The Road Trip(47)

He nods at the queue ahead of us. ‘Conveniently, I’m not going anywhere. Hannah.’

‘Way off.’

‘By which I mean, Ella. No, nope, sorry, meant to say Bethan. Emily. Cindy?’

‘Are you even trying?’ I ask.

‘Well, hmm. What would you say if I told you this was a shameless gimmick to get you talking to me?’

‘I’d say I was shocked and appalled.’

He grins. ‘Will you let me buy your drink, Emma?’

‘Much too soon to say. It’ll be twenty minutes before we get to the bar.’

‘Hoping for a better offer in the meantime, Cassie?’ the blue-eyed guy says, looking around with his eyes narrowed comically, like he’s scouting for the competition.

Actually, I’m deciding. Is it crossing a line if I let him buy me a drink? Do I want to cross a line? Have I already crossed one, back when I wriggled into this dress that I used to wear when I wanted to pull on a uni night out?

‘Addie!’ Deb yells from behind me.

I turn.

‘Aha!’ says the blue-eyed guy. ‘Addie. My next guess.’

‘I got us a bottle for our table,’ Deb shouts.

Around me, the crowd groans with envy.

‘How?’ I mouth, already pushing my way back to her.

‘See you later, Addie?’ the blue-eyed guy calls, but I’ve made my mind up, and I don’t look back.





Dylan She’s talking to some guy at the bar when I arrive. It’s searing, the jealousy, a hot lick up the back of my neck, a cold hand on my nape, and suddenly I am sickeningly aware of what I really did as I wasted all those days lying on my back on interchangeable beaches and failing to write, failing to think, failing to anything. I left her, here, looking like this: astonishingly beautiful, fay-like, perfection in miniature.

Her dress shows every curve. The desire hits me a few seconds after the envy, and as I watch her laugh, the lights catching the sheen of make-up on her cheekbones, I feel devastatingly out of her league. What kind of moron dosses around in Bali when he could be here with a woman like that? How could I be so stupid? Whatever misery has been gripping me over the past few months – the thick black dread, waiting for me every morning when I woke – feels more ridiculous than ever now that it’s cleared and I’m here, watching her. What was I doing?

‘I did warn you,’ Deb says, at my shoulder.

I messaged Deb last week to say I wanted to surprise Addie on Fireworks Night – she’d mentioned that she and Deb were excited for a night out. Well, it’ll definitely surprise her, Deb said. I think she’s pretty much given up on you ever coming home, to be honest.

‘I’m such a tit,’ I say, rubbing my face. ‘I thought . . .’

‘She’d wait for you for ever?’

‘She’s still waiting, right?’ I say, watching worriedly. ‘She’s not . . . seeing someone else?’

We’ve never talked about being exclusive. We fast-forwarded past that, right through to I love you – I assumed it was unnecessary. Now I’m recapping every Skype call, scanning through every word I can remember for a male name, that hot lick of jealousy working its way down my spine.

‘Of course she’s not seeing someone else.’ Deb folds her arms. ‘What were you doing?’

Hiding. Running away. Sinking. Drowning.

‘Trying to figure things out,’ I say weakly. ‘I thought . . . Addie said to come home to her when I knew what I wanted to do with my life. And then I kept staying, and kept not figuring it out, and coming home felt even, you know, even harder.’

Deb frowns. ‘That wasn’t very sensible.’

‘Yeah. I’m getting that.’

The man beside Addie ducks his head to speak to her and I want to whimper.

‘Can’t we tell her I’m here now? Please?’

Deb looks at me in an evaluating sort of way.

‘Do you really love her?’

‘I really do.’

‘Then why did you stay away for so long?’

I grind my teeth in frustration. I can’t tell her about the dread, the lethargy, the terror, and even if I could bring myself to share the shame of that, deep down I don’t believe it’s an excuse. That thick dread has hit me before, once, when I was a teenager, and back then my father made it very clear that it was nothing but weakness.

‘I don’t know. OK? I don’t know. Marcus kept saying I should stay, and my dad was on at me to come back and start work at his business, and Addie has this whole new life here and I wasn’t sure . . . how I’d fit in it.’

‘So you opted out?’

‘So I waited. Until I was, you know, the man she’d want.’

Deb looks me up and down. ‘And you’re that now?’

I sag. ‘Well, not really, no.’

‘No. You look pretty much the same, aside from the tan.’

‘Please, Deb,’ I beg, as Addie laughs again, lifting a hand to her hair to smooth it back. ‘I messed up. Let me fix it.’

‘All right,’ Deb says. ‘Fine. But don’t keep messing up, will you? You made her happy for a few days in France, I’ll give you that – but since then you’ve made her bloody miserable. Now go hide and I’ll lure her back to our table with alcohol so you can surprise her. If you’re going to do this, you had better do it properly. I want to see my sister smiling again.’