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) 📖

‘Oh, Christ,’ Dylan says. ‘Can’t leave them alone for five minutes, can we?’

Dylan

Beneath us, on the motorway verge, Rodney, Kevin and Marcus form a bizarre tableau – they seem to be conducting some sort of amateur Olympic Games.

Rodney has an empty bottle held like a javelin, his other arm sighting the throw (thankfully he is aiming away from the busy motorway). He is sporting an expression of comical concentration on his face. Meanwhile Marcus and Kevin are squatting down to lift two suitcases.

‘It’s all in the legs,’ Marcus is saying as he grabs hold of my luggage. ‘You don’t need upper-arm strength.’

Addie’s sister watches over proceedings from the picnic blanket, where – from my limited understanding of such things – she seems to be expressing breast milk into a hoover-like contraption attached to her chest.

Kevin hefts the suitcase with practised ease. ‘Upper-arm strength helps, though.’ He proceeds to bicep-curl the suitcase while Marcus – who’s never had the patience or dedication required to regularly go to the gym, or in fact regularly do anything – attempts to lift the suitcase above his head like a weightlifting champion. He gets halfway and then sets it down again, looking rather red in the face.

‘Just getting a good grip,’ he says.

Kevin chortles, doing a few casual squats.

Addie sighs beside me. ‘I do not like the way Deb is looking at that trucker.’

‘Kevin? Really?’

‘She’s not had sex since having Riley. She said something about wanting to get back in the saddle this weekend.’

Her expression mirrors mine.

‘Is Rodney actually taking part?’ I ask, watching him practise the throw before going in for the real thing. He looks a little like an animated stick figure with his knobbly knees jutting and his feet turned out. The bottle sails up the bank, not quite reaching the line of trees at the top, and then topples gracelessly down again.

‘Just joining in, I guess, in his own way,’ Addie says, with something that sounds a lot like fondness. ‘He doesn’t seem to have fallen for Deb like the other two, does he?’

‘Kevin’s certainly smitten, but I would say Marcus is . . .’ I pause carefully. ‘Doing what Marcus does whenever there’s a woman in proximity. Not that Deb would ever go anywhere near him, all things considered. Oh, bloody hell, there he goes,’ I say as Marcus topples over below, suitcase thudding to the ground beside him. ‘He had to pick my suitcase, didn’t he?’

Kevin carefully sets Marcus’s suitcase down. Rodney stretches a hand out; it takes Kevin a moment to realise he’s asking for a high-five. Rodney’s delighted expression when their palms clap suggests that Rodney is accustomed to people leaving him hanging.

‘You lot are a right laugh,’ Kevin says, bouncing on his toes, seemingly energised by all the bicep-curling.

‘Really? Even Rodney?’ Marcus says, brushing himself down as he stands. ‘Kevin, you need to broaden your horizons. You know I once met a woman who could fellate her own toes? Now she was fun.’

‘Gosh,’ says Rodney, as Kevin roars with laughter and slaps Marcus on the back.

Deb spots us and waves, then removes her breast pump; it’s only my extremely quick thinking that saves me from the sight of Addie’s sister’s nipple.

‘If you lot want anything else to eat or drink, it’s not a long walk to Tesco from here,’ Kevin says, and there’s a huskiness to his tone that makes me wonder if he might have seen rather more of Deb’s breast than I did.

Deb pushes herself to standing. ‘Why don’t you show me?’ she says briskly to Kevin.

‘Called it,’ Addie says.

‘What? You don’t mean – they’re not going to have sex on the way to Tesco, are they?’

‘You really have changed,’ Addie says dryly, then her cheeks flare as she registers what she’s said. She’s right to blush – I’m gone the moment she says it, thinking of all the nights we couldn’t wait until we got home, sex against walls, in the backs of cars, on the dry chalky soil of the vineyard next to Villa Cerise . . .

‘Off to the shops!’ Kevin says, with a cheery wave. His broad grin looks more like a grimace – I get the impression he’s not especially accustomed to smiling. Looking at Kevin is proving very helpful with the sexual thoughts, so I watch him make his way up the bank and try to concentrate on his grisly balding head.

It doesn’t work. All I can think about is Addie’s soft, curved hip, Addie’s bare thighs, Addie’s long dark hair splayed across my chest as she presses her lips to the band of my boxers. It seems almost unbelievable now that holding her body against mine wasn’t always a fantasy – that once upon a time I could reach out and touch her.

THEN

Addie

Can’t the girl find us another bottle of vino? She’ll have a naughty secret stash somewhere, I’ll bet.

The girl. The girl. There’s been plenty of knobbish visitors in the last six weeks at Villa Cerise, but Dylan’s uncle Terry is getting under my skin like none of the others have. Him and Dylan have been up on the terrace ever since we got back from La Roque-Alric – I’ve been getting on with jobs down here and in the house, but I can still hear them. Terry’s the ‘fun guy’ of the boys you’d see at a pub quiz machine. The one who never gets laid but talks like he’s screwed every girl in the bar. That guy, but twenty years on. Still ‘fun’, still not getting any.

I frown at my reflection in the mirror on the living-room wall of the flat. That was bitchy. I’m better than that. I just . . . need to take a breather.

I examine myself more closely. The mirror’s a bit convex – or maybe the other one, concave. Anyway, it makes my nose look tiny and my eyes buglike and huge. I turn my head a