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) 📕

‘Shut up,’ I say, wiping my face hard. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up.’

‘No, go on,’ Marcus says. He steps forward. ‘Go on.’

‘Look, I tried to be a good guy. But she’s – I had a moment of weakness. She said how badly she wanted me and . . .’

He darts backwards as I move towards him again, but Marcus puts his hand out to stop me.

‘I’m sorry,’ Etienne says. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘What happened?’ Marcus asks. ‘Where is she now?’

‘I stopped her as soon as I realised what was happening,’ Etienne says, eyes flicking between me and Marcus. ‘She got mad and left. I didn’t mean for anything to happen with her. She just . . . got in my head. I can’t think straight around her.’

Marcus is nodding. ‘Yeah,’ he says. His voice slurs. ‘Yeah. That sounds just like Addie.’

Addie

I call my sister. I will never be grateful enough for Deb. I barely have words to say it, but she never says, I thought you fancied him. She never says, You wanted that. She turns up at the flat and she undresses me like I’m made of something precious, then gets me in the shower. After I’m clean, she wraps me in my old threadbare dressing gown and holds me very tightly. It isn’t a hug – she’s holding me together.

The guilt sets in after the shock. It’s all very predictable. When I’m no longer running from him, when the horror isn’t right in front of me, I’m totally sure it’s my fault. I fancied him. I drank his wine and I replied to his texts.

Deb says, ‘What would you tell me? If I said those things?’

And I see the truth of it for a moment. I know what I would tell my sister. I know how fiercely I’d protest that consent is an ongoing process. That no means no whatever you’ve said before it. But then the clarity’s gone again. There’s just horror and shame.

Dylan

Marcus makes me go to the pub with him before I go back to the flat to see Addie.

‘You need to clear your head,’ he says, then he proceeds to buy me four pints, as if that will fucking help.

I cry into my drink. I don’t tell Marcus what Luke told me because, quite honestly, I’m barely thinking about it. All I can think about is the pain in my chest, like it’s cracking, like someone’s pried my ribs apart and left them gaping.

‘Don’t get sad, get mad,’ Marcus tells me, pushing another drink towards me. ‘Addie’s been screwing around with the teacher and God knows who else, pretending she’s all sweetness and light. I knew there was something about her. Didn’t I say? Didn’t I say?’

Addie

Deb wants to stay. But I want Dylan. He’ll be home soon. I need to wash again. I need to wash it all off and then I need to tell Dylan, because somehow that’s almost more frightening than everything else.

But it turns out I don’t need to tell him.

He’s already been told.

Dylan

She looks different when I walk into the flat – her eyes are wide and frightened, kitten-like, and I know then that this is the first time she’s betrayed me with another man. She wouldn’t be able to hide this from me: it’s written all over her face.

‘I know what you did.’

That’s what I say. And then I tell her I’m leaving, just like I practised it in the pub. I tell her there are some things I can’t forgive, and I think to myself, Yes, I’m right, and I’m strong for walking away. I won’t be like my mother. I won’t turn a blind eye. I’ll be strong.

At first she’s very still. She looks so pale and small, like a little wild creature brought in from the cold, deciding whether to hide or fight.

The silence is horrifying; we’re on the edge of something vast and empty. I’m dizzy from drink and sick with horror and I want to climb out of my own skin, be somebody else, anyone else.

‘Aren’t you even going to listen to my side of the story?’ she says into the silence. Her voice sounds like a child’s.

‘Etienne told me everything. There’s nothing you can say.’

The next few minutes are a blur. She throws herself at me, and I think she’s trying to hurt me, her little fists in my chest, her feet stamping, but it’s almost as if she’s trying to burrow into me, too, to get closer. She roars. It’s grief, unmistakably. I think, quietly, So she does love me, then. She doesn’t want to lose me. What a time to find out for sure.

Addie

There is no hurt like it. All the worst things have been confirmed. I’m as bad as I feared. I’m worse.

I tell nobody else, not even my mum.

Deb saves my life, I think. She makes all the calls. She takes me to the police station and never leaves my side. If she wasn’t here, Etienne would have remained as the head teacher at Barwood School, and I’d have fallen apart.

Dylan

The doubt creeps in like damp. I wake up the next day in the log cabin at the end of Marcus’s dad’s garden, as if I’ve slipped back to that long dark winter before I stopped taking money from my parents. India picked us up from Chichester last night; Marcus must have rung her, I register, with a flicker of surprise that soon dulls again. I stare at the ceiling and touch – just for a moment – the thought of living without Addie, and it’s enough to send me curling inwards like an insect, burying myself in the sheets.

I don’t get up until the evening, and only then because my stomach gnaws with hunger.

‘What if there was