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

Dad will allow on our lands, mainly because it’s something his father did before him. Grouse and pheasants are a permanent feature of life at home – I once went into the downstairs bathroom and found a pheasant sitting in the sink. She’d got in the window, which jammed some time ago and still won’t close, letting in a steady arctic draught that always seems to be directed precisely towards the toilet.

If Dad is out shooting, that at least means he’ll come back in a good mood. I push the front door – it needs paring again, it’s harder than ever to lever open – and step into the hall, the most done-up part of the house. There are freshly cut flowers on the pedestal at the bottom of the staircase and the tiled floor has been recently polished.

‘Dylan?’

I smile. ‘Mum?’

‘In here!’ she calls.

I roll my eyes. Mum has never grown accustomed to living in a house so big that ‘in here’ is not sufficient direction. She grew up in a two-up, two-down in Cardiff, and even thirty years of marriage to my father hasn’t quite knocked that out of her. Their marriage was rather scandalous at the time, hard as it is to imagine my father ever having done anything remotely frowned-upon.

‘The kitchen?’ I yell.

‘The front room!’

I follow the sound into the only living room we keep open, the grand front room that would have been intended for receiving guests when this house was built. The view from the tall windows is stunning – breeze-ruffled green fields, the dark thatch of woodland, not a person or building in sight.

Mum cups my face in her cold hands. She’s wearing jodhpurs and a jumper that’s lumpy because of all the layers she has on underneath; her cropped hair looks a little whiter than when I last saw her, but then, it has been almost six months.

‘My darling boy,’ she says, her hands tightening on my cheeks. ‘Have you been trying to give your father a heart attack?’

I shift out of her grip and give her a hug. I can feel the dread creeping in already, slow fingers tiptoeing up my spine, dark fog collecting at my ankles. This house is full of it; here, I’m boy-Dylan, the kid who never took to sports, who could never get his head around numbers, who simply wouldn’t toughen up.

‘I don’t know what Dad’s so upset about,’ I say, as I step away and fling myself down on the other sofa. It creaks ominously. It’s Victorian, stuffed full of spiky horsehair that springs up immediately to pinprick the back of my legs. ‘I’m here with a plan, anyway.’

The relief on Mum’s face makes my gut twist. ‘Wonderful! Have you applied for a job?’

I swallow. ‘Not . . . exactly. But I’ve worked out what I want to do. I’m going to do a Masters in English Literature. I want to be an academic.’

She freezes, hands twisted in her lap as if she’s wringing something out between them.

‘Oh, Dylan . . .’

‘What?’ I almost yell it; I was poised and ready for this, defences up the moment I stepped through that great creaking door. ‘Why not?’

‘It’s not . . . Your father wants you to choose something financially stable, Dylan . . . You know how things are here,’ she says, stretching her hands out helplessly to indicate the ratty, moth-eaten edges of the curtains and the damp quietly seeping down the wall from the bathroom above. ‘When you inherit . . .’

‘Luke inherits,’ I say, turning my face away from my mother and staring up at the ceiling. It sags a little, looming down, as if the house is ready to flatten me.

‘Dylan,’ Mum says quietly.

Dad wrote Luke out of the will when he came out as gay. I was ten, Luke was twelve. Twelve.

I ball my fists. I know I should feel more sympathy for my mother – being married to my father must be unspeakably difficult, even if she does love him. But I can’t forgive her for failing to change Dad’s mind about Luke. Dad acknowledges him, has him to visit, advises him on his business ventures – but he refuses to meet Javier, and he won’t let his gay son inherit his estate.

‘Just take the job your father’s set aside for you at the firm,’ Mum says gently. ‘Dylan, you have a responsibility.’

‘Elinor?’

My dad’s voice. I stiffen immediately.

‘In the front room! Dylan’s here,’ Mum calls, resettling her hands in her lap and straightening up.

There’s a moment of silence, then Dad comes tramping down the hall, still in his hunting boots, heavy with mud.

He stands in the doorway and looks at me for a while. I hold his gaze and the rage-fear thunders and the dread flexes its claws and here it is, the reason my mother hasn’t seen me for six months.

‘Glad you’ve seen sense and come home,’ my father says, already turning away. ‘Help your mother with dinner. And then we’re going to have a serious chat about your future.’

NOW

Addie

It’s just a sprained wrist at worst. But Felicity, the passing Good Samaritan, insisted on taking me to A&E, so now I’m here instead of looking for Deb.

I’ve had it up to here with passing Good Samaritans, to be honest. Kevin was plenty.

‘All right, love?’ Felicity says, smoothing my hair with a hand. Felicity is a real toucher. Deb would hate her. Wherever Deb is.

Accident and Emergency at Royal Preston Hospital is pretty busy right now. Someone just got rushed by with blood painted down the front of their summer dress like an extra in a horror film, and there’s a man sat across from me who seems to be holding his nose on to his face. I’m trying not to think about what’ll happen if he lets go.

I’ve yet to see a member of staff move at anything less than a run. I’m just another person wasting their time. I make a second attempt to