The Road Trip(86)

‘I stink of vomit,’ he says. ‘I need a shower. Sorry.’

My stomach twists. ‘He was really bad?’

Dylan just nods. As he makes his way to the bathroom I stand there, sick with guilt and shame, because Marcus is unwell, and Dylan is helping him, and I am the most unreasonable girlfriend there has ever been.



The first text from Etienne comes ten days later, on a Saturday night.



How are you doing, Addie? I mean, really. I know it can be hard to talk about at school. X



I leave it sitting in my pocket, determined not to reply. It isn’t professional of him to text me about personal stuff outside school. But then I think, I wouldn’t find it strange if it was Moira. Or even Jamie, and Jamie is a single guy my age too. It’s me who’s making this unprofessional. Etienne’s just being a polite, supportive colleague and manager.

Dylan’s looking after Marcus again. We’ve had a good week – we had a proper conversation about Marcus and how he’s got this history of going off the rails. I promised to be more understanding.



Doing much better, thanks. Really appreciate you stepping in to sort cover for me the other day. Addie

There’s no reply. I begin to wonder if I’ve been too abrupt. But when I see Etienne on Monday he smiles at me, a supportive, I-know-you’ve-got-this smile, and I feel better.

It’s like this for a month or two. The occasional text – nothing flirtatious or inappropriate. Just ever so slightly friendlier than we are in person. As Dylan’s Masters begins to eat into his time even more, and as he takes more shifts at the bar, I’m alone a lot. Some nights I stay late at school. Etienne’s often around, and we have quiet chats over evening cups of tea. Nothing more than that.

But I can’t deny that it excites me. Nothing’s happening. On paper, nothing’s wrong. But I know otherwise.

I know Etienne wants me. Sometimes, I want him too.



It’s two days before the Christmas holidays, and late – nine at night. Nobody else is around, not even the caretaker. Etienne has keys. He’ll lock up.

‘Addie?’ he says, poking his head around the door to my classroom. I’m taking down a display that Tyson raked his fingernails through, Wolverine-style. ‘Fancy a nightcap?’

It takes me a moment to realise he has a bottle in his hand. Red wine, by the looks of it.

‘It’s nearly the end of term, and we’ve both worked ourselves to the bone this year,’ he says, waggling the bottle. ‘We deserve a treat.’

I say yes to the nightcap. I follow him to his office. I fetch us glasses from the kitchen, and we drink the wine out of water tumblers. I’m wearing lipstick, and I leave a pink kiss on the edge of the glass.

We talk about work stuff, mostly. Laugh about the kids that do our heads in, complain about the ever-changing government guidelines, compare our least favourite parents. My cheeks are flushed pink and I’m drunk on half a bottle. Maybe a little more than half. I don’t keep track of how often he tops up my glass and his.

It happens very naturally. His hand on my thigh. It takes me too long to realise it’s strange.

I stand, move away. He follows me.

‘Addie,’ he says.

‘I should go,’ I say.

I turn towards the door.

He pushes it closed, over my shoulder, his body against my back.

‘This has been such a long time coming,’ he says in my ear. ‘Hasn’t it?’

There’s a cold sort of dread in my stomach. He’s right, I knew this was coming. What else had I expected? I feel like I’m slipping, or perhaps like I already slipped and now I’m falling, fingernails grasping for something to hold.

His lips are on my neck. I can feel desire, quiet and low, but above that I feel desperate disgust. At him? Myself?

I know when he pulls me back against him, against his hardness. I don’t want this. Fuck. I can’t do this, the thought makes me feel sick, the wetness of his mouth on my neck is like a tarantula across the skin.

‘No,’ I say.

I say no.





Dylan

Luke calls me around seven, and he tells me that my father is cheating on my mother.

I sit, slowly, on the edge of the sofa. For a long while I say nothing at all.

‘Dyl?’ Luke says. ‘Dyl, I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been dreading this phone call.’

I feel like my head is full of whiteness; I’m not exactly surprised, but it’s horrifying, like being told you’re not who you think you are at all.

‘She knows?’ I manage.

‘I told her before I told you. I thought – I guess I thought she should know first. She was totally in denial. I couldn’t convince her.’

I’m only half listening – a sudden rage is rising up my body, freezing hot, like ice burn. I’m so rarely angry that I hardly know how to hold the feeling: it seems to have found its way into my throat, my ears, the little capillaries spreading through my lungs.

‘I don’t think she’ll ever leave him, you know,’ Luke says. ‘She just didn’t want to hear it.’

A message comes through from Marcus; I check it abstractedly, hardly seeing it at first.



You need to come to Addie’s school. She’s there with Etienne, and . . . it doesn’t look good.