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) 📕

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.’

‘I’m not saying do it,’ Deb points out. ‘I’m saying let’s go.’

Dylan has moved the Mercedes to somewhere safer to wait for the tow. I turn in my seat just as he’s getting out of the car again, all lean, scruffy, almost-six-feet of him.

I know as soon as our eyes meet that I’m not going to leave him here.

He knows it too. I’m sorry, he mouths at me.

If I had a pound for every time Dylan Abbott’s told me he’s sorry, I’d be rich enough to buy that Mercedes.

Dylan

Sometimes a poem arrives almost whole, as if someone’s dropped it at my feet like a dog playing fetch. As I climb into the back of Deb’s car and catch the achingly familiar edge of Addie’s perfume, two and a half lines come to me in a split second. Unchanged and changed/Eyes trained on mine/And I’m—

I’m what? What am I? I’m a mess. Every time I look at Addie something leaps inside me, dolphin-like, and you’d think after twenty months it wouldn’t hurt quite like this but it does, it hurts, the kind of hurt that makes you want to fucking wail.

‘Shove up, would you?’ Marcus says, pushing me into Rodney’s shoulder. I throw a hand out and just about avoid landing it right in Rodney’s lap.

‘Sorry,’ me and Rodney say simultaneously.

My palms are clammy; I keep swallowing, as if that’ll help keep all the feelings down. Addie looks so different: her hair is cut almost as short as mine and dyed silver-grey, and her glasses – miraculously recovered from the boot of the Mini after the crash – are chunky and hipster-ish, unapologetic. She is quite possibly more beautiful than ever. It’s as if I’m looking at Addie’s identical twin: the same but different. Unchanged and changed.

I should be saying something, clearly, but I can’t think quite what. I used to be good at this sort of thing – I used to be smooth. I cram myself into the narrow middle seat and watch Marcus’s father’s car being driven away down the dark street, clinging forlornly to the tow truck’s back, and I wish I could reclaim some of the cockiness I had when I first met Addie and didn’t have the foggiest idea of how completely and utterly she would change my life.

‘What were you doing heading off so early, anyway?’ Addie says, as Deb pulls away from the side of the road. ‘You hate driving early.’

She’s putting on make-up, using the mirror in the sun visor above the passenger seat; I watch her blend a paste from the back of her hand into the cream of her skin.

‘You’re a little out of date,’ Marcus says, trying to get comfortable in his seat, and elbowing me in the ribs in the process. ‘These days Dylan has very strong opinions about why road trips absolutely must start at four a.m.’

I look down at my knees, embarrassed. It was Addie who taught me how much better a road trip is when you leave in the thick quiet before dawn, the day still heavy with hope, though she’s right: when we were together, I always complained about how early she made us set off for a long drive.

‘Well, it’s a