The Road Trip(54)

India is loud, kind and straightforward to the point of rudeness. When Marcus was a teenager they would have screaming matches, veins popping in their foreheads, arguments so loud and vicious you’d never think they could reach any sort of resolution, and then somehow, miraculously, India would get an apology out of Marcus for whatever he’d done, and they’d be playing golf together again. This is how Marcus’s family worked, until, in our first year of university, India left Joel for Joel’s brother.

I’ve never seen Marcus so broken. He went wild. Endless parties, orgies, ten-thousand-pound trips to ski resorts and run-ins with the police. The night I found him alone on the college chapel roof with a bottle of absinthe was the tipping point: Joel told Marcus he’d send him to rehab if he didn’t clean up. I remember the phone call, how Marcus’s eyes flicked to mine and widened for a moment, and I thought, At last, something’s got to him. I should have thought of rehab myself: Marcus hates nothing more than the feeling of being abandoned somewhere, alone.

He never cleaned up, exactly, but he managed to rein himself in a little after that. Or rather, he’s still managing.

To my surprise, India didn’t check out when she left Joel. She still visits Joel’s house to see Marcus; she still rings him and messages him. She’s still his stepmum, she says, but he’s never really seen her that way again, and now the screaming matches just end with Marcus slamming out of the house and calling me.

It’s no wonder, really, that he was so keen to keep travelling. And when I couldn’t muster the energy to get out of bed, Marcus understood – he never said it, but I knew the dread had come for him before too.

‘What was it you wanted to show me?’ I ask Marcus as he joins me downstairs. His shoes are muddy; they leave a trail on the floor, cartoonish, pale brown footprints on the pristine marble.

Marcus jerks his head for me to follow him and heads for the garden. ‘You’ll love it.’ He grins at me over his shoulder. ‘Come on.’

I smile back despite myself. Marcus’s good moods come and go like rain showers, but when you catch one, it’s a joy.

We step out into the grey evening light. The back porch – about the size of a squash court – is lit by soft pink lights embedded between the flagstones; they give Marcus a faintly ghoulish air, as if he’s a character in a horror film, uplit in pale red. Beyond, the lawns stretch down to the man-made lake in which Marcus celebrated his twenty-first birthday. Everyone had protested when he insisted on bikinis and swim shorts – it was a lake in Britain, for God’s sake – until the first brave person dive-bombed in and discovered that the lake was fully heated.

We traipse all the way down the lawn. Marcus jumps between the stepping stones India had laid when he was a child. As the pinkish light from the porch recedes, he flips on the torch on his phone, sending its beam scattering this way and that as he leaps from flagstone to flagstone.

There’s a small jetty on the lake – this is where India and Joel got married. I must have been about eight. Joel and my mother met at a gala in London; our families have been friends ever since. I’d stood beside Marcus during the ceremony; he was dressed in a pale blue suit and waistcoat, and there was a wreath of flowers in his curls, skewed, looping over one ear. He cried when they said I do, just tears down his cheeks, no shoulders shaking, no gulps for air. Until then, I’d known that Marcus was sad to have lost his mother, but I’d never felt it before. I’d held his hand tight; across from me, down the aisle, my brother had reached to hold his other.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I call.

Marcus is getting ahead of me now, almost at the jetty. His torchlight catches the surface of the water and sends reflections shuddering; I catch sight of a boat bobbing uneasily on the lake.

Marcus stands aside, lighting the boat so I can get in first. It’s a small wooden thing with two paddles and planks to sit on. I eye it with suspicion.

‘Get in, wet-arse,’ Marcus says, giving me an affectionate shove. ‘As if you didn’t spend half your childhood fishing.’

‘On a bank,’ I point out. ‘Fishing on a bank.’

Marcus gives me another shove, enough to make me think he’ll help me into the boat if I don’t get on with it. I leap in, landing unsteadily, grabbing at a plank to keep myself from falling completely. Marcus laughs behind me, and the beam of his phone torch skitters around us, lighting the distant trees, the dark lake, the jetty, as he jumps in beside me. It’s cold enough to see my breath when the torch beam swings my way.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

‘All in good time, my friend! Grab an oar, would you?’

We row erratically across the water. For all his dabbling in every sport imaginable at university – and with a sportsman’s genes – you’d think Marcus would be good at this sort of thing, but he’s useless. For a while we go around in circles, splashing each other, swearing, laughing, until we get the hang of it.

I’m warming up now, and with the warmth comes a fizz of excitement at being out adventuring. It’s often like this with Marcus – he brings out the bravery in me. With Marcus by my side, I’m somebody, the sort of man who throws caution to the wind, who defies his father, who chooses poetry when he ought to know better.

There’s no jetty at the other end of the lake, just a bank to scrabble up – we’re both soaked through by the time we make it to dry land, and as Marcus ties the boat messily to a wooden pole near the water, I come to the conclusion that his dad must have turned off the lake-heating over the winter. The water is eating its way through my jeans, gnawing cold at my fingers.