The Road Trip(8)

Sometimes I like the extra space when she’s gone. But I also kind of hate being the one who’s left behind.

‘There’s a guy outside N?mes with an empty house. Kind of a commune thing,’ Deb says. ‘But like, a party commune. Not the nun kind. Do you not want me to go?’

She’s never really got the concept of half-feelings, Deb. I turn away, irritated, and shoot ‘Of course you should go’ over my shoulder as I stare vaguely at the contents of the fridge.

‘If you need me here, you know I’ll stay,’ she says.

I glance back at her. Her expression is totally open. It’s impossible to stay irritated with Deb. She’s just got someplace else she wants to be, and in her head, why would that affect me unless I needed her here?

‘No, you go,’ I say, closing the fridge. ‘Find yourself a sexy French hippy.’

We pause again. Upstairs our solo guest has walked out of the kitchen and on to the terrace. He’s speaking. Muttering. I can’t quite catch the words.

‘Is he talking to himself?’ Deb asks, tilting her head. ‘Maybe a madman’s found his way in. Maybe we’ve got a squatter.’

I move closer to the door to our flat and crack it open. The villa’s built on a hill – our door is tucked away to the right of the building, hidden from view under the walkway that leads from the kitchen to the raised terrace with its infinity pool.

Through the gap in the door, I can see the guest’s lower half passing the balustrades around the terrace. He’s wearing stone-coloured shorts and no shoes. A half-drunk bottle of beer taps against his thigh as he paces. His legs are tanned pale brown. He doesn’t look like a squatter.

‘What—’

I shush Deb and try to listen. He’s reciting something.

‘Upon a great adventure he was bound, that greatest Gloriana to him gave . . .’

‘Is he reading out some Shakespeare or something?’ Deb asks in my ear. She shoves me aside and opens the door wider.

‘Deb, careful,’ I hiss. Caretakers aren’t meant to spy on guests. This job is the best summer gig I could have imagined. Every so often I’m hit with a pang of fear that one of us will screw up so badly someone’ll notice and call Cherry’s parents.

‘To win him worship, and her grace to have, which of all earthly things he most did crave, and ever as he – even as he . . . Fuck.’ The man stops and lifts his beer. ‘Fucking shitting fuckity shit.’

He’s posh – he sounds like Hugh Grant. Deb covers her mouth to stifle her laugh. The man stills. I breathe in sharply and pull her back from the doorway.

‘Come on.’ I drag her back through to the living room. ‘Let’s not piss him off on day one, whoever he is.’

‘I think he’s fit,’ Deb decides, flopping down on the sofa. Like most of the furniture in the flat, it lived in the main house once, then got downgraded when Cherry’s mum fancied giving the place a new look. It’s dark pink velvet and has a massive red wine stain on the right arm – nothing to do with us, thank God.

‘You got that from his feet?’

Deb nods. ‘You can tell a lot from feet.’

This is the sort of Deb comment I’ve learned to just skim over, because you get into a whole world of weird if you start asking questions.

‘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 N?mes 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.