The Road Trip(88)

Deb says, ‘What would you tell me? If I said those things?’

And I see the truth of it for a moment. I know what I would tell my sister. I know how fiercely I’d protest that consent is an ongoing process. That no means no whatever you’ve said before it. But then the clarity’s gone again. There’s just horror and shame.





Dylan

Marcus makes me go to the pub with him before I go back to the flat to see Addie.

‘You need to clear your head,’ he says, then he proceeds to buy me four pints, as if that will fucking help.

I cry into my drink. I don’t tell Marcus what Luke told me because, quite honestly, I’m barely thinking about it. All I can think about is the pain in my chest, like it’s cracking, like someone’s pried my ribs apart and left them gaping.

‘Don’t get sad, get mad,’ Marcus tells me, pushing another drink towards me. ‘Addie’s been screwing around with the teacher and God knows who else, pretending she’s all sweetness and light. I knew there was something about her. Didn’t I say? Didn’t I say?’





Addie Deb wants to stay. But I want Dylan. He’ll be home soon. I need to wash again. I need to wash it all off and then I need to tell Dylan, because somehow that’s almost more frightening than everything else.

But it turns out I don’t need to tell him.

He’s already been told.





Dylan

She looks different when I walk into the flat – her eyes are wide and frightened, kitten-like, and I know then that this is the first time she’s betrayed me with another man. She wouldn’t be able to hide this from me: it’s written all over her face.

‘I know what you did.’

That’s what I say. And then I tell her I’m leaving, just like I practised it in the pub. I tell her there are some things I can’t forgive, and I think to myself, Yes, I’m right, and I’m strong for walking away. I won’t be like my mother. I won’t turn a blind eye. I’ll be strong.



At first she’s very still. She looks so pale and small, like a little wild creature brought in from the cold, deciding whether to hide or fight.

The silence is horrifying; we’re on the edge of something vast and empty. I’m dizzy from drink and sick with horror and I want to climb out of my own skin, be somebody else, anyone else.

‘Aren’t you even going to listen to my side of the story?’ she says into the silence. Her voice sounds like a child’s.

‘Etienne told me everything. There’s nothing you can say.’

The next few minutes are a blur. She throws herself at me, and I think she’s trying to hurt me, her little fists in my chest, her feet stamping, but it’s almost as if she’s trying to burrow into me, too, to get closer. She roars. It’s grief, unmistakably. I think, quietly, So she does love me, then. She doesn’t want to lose me. What a time to find out for sure.





Addie There is no hurt like it. All the worst things have been confirmed. I’m as bad as I feared. I’m worse.

I tell nobody else, not even my mum.

Deb saves my life, I think. She makes all the calls. She takes me to the police station and never leaves my side. If she wasn’t here, Etienne would have remained as the head teacher at Barwood School, and I’d have fallen apart.





Dylan

The doubt creeps in like damp. I wake up the next day in the log cabin at the end of Marcus’s dad’s garden, as if I’ve slipped back to that long dark winter before I stopped taking money from my parents. India picked us up from Chichester last night; Marcus must have rung her, I register, with a flicker of surprise that soon dulls again. I stare at the ceiling and touch – just for a moment – the thought of living without Addie, and it’s enough to send me curling inwards like an insect, burying myself in the sheets.

I don’t get up until the evening, and only then because my stomach gnaws with hunger.

‘What if there was an explanation?’ I say to Marcus, as we drink whisky on the floor of the cabin, in amongst the clutter of takeaway boxes. ‘What if there was a reasonable explanation?’

‘Like what?’ Marcus is pale, almost gaunt, his eyes bruised with exhaustion. ‘Just look at the photo, Dylan. Who she really is, right there in high definition.’





Addie I know at least half of my suffering is the after-effects of what I’ve been through with Etienne. But all I can find is grief at losing Dylan.

I don’t feel like he left me – I feel like he died.

He didn’t even let me speak. The man I love would always let me speak. So who’s Dylan?





Dylan

It’s Deb who tells me the truth of it.

One week on from the night at the school, she turns up on the doorstep of Marcus’s log cabin with her face twisted in disgust.

‘You son of a bitch,’ she says. ‘You are an absolute piece of shit and I hope you burn in hell.’

She puts down a large box of my belongings and turns her back on me. ‘The rest of it is at the end of the lane,’ she says over her shoulder. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t drop it in your fucking lake.’

‘Hey,’ I say. I dither in the doorway – I’m in just socks – and then chase her anyway. ‘Hey! How dare you!’