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

expression as I approach them and pause, watching, because oh, this is my Addie. Wide, open smile, no tension, easy laughter. That glint of sharp humour in her eyes, like she’s poised to surprise us all.

‘The one with the bald patch?’ Deb’s saying. She’s peering towards the terrace; I’m hidden here, I realise, behind the bulk of Grace’s car.

‘What? No, you mongoose, that’s his uncle, Terry,’ Addie says, laughing.

‘Oh, yeah, the one with the ponytail and the eyepatch?’

‘No,’ Addie says, more sharply this time. ‘That’s Marcus. Dylan’s mate.’

I step forward; staying here any longer feels like lurking. Addie’s face lights up when she sees me and something explosive happens in my chest, a chain reaction, a Catherine wheel sent spinning.

‘Here’s Dylan,’ she says, coming towards me. ‘Dyl, meet my sister.’

Deb turns and looks me up and down so openly I almost laugh. She looks nothing like Addie, but there’s an Addie-ness to her all the same – the way she tilts her head, the sharp narrowing of her eyes as she takes me in.

‘Interesting,’ she says eventually. ‘You went for the one with the cock on his face?’

NOW

Addie

It is so hot and everyone in this car is so annoying.

I’m driving, with Dylan beside me. We’re somewhere outside Stoke-on-Trent. That’s about two hundred miles south of where we should be right now.

‘Is there anything to eat?’ Marcus asks. ‘I’m hungry again.’

I don’t need to check my mirror to know that Rodney has just offered him a flapjack.

‘Not that,’ Marcus says. ‘There’s only so much glorified porridge one man can take. No offence, Rodney.’ He twists to look in the boot.

‘For God’s sake,’ Deb says. ‘Would you boys please watch your extremities? Addie, I need to break soon to pump again.’

‘That boob contraption you were using when we broke down? You have to do it again? Why?’ Marcus asks. I glance at him in the mirror. He’s managed to get some Fruit Pastilles from the back of the car and is staring at Deb’s chest while he tries to open the sweets with absolutely no elbow room.

‘I lactate,’ Deb says, deadpan.

‘Next services in twenty-one miles,’ I say, nodding to the sign on the roadside. ‘That OK, Deb?’

‘It would have been if someone hadn’t poked me in the nipple.’

‘Did I?’ Marcus says. ‘What a waste, I didn’t even notice.’

‘I can probably pump in the car,’ Deb says. ‘Rodney, can you reach that bag?’

There is a short spell of what looks like Twister in the back of the car. Rodney eventually produces the bag with Deb’s breast pump in it. Deb fiddles around with her top. Rodney contorts himself so that he is facing the other way, closing his eyes and covering his face with his hands. I stifle a grin. Meanwhile Marcus opens the Fruit Pastilles and scatters them absolutely everywhere. One hits me in the ear.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ he says. ‘Pass that red one over there, would you, Rodders? I’ve never been with a woman who’s breastfeeding. What happens when you have sex, Deb?’

‘Marcus!’ Dylan snaps.

‘No? I can’t ask that? Christ! Being well behaved is exhausting.’

I hear the whir of the battery-powered breast pump starting up. It sounds a bit like there’s a washing machine in the back of the car.

‘All right. Five questions for Dylan,’ Marcus says after a while.

He sounds more subdued now. Hmm. Worrying. At least when he’s pissing around he’s not up to anything evil.

‘I’ll start,’ Marcus says. ‘Why haven’t you tried to get your poems published yet?’

I dial down the volume on the music and glance at Dylan. I want to hear the answer to this one.

‘I don’t think they’re ready,’ Dylan says eventually.

Interesting. It’s the only answer I’d accept, and one he never gave when we were together. It was always, Oh, they’re just drivel, or, Nobody wants to read that.

‘Well, all right,’ Marcus says. He shifts in his seat. ‘When will they be ready?’

‘Is that another question from my five?’

‘Yes, it’s another question,’ Marcus says testily.

‘They’ll be ready when . . . I . . . I don’t know. When I can read them without wincing.’

I frown. ‘What if they’re meant to make you wince?’

‘Hey?’

‘I don’t know a lot about this stuff – you know I don’t – but your best poems were always the ones you let me read last.’

Quiet descends again. The music’s a whisper now, and I can feel sweat trickling down the inside of my upper arms.

‘You never told me that,’ Dylan says.

‘Didn’t I?’

‘No. I could never tell when you liked a poem.’

This genuinely surprises me. ‘I always liked them.’

‘Next question,’ says Marcus. ‘Why did you suggest we drive to the wedding together?’

I look at Dylan and catch his reaction. He’s startled.

‘I guess I thought – we were ready for that,’ he says.

‘Why? You cut me out for almost a year, and then, what, I did something good? What was it? I’m jumping through hoops in the dark, here, Dyl.’

Dylan cut Marcus out for almost a year? I shoot him another look, but he’s turned his face towards the window.

‘It was Luke, actually,’ Dylan says. ‘He told me about your . . . apology thing.’

Another long silence, just the sound of Deb’s breast pump, the low music and the wheels on the road. The traffic is beginning to slow again. Cars close in around us.

‘I suppose I thought I’d give you an opportunity to get around to apologising to me, too.’

I keep glancing in the mirror. Marcus catches me looking at him and I quickly turn my eyes back to the road.

‘I assume it was your therapist’s suggestion,’ Dylan goes on. ‘And that there was a reason you’d managed to apologise to Luke, Javier, Marta, your stepmother, your father, and my mother for your various indiscretions and misbehaviours, but not yet got around to me.’

His voice is rising – he’s hurt, maybe, or angry, but he’s keeping it in check. I know that tone well.

I catch Deb’s eye in the mirror. I widen my eyes,