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’ve always had your back, haven’t I?’ Marcus lowers our joined hands into the water.

I hiss as the pain takes hold.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah, I know, I just . . .’

‘I’m giving you the chance to do what you want to do. You can write here. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?’

‘Poetry isn’t – it’s not a job.’

‘It is if you’re good enough.’

‘I’m not,’ I say automatically. The line on the ceiling is shifting a little to and fro in my vision, blurring.

‘That’s not your gut talking.’

I let the heat creep into my bones and stare at the crack above me and I know Marcus is right. If I really thought I wasn’t good enough, I’d stop writing. Deep down, I love what I write, and I think other people might too, one day.

‘Do you trust me?’ Marcus asks.

Marcus and I applied for Oxford together. English, because Marcus said that was easy to get into, and if I wanted to be a poet that would be a good place to start. The same college, because why would we do anything else?

Luke grew up and fell in love and went to the States for his undergrad – or, really, to escape Dad – but Marcus has never left my side. And I’ve never left his, the small boy with the curly hair and the flower wreath hanging wonkily over his ear.

‘Of course. Of course I trust you.’

‘Then listen to me when I say this is what you want.’ He loosens his grip on my hand. ‘I’ll kick everyone out. Don’t get out the bath until I come back. I think standing might be a little beyond you for the time being. And also, don’t drown.’

I hear the door click shut. At some point, without me really noticing, the urgent knowledge that I’m about to die has eased away. In its place is the familiar, clutching confusion that dogged me all last summer, beneath the dread – the sense that I’m doing something very important, and that I’m doing it entirely wrong.

NOW

Addie

Every time I check Google Maps, Scotland gets further away.

‘How is this even possible?’ I say as Google turns a little more of my journey from blue to red. ‘We’re driving towards Scotland, but every time I check, Scotland takes longer to get to?’

Deb and I are back in the front seats. This feels like the right order of things, if I’m honest. I am too grumpy to be crammed in the back with an assortment of men I did not want on my road trip.

‘Someone’s got to tell Cherry how late we are,’ I say, rubbing my eyes. ‘She’s going to cry, isn’t she?’

Something happened to Cherry when she started planning her wedding. The carefree Cherry who had cheerfully scrubbed her one-night-stand’s vomit out of our bedroom carpet at uni had transformed into a woman who could not stand the thought of her wedding bouquet containing fewer than sixteen dark red roses. Everyone says people change when they’re planning a wedding, but I’d assumed that only happened to crap people, ones who deep down had always been a bit ridiculous and had just hidden it well. But no. The wedding mania had even got to Cherry.

‘She’s not going to cry,’ Dylan says firmly.

There’s a long pause. I wait. He waits. I am totally confident Dylan will crack first. He may have changed, but he’s not changed that much.

‘I’ll call her,’ Dylan says.

I smile.

‘Don’t be smug, now,’ Dylan tells me, with the hint of a smile. ‘Or I’ll do it on speaker.’

Why is sitting in traffic so much worse than driving? I would rather drive for eight hours than sit in traffic for four. At least if you’re going at sixty there’s some sense of progress. As it is, I’ve been inspecting the back end of an Audi for actual for ever. There’s roadworks, that’s part of the problem – only two lanes instead of four.

It’s half past four. We were meant to be in Scotland by now, at Cherry’s pre-wedding barbecue, but appear to be . . . I squint at a road sign catching the sun. Bloody hell, we’re not even at Preston. Cherry didn’t cry on the phone, but she went dangerously high-pitched. We really need to crack on to Scotland now.

The last song ends and I flick through one of my favourite country playlists. So many of these songs make me think of Dylan. I swallow. My finger hovers over ‘What If I Never Get Over You’, Lady A, but I shouldn’t. It’ll probably make me cry hearing that with Dylan in the back seat.

I settle for ‘We Were’ by Keith Urban. As the riff starts up I sink back in the seat and take a deep breath. This journey with Dylan is just as hard as I thought it would be. Worse, even, because he’s different. He was always quieter in a group, but that quietness doesn’t feel like Dylan stepping into the background now. It reads more like . . . thoughtfulness.

‘Give Rodney a bit more room, would you?’ Dylan says behind me. I don’t have to turn to know what he’s talking about. Marcus will be sat with his legs so far apart he might as well be at the gynaecologist’s.

‘Rodney’s fine,’ Marcus says. ‘If we must listen to this filth, can’t we have a classic?’

‘Dolly!’ Deb says.

Marcus groans. ‘Not Dolly Parton, please. Johnny Cash?’

‘Your knee is halfway into his side of the car,’ Dylan says, with a quiet firmness that makes me smile despite myself. ‘Just sit up a bit.’

‘All right, Mum, bloody hell,’ Marcus says. ‘How about it, Addie? A bit of Johnny Cash? Please?’

I raise my eyebrows in surprise. Marcus’s tone is almost . . . polite. I’m suspicious, but when I turn in my seat to glance at him he’s just looking out the window, expressionless. I watch him for a moment, wondering. I meant it when I said I don’t believe a