The Road Trip: The heart-warming new novel from the author of The Flatshare and The Switch Beth O'Leary (ready to read books .TXT) 📖

I move into the left lane. I’m swerving, pulling the wheel too far right to compensate, crossing the white lines. I try to slow down. For a mad second I think my foot is on the wrong pedal. The car doesn’t react properly when I brake. It feels like trying to shout but not getting any sound out. I push down harder and the car slows a bit, still dragging me left and I let out a sound, a frustrated, frightened guhh—

‘There’s a hard shoulder, Addie, get on it,’ says Deb behind me. Everyone else is quiet. I can hear them breathing.

I work my way down the gears: third, second, first. I hope this hard shoulder isn’t going to end. There’s a ringing in my ears like the world’s muffled. My neck still hurts from the whiplash, I notice absently. From the last time we crashed.

‘Hold on,’ I say grimly.

We’re not going faster than ten miles an hour, now, but as I ease the parking brake on everyone still jolts forward. The car groans. We sit in silence, and then, very slowly, I lower my forehead against the steering wheel.

As I wait for my heart to stop trying to claw its way up my throat, Dylan slowly reaches across and hits the button to put our hazards on. We all unfreeze.

‘Fuck,’ Marcus says behind me.

‘Goodness me,’ says Rodney.

‘Everyone all right?’ Deb asks.

I twist, forehead still on the steering wheel, and look at Dylan. His face is slack with shock. For a sharp second it reminds me of his expression when he stood in the doorway to our flat as I beat his chest with my fists and told him no, he couldn’t leave me.

Marcus gives a shrill laugh from the back seat. ‘Fuck me, Addie Gilbert, you just saved our lives.’

My breathing still isn’t slowing. I wonder if near-death experiences get more or less scary each time. Like, should I be calmer because I’ve already had one car crash today? Or panicking more, because I’ve still got all that leftover terror in my system?

There is a knock at the car window, passenger side. I shriek. My hand flies to my chest. Behind me, everyone screams. But Dylan’s reaction is the most surprising – he throws an arm out in front of me, as though we’re still moving and we’re about to hit something.

‘Hello? You all right in there?’

I squint. The sun’s behind the man at the window – I can only just make him out. He’s big and tough-looking, in his fifties maybe. He has peppery stubble across his sagging jaw. Beneath the white vest he’s wearing I can just see half the text of a tattoo: unconditio—

‘Do you need help?’ he asks.

Dylan drops his arm and winds down the window.

‘Hi,’ he says, clearing his throat. ‘We’ve broken down. I suppose you gathered that much.’

The man makes a sympathetic sort of grimace. ‘I saw you,’ he says, gesturing upwards. We’ve stopped just shy of a big concrete bridge running over the motorway. There’s a set of steps running down the bank to our left. He must have come down when he saw us. What a nice man. Assuming he’s not an opportunistic murderer.

‘Do we need to, you know . . . call the AA?’ Rodney asks.

‘We should get out. Right?’ I direct this at the stocky Good Samaritan currently eyeing us through the car window.

‘Oh, yeah,’ he says, nodding. ‘Yeah, but get out this way.’ He points behind him.

Dylan clambers out first, then Deb, Rodney and Marcus. I climb out last, over the gearstick, which is a pretty technical manoeuvre.

By the time I emerge from the car our burly Good Samaritan’s eyes have settled on Deb and widened with delight.

‘Hello, gorgeous,’ he says.

Deb gives him a cursory look and I suppress the urge to eye-roll. We don’t have time for this shit.

‘I need to call our breakdown cover,’ I say, looking down at my phone. ‘Can someone walk to the nearest one of those post-thingies that tells them where we are?’

‘I’ll go,’ Dylan says. He clears his throat, embarrassed – his voice came out all squeaky.

Deb already has the car bonnet open and is rummaging around in there. Rodney sidles over to the Good Samaritan.

‘So,’ he says to him, in the bright tone of someone who does not have a natural gift for small talk. ‘What do you do?’

I close my eyes. This is not how this weekend was meant to go. Why aren’t I speeding down the motorway singing Dolly Parton at the top of my voice, with Deb eating Minstrels in the passenger seat? That was the plan. And that sounds so good right now.

Dylan calls the number out to me as he walks back to the car. His T-shirt billows in the breeze and his hands are tucked in his jean pockets. He looks too good – it hurts. I turn away, staring out at the traffic as I ring our breakdown cover.

This is dangerous. Not the car troubles, I mean, but Dylan. For a split second there, as I watched him strolling across the tarmac with his hair blowing in the wind, I didn’t mind missing out on Dolly Parton and Minstrels with my sister. I wanted to be here. With him.

Two hours. Two hours.

‘My breakdown cover guarantees roadside attendance within thirty minutes,’ Marcus says as we spread a blanket out on the verge.

God, I hate him. And he still unsettles me. If anyone else had said what he said before the car broke down – that shit about how I broke Dylan – I would have left them on the side of the road. But with Marcus, even now, I have to fight not to slip into old Addie. Little Addie, forgettable Addie, Addie who’s always second place. He brings out the worst in me in pretty much every way.

‘Yes, well,’ I say, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘I