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) 📕

I walk away. Up the bank, towards the steps Kevin came down when he found us. My heart’s pounding. I hear Deb call for me. I don’t look back. It takes me a while to realise someone’s following me, and another few seconds to clock that it’s Dylan.

‘Go back to the others,’ I say, glancing over my shoulder at him.

‘No,’ he says.

‘Dylan, just go.’

He says nothing this time, but I can still hear him above the rush of traffic. I walk faster and reach the road that crosses the motorway bridge. There’s a path here, narrow enough for one person to walk along. To either side are fields separated from the road by grassy banks dotted with white flowers. If it wasn’t for the roar of the cars beneath me, I’d feel like I’d stepped into the countryside.

‘Addie, come on, slow down.’ He jogs to catch me up. ‘Are you OK?’

I stop and spin on my heels so fast he stumbles and almost collides with me.

‘Am I OK? Marcus is so . . .’ I look away. It’s hard, standing this close to Dylan and meeting his gaze. ‘He’s such a dick.’

‘I know. I’ll talk to him.’

‘No, don’t. Just . . . give me a minute.’

‘I know it’s hard to do, but the best thing is just to ignore him.’

‘Oh, and that’s what you’re doing, is it?’

This is so familiar. It’s like slipping into an old pair of shoes. I’m angry because I’m ashamed, I know that, but I still say the words that’ll hurt him.

‘Because to me it looks like you’re still his trusty sidekick. Following him around like a puppy.’

Dylan opens his mouth to snap back at me and then closes it again. He looks at the ground. My heart hurts. I remember this sense of self-loathing so well. Is this still who I am? Just because it’s familiar, does that mean it’s me?

Maybe those old shoes don’t fit me any more. The anger’s gone as quickly as it came.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Sorry. I didn’t . . . I’m just upset.’

He looks up. ‘It’s not like that with Marcus,’ he says. ‘Not any more. He’s changing.’

Ugh. No. I tear my gaze aside, turning to keep walking away from the motorway.

‘He hasn’t changed a bit. You can’t change a man like Marcus.’

‘I understand why you’d think that.’ Dylan’s voice is calm and level. ‘But I do believe he’s getting somewhere. He’s different.’

Dylan’s walking beside me now, on the roadside. His arm brushes mine, snagging a little against the sticky sun cream on my skin. For a moment I can smell him again. The scent makes me dizzy, as if the world’s going warped, like when someone gets pulled back in time on the telly.

‘Doesn’t seem to be different when it comes to me.’

‘You know he doesn’t know the whole story,’ Dylan says quietly.

‘I know.’ I take a road left into a new-build estate lined with parked cars and squint as the sun hits a window. ‘He’s still a dick, though.’

Dylan doesn’t dispute it. We walk on for a while in silence. This feels weird, like we’re suddenly improvising a scene we’ve run through a thousand times before. Dylan’s expression is serious. I can’t seem to recover that anger that went out of me when I saw how I’d hurt him. Suddenly all I want to do is make him smile. It’s such a forceful sensation that I press a hand to my stomach to stem it.

‘While we’re here, just the two of us, I . . . I want to say I’m sorry for what I said about your decision to stop talking to me,’ Dylan says into the silence. ‘That was your choice.’

In fairness, he’s always respected that choice. Even though I’ve ached so many times to take it back.

‘I thought it would make it easier. To . . .’ I trail off.

‘Yeah. Did it?’

No. Nothing made it easier. I was unmade, when Dylan left me, and there was no simple way to rebuild myself. Only piece by piece.

‘It’s not been the easiest couple of years,’ I say, in the end.

‘No.’ His arm brushes mine again – on purpose, I think. ‘I wish I could’ve . . .’

‘Don’t do that.’ It comes out strangled. ‘Don’t wish things.’

He stays quiet. ‘Marcus has changed. Is changing. Just look out for it – please. For me.’

‘Don’t do that either. Don’t say for me like . . .’

‘I’m sorry. But I want you to know I wouldn’t be in a car with Marcus if he was still the man you knew when we were together.’

I glance at him. He wouldn’t have said something like that a year and a half ago. I play spot-the-difference again: the shorter hair, a little line between his eyebrows . . . and now when Marcus is being a prick to me, Dylan snaps at him. That’s new too.

The frown, the hair, the snapping – it all adds up to make him seem kind of worldlier. A bit damaged, a bit stronger. More self-possessed.

‘We should probably . . .’ He sighs and looks behind him. ‘We’ve left a very weird combination of people by the side of the motorway.’

I rub my face and laugh shakily into my hands. ‘Oh, God. Kevin the trucker has probably killed them all.’

‘Or Rodney. It’s always the quiet ones.’

We smile at one another. I turn back first, my arm brushing his again.

‘I was wrong,’ I say on impulse. ‘About the not-talking. It was worse. I – it – I wish I hadn’t asked you to leave me alone.’

I watch the corners of his mouth turn up. There was a time when I would have done anything to make him smile like that.

‘Thank you for telling me,’ he says simply.

We walk back towards the Mini in silence. It’s hard to know what to say after that. I’m walking slower than I should be. I like the feeling of him beside me.

We both stop as we reach the steps