The Road Trip(19)

‘I know.’ I take a road left into a new-build estate lined with parked cars and squint as the sun hits a window. ‘He’s still a dick, though.’

Dylan doesn’t dispute it. We walk on for a while in silence. This feels weird, like we’re suddenly improvising a scene we’ve run through a thousand times before. Dylan’s expression is serious. I can’t seem to recover that anger that went out of me when I saw how I’d hurt him. Suddenly all I want to do is make him smile. It’s such a forceful sensation that I press a hand to my stomach to stem it.

‘While we’re here, just the two of us, I . . . I want to say I’m sorry for what I said about your decision to stop talking to me,’ Dylan says into the silence. ‘That was your choice.’

In fairness, he’s always respected that choice. Even though I’ve ached so many times to take it back.

‘I thought it would make it easier. To . . .’ I trail off.

‘Yeah. Did it?’

No. Nothing made it easier. I was unmade, when Dylan left me, and there was no simple way to rebuild myself. Only piece by piece.

‘It’s not been the easiest couple of years,’ I say, in the end.

‘No.’ His arm brushes mine again – on purpose, I think. ‘I wish I could’ve . . .’

‘Don’t do that.’ It comes out strangled. ‘Don’t wish things.’

He stays quiet. ‘Marcus has changed. Is changing. Just look out for it – please. For me.’

‘Don’t do that either. Don’t say for me like . . .’

‘I’m sorry. But I want you to know I wouldn’t be in a car with Marcus if he was still the man you knew when we were together.’

I glance at him. He wouldn’t have said something like that a year and a half ago. I play spot-the-difference again: the shorter hair, a little line between his eyebrows . . . and now when Marcus is being a prick to me, Dylan snaps at him. That’s new too.

The frown, the hair, the snapping – it all adds up to make him seem kind of worldlier. A bit damaged, a bit stronger. More self-possessed.

‘We should probably . . .’ He sighs and looks behind him. ‘We’ve left a very weird combination of people by the side of the motorway.’

I rub my face and laugh shakily into my hands. ‘Oh, God. Kevin the trucker has probably killed them all.’

‘Or Rodney. It’s always the quiet ones.’

We smile at one another. I turn back first, my arm brushing his again.

‘I was wrong,’ I say on impulse. ‘About the not-talking. It was worse. I – it – I wish I hadn’t asked you to leave me alone.’

I watch the corners of his mouth turn up. There was a time when I would have done anything to make him smile like that.

‘Thank you for telling me,’ he says simply.

We walk back towards the Mini in silence. It’s hard to know what to say after that. I’m walking slower than I should be. I like the feeling of him beside me.

We both stop as we reach the steps down to the motorway.

‘Oh, Christ,’ Dylan says. ‘Can’t leave them alone for five minutes, can we?’





Dylan

Beneath us, on the motorway verge, Rodney, Kevin and Marcus form a bizarre tableau – they seem to be conducting some sort of amateur Olympic Games.

Rodney has an empty bottle held like a javelin, his other arm sighting the throw (thankfully he is aiming away from the busy motorway). He is sporting an expression of comical concentration on his face. Meanwhile Marcus and Kevin are squatting down to lift two suitcases.

‘It’s all in the legs,’ Marcus is saying as he grabs hold of my luggage. ‘You don’t need upper-arm strength.’

Addie’s sister watches over proceedings from the picnic blanket, where – from my limited understanding of such things – she seems to be expressing breast milk into a hoover-like contraption attached to her chest.

Kevin hefts the suitcase with practised ease. ‘Upper-arm strength helps, though.’ He proceeds to bicep-curl the suitcase while Marcus – who’s never had the patience or dedication required to regularly go to the gym, or in fact regularly do anything – attempts to lift the suitcase above his head like a weightlifting champion. He gets halfway and then sets it down again, looking rather red in the face.

‘Just getting a good grip,’ he says.

Kevin chortles, doing a few casual squats.

Addie sighs beside me. ‘I do not like the way Deb is looking at that trucker.’

‘Kevin? Really?’

‘She’s not had sex since having Riley. She said something about wanting to get back in the saddle this weekend.’

Her expression mirrors mine.

‘Is Rodney actually taking part?’ I ask, watching him practise the throw before going in for the real thing. He looks a little like an animated stick figure with his knobbly knees jutting and his feet turned out. The bottle sails up the bank, not quite reaching the line of trees at the top, and then topples gracelessly down again.

‘Just joining in, I guess, in his own way,’ Addie says, with something that sounds a lot like fondness. ‘He doesn’t seem to have fallen for Deb like the other two, does he?’

‘Kevin’s certainly smitten, but I would say Marcus is . . .’ I pause carefully. ‘Doing what Marcus does whenever there’s a woman in proximity. Not that Deb would ever go anywhere near him, all things considered. Oh, bloody hell, there he goes,’ I say as Marcus topples over below, suitcase thudding to the ground beside him. ‘He had to pick my suitcase, didn’t he?’