The Road Trip(11)

It’s possible I’ve drunk a little too much. I hope she can’t tell. I’m trying to do the good kind of staring, not the leering kind, but I’ve had three quarters of a bottle of wine while reading Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella in the hills above the villa with lunch, and I have to confess I don’t entirely trust my judgement.

As I climb into the passenger seat of the blue-eyed caretaker’s rental car, I try to sober up and listen to what she’s saying – something about the shutters – but my mind is busy stuttering over a new idea, something about quick little hands with bitten-down nails.

As we pull out of the villa’s gates, I cast another look at her profile: a delicate, turned-up nose, a hint of freckles on her cheekbones like fine droplets of water on sand. There’s a quickening in my stomach, half fear, half excitement, or maybe just desire. I knew this summer was going to be magnificent, and here, now, with the wind tearing in my ears and the sun’s heat pressed to my cheek, with a dark-haired beauty beside me, her pale thighs bare against the leather seat, her—

‘You’re going to break the fridge door, by the way,’ she says.

I startle. ‘Hmm?’

‘The fridge door. You keep yanking it from the bottom of the handle. Try pulling from the top, would you – otherwise Deb and I will have to sort someone to fix it and all the tradesmen around here think we’re morons. We’ll end up having to try and do it ourselves.’

I deflate a bit.

‘How can you tell?’ I ask, rallying. ‘Have you been watching me, little phantom caretaker?’

She looks at me, her blue eyes sharp. She has a mole on the top of her lip, just left of where her Cupid’s bow mouth rises in soft peaks.

‘Don’t call me little. It’s patronising.’

I waver. The feeling of grandeur, of magnificence, it slips. Am I playing this all wrong? She is little, in my defence: fine-boned and fragile, her collarbone pressing against her skin like a root, her wrists so narrow I could circle them both with one hand. She turns back to the road, smiling slightly; I think she saw me waver.

‘And I wasn’t watching you,’ she continues. ‘Just listening. All the pots on the top of the fridge rattle when you yank it that way.’

‘Listening?’ Hmm. I have spent much of the last two days loudly reciting lines from The Faerie Queene – my primary inspiration for the poetry collection I’m working on, a sort of homage to Spenser. And yesterday I sang the whole of Taylor Swift’s ‘22’ to myself on the terrace with a bottle of wine as a microphone.

‘You have a lovely singing voice,’ she says, biting her bottom lip. I watch her white teeth pull at the soft pink skin and for a hot, bold second I imagine those teeth digging into my bare shoulder.

‘Really?’

She glances at me incredulously. ‘No. Of course not. You’re rubbish. You can’t possibly not know that?’

I swallow again. Rallying is getting somewhat harder. ‘You’re a little rude; did anyone ever tell you that, phantom caretaker?’

‘My name is Addie,’ she said. ‘And I’m not rude. I’m . . . blunt. It’s charming.’

She says it as if she’s just figuring it out herself, then flashes me a smile that zips right through me. The line of poetry I’d been playing with is lost as my mind sharpens in on the curve of her lip, the way that dress clings to her breasts. The unsettling way she keeps setting me back. I’m reassessing: she’s like a water sprite, yes, but a fierce little one with teeth and claws, half sweetness, half wild. Marcus would love her.

It’s odd being here without Marcus. He and I have been travelling together all summer – I’d intended to take three weeks out from our trip for a family holiday here at Cherry’s villa, but my relatives all cancelled after a classic rerun of an Abbott family favourite, the perennial ‘everyone is a disappointment’ dispute. This old gem invariably ends with my father screaming spittle and invectives at us all, and my brother and I promptly spending reckless amounts of cash to spite him. This year I have gone easy on him: I’ve merely robbed him of the opportunity to get his money back by attending this holiday solo.

Mum is still leaving me voicemails three times a day. They’re all the same: Dylan, my darling, your father is very sorry, please do call us back.

Funny how my father never phones me himself, given how terribly sorry he is.

My long summer in Europe was his idea. Like the classic English gentleman, I should go and sow my wild oats on the Continent before returning to the duties of real life. I have resolutely rejected this idea all summer, of course – I’m here looking for Grace.

But Grace is proving very hard to find. And here’s Addie, tiny and beautiful, living fairylike beneath my feet.

‘So who was it who saw your friend in La Roque-Alric?’ Addie asks, as we wind our way through the vineyards. There’s nobody on the road but the two of us, and even through the wind you can hear the crickets rattling out their strange song from the dry undergrowth bordering the tarmac.

‘Just a friend of a friend.’ I wave an arm vaguely. The truth is, the lead came from Instagram-stalking people who had liked Grace’s last post; I’d rather not share this with Addie. I’m sobering up a little – perhaps it’s the fresh mountain air – and without the edge of the wine, I’m beginning to feel somewhat out of my league here. Addie is sharp and self-possessed and has really quite phenomenal legs and I don’t think I put any product in my hair this morning. I surreptitiously check – no, nothing, damn.