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) 📕

‘You going to stick around then? Now you’ve seen his sexy ankles?’

Deb pauses in thought, then shakes her head. ‘I can get posh boys in chino shorts back home,’ she says. ‘I fancy myself a long-haired French hippy.’

‘You think you’ll ever get bored of it?’ I ask her, hugging a cushion to my chest.

‘Bored of what?’

‘You know – only ever having flings.’

Deb stretches her legs out on the sofa. Her toenail varnish is chipped and there’s a bruise on each of her long brown shins. Deb inherited her dad’s skin tone – her grandfather on that side was Ghanaian – while I got the pasty white skin of mine. I find it irritating when people say we’re half-sisters. Deb’s my soul sister, my other half, the only person who understands me. I’m her anchor, the one she always comes back to. There’s nothing half about us.

When we were growing up, I always hated it when Deb’s father visited. He’d take her off somewhere, just the two of them, a trip to the park or the bus into town. Dad would look pinched and sad until Deb came home and wanted to build model trains with him and he’d light up again. As awful as it sounds, I was glad when Deb’s father argued with Mum and, eventually, when I was about eight, he stopped coming altogether. In classic Deb style, she’s written her biological dad out now. Deb doesn’t really do second chances.

‘Why would I get bored?’ she says. ‘I have endless variety.’

‘But don’t you want to settle down one day?’

‘Settle what down? What is there that needs settling? I know who I am and what I want. I don’t need some guy to make me complete, or whatever it is they’re meant to do.’

‘But what about kids? Don’t you want them?’

‘Nope.’ She scratches her stomach and lifts her head to stare at the ceiling. ‘That’s one thing I know for sure. No babies. Not ever.’

I wave Deb off as she heads to Nîmes in her dodgy banged-up rental car – I only know she’s going because I hear the car engine starting. Deb doesn’t really do goodbyes. She hates hugs, which has put her off the whole goodbye thing, since people always seem to expect them. Ever since we were kids, she and I have said goodbye on text, after the fact. I kind of like it – we hardly ever text the rest of the time, especially now everyone uses WhatsApp, so our text conversation is always a string of nice notes.

Bye, love you, call me if you need me, my message to her reads.

Ditto, kiddo, says hers. You need me, I’m there.

Usually me and Deb introduce ourselves to a guest as soon as they arrive, but this time I decide to wait until the evening, once she’s gone. No need to confuse matters by giving the impression of two caretakers when one of them doesn’t plan on sticking around.

I make my way up the servant’s entrance to the villa. There’s a cramped spiral staircase that leads from our flat to a small hallway just outside the villa’s kitchen. The door between kitchen and stairway is locked from our side, but I knock loudly anyway. I’ve been burned before, just walking in: I caught a beer-bellied Scottish guest helping himself to some crackers in the nude.

‘Hello?’ I call through the door. ‘Mr Abbott?’

No answer. I unlock the door and step through gingerly. Nobody here. The kitchen’s a tip: baguette ends, empty bottles, rinds of cheese, a whole slab of butter sweating in the evening sun. I tut, then stop myself, because tutting is exactly what my mother would do.

I gnaw at one of the baguette ends as I tidy. Whoever this guy is, he’s used to someone else clearing up after him. And he’s drunk, judging by the number of bottles. I swallow the last of the bread and pause in the middle of the floor. It’s quiet except for the constant static of the crickets outside. I’m not used to quiet up here in the house. Sometimes a family go out for the day, but they’re usually around in the evenings, and most of the time I have Deb with me anyway.

I’m a little spooked. Just me and a strange drunk man in the house. I count bottles. Five beers, a half-drunk bottle of wine.

I check the kitchen once more, poke my head out to see the terrace, then wander through into the villa’s grand entrance hall.

‘Hello?’ I call, more quietly this time.

It’s cooler here, with the big double doors closed tight, blocking out the sun’s heat. There’s a jacket pooled at the bottom of the stairs. I hang it back on the bannister. It’s soft denim lined with fleece – it must have been cold wherever he flew in from. You’d roast wearing it here. As I hang it up I catch its scent: orange-ish, woody, manly.

‘Mr Abbott?’

Through to the reception room, the dining hall, the ballroom, the living room. They’re exactly as we left them when we prepared the villa for new guests. He’s upstairs, then. We never go upstairs when guests are here, unless they ask us up to sort a blocked drain or whatever. Bedrooms are their private space.

I’m kind of relieved. I retreat back to the servant’s staircase and lock the door behind me. The flat’s just as it always is: cosy, cluttered, zero natural light. I sink into the pink velvet sofa and flick on the telly. Some French drama, too fast-paced for me to follow, but really I just want the noise. Maybe I should have asked Deb to stay. I hate this lost feeling I get when I’m left on my own. I turn the TV up.

I’ll try meeting Mr Abbott again tomorrow. Not too early, though. He’ll need to sleep off that hangover.

He wakes me the next day with the slam of his shutters. He can’t get the hang