The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary (grave mercy .txt) 📕

you to book things before somebody else does, but a boutique travel agency with a cosy office and staff who are astonishingly nice to you. The niceness only applies to the right sort of person, of course. It’s very exclusive.

Rodney doesn’t exactly scream exclusivity.

I should say something – I’ve left it too long. ‘That’s great!’ I say, much too enthusiastically. Addie shoots me an amused glance and I make a quick face, like, What would you have done? I feel rather than see her smile.

‘What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done, Rodney?’ Marcus asks, without turning around.

‘Marcus,’ Addie begins.

‘What? Five questions! I did it earlier, didn’t I?’ He turns then, and smiles. ‘Come on, Rodney, it’ll be fun. We’re all friends here, aren’t we?’

This is a wildly inaccurate statement.

Rodney clears his throat. ‘Umm. Most embarrassing . . . Oh, let’s see . . . I once wet myself in bed.’

There is a long silence.

‘With a girl there,’ he says.

‘What?’ everyone choruses.

‘What, like, as an adult?’

‘Well, yeah,’ Rodney says. ‘Haha!’

I cringe as Marcus laughs to himself. I suspect Rodney has not heard the end of this story and will sincerely regret sharing it.

‘Next question?’ Rodney says hopefully.

‘Like, full-bladder-wet-yourself?’ Deb asks, with curiosity. ‘Or just a dribble?’

‘Oh, gosh,’ Rodney says. ‘Haha! Let’s not go into the details?’

‘I think you’re misunderstanding, Rodney,’ Marcus says. ‘The details are the only interesting part.’

Addie leans into me for a moment as she adjusts her seat belt. I wonder if she feels that heat between us too, if the left side of her body is blazing like the right side of mine, hypersensitive to touch.

‘Let’s allow Rodney to retain some dignity,’ Addie says. ‘When did you and Cherry become friends, Rodney?’

‘What a waste of a question,’ Marcus says.

‘Christmas party, year before last,’ Rodney says, with pride.

I remember Cherry telling me about that Christmas party. She always has excellent anecdotes, largely because she’s so ridiculous – she’s always in one scrape or another. For a while I used to hope for them, because when she needed rescuing it would usually be Addie who turned up to save her. Cherry always caved eventually and gave me the details of exactly how Addie was, what she was doing, whether she was dating, and all the other questions I would insist on torturing myself by asking.

That particular Christmas party had been one month before the night out with me in Chichester when Cherry had first met Krishna, her now fiancé. That Christmas she’d had one ill-fated sexual encounter with a man who had subsequently spent a year sending her very poorly written poems, a story that had always made me feel deeply uncomfortable (embarrassingly bad poets always hit a nerve); if I remember the tale correctly, she also bought shots for everybody in the business and kissed seven colleagues at that party. This was an entirely standard Cherry anecdote; I remember her telling it at the pub in a fit of giggles, and when Grace had said to her, Darling, have you no shame? Cherry had said, What’s shame good for, except keeping people down?

‘She’s fun, isn’t she, Cherry?’ I ask Rodney.

He beams. ‘She’s brilliant. Helped me through all sorts.’

Ah – so he’s a Cherry charity case. Cherry collects waifs and strays like a benevolent nineteenth-century widow: she once put up fifteen homeless teenagers in a large marquee in her parents’ garden; she owns eight rescue animals, who have about six limbs remaining between them. Even Addie and Deb’s stint as caretakers was a by-product of Cherry’s boundless goodwill: Deb was between jobs, and Addie was planning on spending the summer working in her local old-man pub before Cherry swooped in and got them four months in Provence.

I swallow. Thinking of that summer brings an ache to the back of my throat. I can’t cast my mind back to the heat and dust and sexual tension without feeling sure that I rolled the dice, then, and came up with the wrong numbers. We were both so unformed. So sure of ourselves and so utterly lost.

If we’d met now, as adults, would we have been able to make it work?

The music shifts. Taylor Swift, ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’.

A timely reminder from the universe. Or Marcus, rather, who I now realise is manning the Spotify playlist.

Addie

Bloody hell, it’s hot in this car. The air con can’t contend with five adults and – I check my phone – thirty-degree heat. The forecast says it’s going to be thirty-six by mid-afternoon. Wish I’d not bothered putting make-up on now. It’ll probably be puddling on my chin by the time we get to Scotland.

Dylan shifts beside me. He’s being a gentleman and not complaining about being in the middle seat, but his knees are jutting up towards his chest and he’s pulling both elbows in. Kind of a T-rex pose. We’d save a lot of space if I sat in his lap.

I blink. That thought was . . . inappropriate. Dylan’s body is pressed against the side of mine. He’s radiating heat, and as Taylor Swift sings out from the speaker – Marcus is on a Taylor thing, probably trying to make some sort of point – I think about how easy it would be to put my hand on Dylan’s knee. Instead I press both palms together between my legs and try to get a bloody grip on myself.

This is Dylan. He left me. I don’t love him any more.

But God, that orange-wood scent of him. My body’s forgotten the misery and the heartbreak and it only remembers my face pressed to the hot skin of his neck as he moves inside me. The gasps, the euphoria. The joy of falling asleep naked and hot in his arms.

‘Flapjack, anyone?’ says Rodney.

I swallow and press my legs closer together. My heart is beating a bit too fast. I feel as if Dylan can tell somehow. He’s holding himself still, like he doesn’t trust himself to move. The radio, playing something