. For starters, I lost my key.’

That slow stare shifts for a moment, turning boyish. Much better. He’s cute, in a scruffy, hapless kind of way. Like a Yorkshire Terrier puppy. Or a member of an X Factor boy band before they’ve made it big.

‘I can’t be trusted with keys,’ he says.

‘I can sort that, sure.’

‘Thank you. You’re very kind. And . . .’ He pauses, looking at me, as if making his mind up. ‘I’m looking for someone,’ he says.

‘You’re . . . what do you mean?’

‘I’m trying to find somebody, and I think you might be able to help?’

I tilt my head, curious. My pulse flutters a bit faster. Maybe he’s very cute, actually. His eyes flicker to the wet patches on my dress, and then up to my face again. All very quick, like he didn’t mean to look and he’s worried I’ve noticed. I press my lips together to hide a smile. I wonder if he’s smoother when he’s sober or if he’s always like this.

‘Do you have a car?’ he says.

I nod.

‘Do you think you could drive me somewhere?’

Dylan

She’s like a water sprite, with her dark, wet hair and her river-blue eyes. Finding her here in this little flat, buried underneath the house . . . It’s as if I’ve unearthed her, as if she’s been waiting for me and at last I’ve come to free her from her windowless existence.

It’s possible I’ve drunk a little too much. I hope she can’t tell. I’m trying to do the good kind of staring, not the leering kind, but I’ve had three quarters of a bottle of wine while reading Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella in the hills above the villa with lunch, and I have to confess I don’t entirely trust my judgement.

As I climb into the passenger seat of the blue-eyed caretaker’s rental car, I try to sober up and listen to what she’s saying – something about the shutters – but my mind is busy stuttering over a new idea, something about quick little hands with bitten-down nails.

As we pull out of the villa’s gates, I cast another look at her profile: a delicate, turned-up nose, a hint of freckles on her cheekbones like fine droplets of water on sand. There’s a quickening in my stomach, half fear, half excitement, or maybe just desire. I knew this summer was going to be magnificent, and here, now, with the wind tearing in my ears and the sun’s heat pressed to my cheek, with a dark-haired beauty beside me, her pale thighs bare against the leather seat, her—

‘You’re going to break the fridge door, by the way,’ she says.

I startle. ‘Hmm?’

‘The fridge door. You keep yanking it from the bottom of the handle. Try pulling from the top, would you – otherwise Deb and I will have to sort someone to fix it and all the tradesmen around here think we’re morons. We’ll end up having to try and do it ourselves.’

I deflate a bit.

‘How can you tell?’ I ask, rallying. ‘Have you been watching me, little phantom caretaker?’

She looks at me, her blue eyes sharp. She has a mole on the top of her lip, just left of where her Cupid’s bow mouth rises in soft peaks.

‘Don’t call me little. It’s patronising.’

I waver. The feeling of grandeur, of magnificence, it slips. Am I playing this all wrong? She is little, in my defence: fine-boned and fragile, her collarbone pressing against her skin like a root, her wrists so narrow I could circle them both with one hand. She turns back to the road, smiling slightly; I think she saw me waver.

‘And I wasn’t watching you,’ she continues. ‘Just listening. All the pots on the top of the fridge rattle when you yank it that way.’

‘Listening?’ Hmm. I have spent much of the last two days loudly reciting lines from The Faerie Queene – my primary inspiration for the poetry collection I’m working on, a sort of homage to Spenser. And yesterday I sang the whole of Taylor Swift’s ‘22’ to myself on the terrace with a bottle of wine as a microphone.

‘You have a lovely singing voice,’ she says, biting her bottom lip. I watch her white teeth pull at the soft pink skin and for a hot, bold second I imagine those teeth digging into my bare shoulder.

‘Really?’

She glances at me incredulously. ‘No. Of course not. You’re rubbish. You can’t possibly not know that?’

I swallow again. Rallying is getting somewhat harder. ‘You’re a little rude; did anyone ever tell you that, phantom caretaker?’

‘My name is Addie,’ she said. ‘And I’m not rude. I’m . . . blunt. It’s charming.’

She says it as if she’s just figuring it out herself, then flashes me a smile that zips right through me. The line of poetry I’d been playing with is lost as my mind sharpens in on the curve of her lip, the way that dress clings to her breasts. The unsettling way she keeps setting me back. I’m reassessing: she’s like a water sprite, yes, but a fierce little one with teeth and claws, half sweetness, half wild. Marcus would love her.

It’s odd being here without Marcus. He and I have been travelling together all summer