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) 📕

man like Marcus ever changes. And an occasional please isn’t going to make me feel differently. But all the same, when I turn back to my phone, I hit play on Johnny Cash’s ‘I Walk the Line’.

Deb switches lanes at snail’s pace in a vague attempt to get some forward momentum. Our windows are closed to give the air con its best shot at actually cooling someone down, but I’m dying for fresh air. The cars on either side of us are full of people yawning and bored. Feet up on dashboards and forearms leaning on steering wheels.

The car parallel to ours has three teenagers in the back, all squabbling over an iPad. From the outside, we probably look like a group of friends off on holiday together. The parents in that car are probably so jealous of us.

If only they bloody knew.

‘Google says all routes are red,’ Rodney pipes up. I turn and see him peering at his phone. His hair is slick with sweat and sticking to his forehead, and there’s a triangular dark patch from the neck of his T-shirt down his chest. God. Rodney’s having a shit day. Imagine thinking you’d found a nice, cheap transport option to a wedding, and ending up trapped in a sauna-car with us lot.

‘How long’s it saying it’ll take us to get to Ettrick?’ I ask Rodney.

‘Umm. Seven hours.’

‘Seven hours?’ everybody choruses.

Deb gently leans her head forward against the steering wheel. ‘I can’t go on,’ she says. ‘And I’m bloody desperate for a wee.’

‘We could finish this bottle of water?’ Rodney suggests.

‘Rodney, are you familiar with how women pee?’ Deb says.

‘Not . . . very familiar, no,’ Rodney replies.

Marcus sniggers.

‘Well. I’ll draw you a picture when we get there,’ Deb says.

‘Oh, wow, thanks?’ Rodney says.

‘If we swap, you can hop out and nip behind the treeline,’ I say, nodding towards the fields beside the motorway. ‘Nobody’s moving anyway. I can’t remember the last time we moved forward.’

‘Are you sure?’ she says, glancing ahead at the stationary traffic.

‘How badly do you need to pee?’

‘Even my pelvic floor exercises will not help me soon, Ads.’

‘What’s a pelvic floor?’ Rodney asks.

It’s like having an actual child in the car.

‘Ready?’ I say to Deb.

She nods, and we each open our car doors. God, it’s nice to breathe some fresh air. Even if that fresh air is nasty, smelly pollution. It’s hotter out here than in the car – I can feel my skin burning in real time as I walk around the back and meet Deb halfway.

‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ I say to her as she passes me. ‘Giving Dylan and Marcus a lift?’

‘Oh, yeah. Worst idea ever,’ Deb says. ‘What were we thinking?’

I watch her weave her way through the rows of cars and up on to the bank, disappearing into the scrubby trees. At first, when the cars start moving around me, I feel a bit seasick. Like when you’re on a train and you think it’s leaving the station because the train on the other platform is pulling away, and your brain gets all confused. Then the car behind us hoots. And the car behind that. I come to my senses.

‘Shit.’

I yank open the driver-side door and climb in. Marcus is already laughing like a bloody hyena, and Rodney is going, oh dear, oh dear, like a flustered old lady having trouble with her nerves.

‘Ah,’ says Dylan. ‘This is . . . a conundrum.’

There’s a good three hundred yards between me and the Audi in front already. I glance in the wing mirror and catch sight of the cars behind us trying to inch into the other lane. There’s no hard shoulder either, because of these roadworks – we’re out of options.

‘Fucking shitting fuckity shit,’ I say, then blush, because I nicked that particular arrangement of expletives off Dylan, and I haven’t used it for years. Apparently him being here has reminded me of one of the few gifts he gave me that I did not give back: the talent of swearing like a true toff.

‘We can’t stay here. She can’t run into the traffic to get to us anyway, and someone’s going to go into the back of us. Shit.’ I start up, going as slowly as I can get away with. ‘Can you see her? Did she take her phone?’ I glance down at the car door – nope, there’s the phone. ‘Bloody bollocking fuckity fuck,’ I hiss between my teeth. ‘What do I do?!’

‘First things first, you probably need to drive faster than ten miles per hour,’ Dylan says apologetically. ‘Or we might all die.’

‘Right, right,’ I say, accelerating. ‘Oh, God, can you see her?’

Dylan strains to look out the window, but he’s on the wrong side. ‘Marcus?’ he says.

‘Can’t see her,’ Marcus says. ‘This is priceless.’

‘Oh dear, poor Deb!’ says Rodney.

‘Yes, thank you, everyone,’ I say, trying not to hyperventilate. ‘Shall I come off at the next junction? Where will she expect to meet us? What do we do?’

‘Breathe, Ads – it’s Deb. She could handle being dumped alone in the Sahara. She’ll just find this funny. Or mildly annoying,’ Dylan says, and I jump slightly as I feel his hand on my shoulder. He withdraws it quickly. I wish I hadn’t jumped.

‘Oh, God,’ I say, letting out a strangled laugh. We’re going at thirty now, which is about the same speed as everyone else as the motorway starts to get moving again. This would usually feel annoyingly slow but right now, while Deb’s spot on the verge slips away in my left mirror, it feels way too fast. ‘I need to get into the left lane. Marcus, would you please stop fucking cackling back there? It’s not helpful.’

Dylan snorts with laughter. I catch his eye for a moment in the internal mirror. He pulls a face.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘It’s just . . . It is . . . a bit . . .’

I swallow down a laugh, but it comes back, and before I know it my shoulders are shaking