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) 📖

‘Saved by the bell,’ Marcus says under his breath, just loud enough that I can hear him. My heart is thudding unsteadily; I really thought we were getting somewhere there, but of course Marcus wouldn’t perform his apology on cue – I’ll likely never get one now I’ve asked for it. And besides, he hardly knows the depth of what he ought to be apologising for; no wonder he feels like he’s jumping through hoops in the dark. I clench my fists in my lap. He’s trying, I remind myself, and I think of what Luke said when we last spoke: Write Marcus off if you want to, I won’t judge, believe me – but don’t pretend you’re giving him a chance when you’re clearly just not.

‘Hello? Is Riley OK?’ Deb says.

Addie’s on alert immediately – her eyes dart towards Deb in the mirror as the traffic crawls around us, hunched cars inching along like beetles, sunlight glinting on their backs.

‘OK. Oh, yeah, of course, now’s good,’ Deb says, and Addie relaxes.

They’ve always had that bond, the Gilbert sisters; I’ve envied Deb more than once for the way she slots in with Addie so instinctively, as if the two of them were made to come as a pair.

‘Is it Dad?’ Addie cocks her head, listening, then gives a quick grin. ‘Put him on speaker, Deb.’

The voice of Addie’s father cuts through the stuffy heat of the car, and it’s like catching the scent of Addie’s shampoo in the street, like hearing the rattle of beaded bracelets. It’s like stepping back for half a second into the life where she was mine.

‘. . . told your mother it wasn’t meant to be that colour, but she says it’s perfectly fine, and not to mention it to you,’ he’s saying. ‘Oh, bugger, probably shouldn’t have told you that. But it was so yellow. I’m sure babies didn’t poo yellow in my day.’

‘What shade of yellow?’ Deb asks.

I look back; Marcus is gazing out the window moodily, but he pulls a disgusted face at that. I find myself smiling. Losing Addie was so all-eclipsing I rarely thought of the other people I lost with her, but hearing Neil’s voice makes me miss him in a way I can honestly say I have never missed my own father.

‘I’d go for . . . mustard? English mustard, that is, the powdered kind.’

‘Ooh,’ says Rodney, ‘that is quite yellow.’

‘Oh, hello,’ Neil says cheerfully. ‘Who’s that, then?’

‘We’ve got company,’ Deb says. ‘That’s Rodney, and . . .’ She trails off.

Addie is furiously shaking her head at her. The joy at hearing Neil again seeps away, because of course Addie doesn’t want her father to know I’m here in the car with them. I walked out on his daughter: he must despise me.

‘And . . . Rodney made flapjack,’ Deb finishes. She pulls a face at Addie.

‘Flapjack!’ Neil says, sounding genuinely enthused. ‘Lovely!’

‘Dad, the yellow poo,’ Deb says, with the air of a woman getting back down to business. ‘Talk to me about texture. Loose? Firm? Peanut butter?’

‘Your dad’s such a nice guy,’ I say into the silence that follows once Neil finally hangs up.

‘He’s all right,’ Deb says, with unmistakable fondness. ‘Why, what’s yours like?’ She pauses. ‘Oh, sorry, he’s a bit of a shit, isn’t he?’

Marcus laughs at that. He seems to be cheering up a little, and frankly it would have been impossible to stay angry for the duration of Neil’s very serious, very earnest discussion of Riley’s faecal matter.

Deb’s finished pumping, and there’s a lengthy pause while she rummages around for the cool bag to store the bottle of milk. Rodney, who is ostensibly trying to help, seems to have more limbs than an octopus – Addie winces as one of his knees shoves into the back of the driver’s seat.

‘Yeah, my dad’s . . . difficult,’ I say, when the commotion has died down. ‘I can’t blame him entirely for that, though. I have consistently disappointed him – I’ve made something of an art of it, actually.’

I feel Addie glance at me but keep my eyes on the road ahead. The heat is hovering on the tarmac, blurring the car in front and turning it into an oil painting, perhaps, or a live stream on poor WiFi. This whole day has an air of surrealness to it, and the blur, the heat, the fierce sun, they make it feel even stranger.

‘We’ve reached an understanding,’ I say. ‘He keeps out of my life, and I keep out of his. We’ve not spoken since December 2017.’

Addie startles as I say the date. I look down at my hands in my lap. For a wild second I imagine reaching across and covering her hand on the steering wheel with mine.

‘I found out something rather unpleasant,’ I say. ‘About my father. Or, more precisely, about my father’s girlfriend, who, it turns out, lives a very nice life in a townhouse in Little Venice that he pays for out of the family business.’

In the long, shocked silence, Rodney unclicks his Tupperware of flapjack again.

‘And you found that out in December of two years ago?’ Addie says slowly.

I nod, still looking down at my hands.

‘No,’ Marcus says. ‘That day?’

I glance up at Addie, anxious. The colour rises slowly up her chest, her neck, to dapple her cheeks.

‘That’s what you’d been talking to Luke about when I texted you?’ Marcus says.

‘Mm. He’d been home.’

‘Confronting your dad?’

‘Talking to my mother,’ I correct him. ‘Confronting my dad would be . . . Ah.’

That’s something Luke and I have never had the courage to do, not even for this.

‘You know your dad’s going to be at Cherry’s wedding, right?’ Marcus says, and I can hear his expression: eyebrows raised in incredulity.

I take a slow, wobbly breath, because there it is again, the moment I think about seeing my father – a weight against my chest like the heel of a hand pushed against my ribs. The