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) 📖

It’s the sharpest I’ve ever heard him speak to me. He yells sometimes, when we argue, but he’s never quick and catty like that. I’m still staring at him when my phone buzzes into life on the table. It’s Deb. I frown. Deb hardly ever rings me out of the blue, she usually messages first.

‘Hang on,’ I say to Dylan, sliding out of my seat. ‘Back in a minute.’

I pass Marcus on my way out the door, already lifting the phone to my ear. His eyes lock with mine. It’s so unusual, him looking me right in the eye, that it sends a jolt through me. His expression is hard to read, but it’s soft, unlike himself.

‘Leaving so soon? Was it something I said?’ he asks. The corner of his mouth begins to lift. A slow, sardonic smile, and that softness is gone.

‘Hello?’ I say into the phone, moving past Marcus. I hear him breathe in sharply as I brush past. His shoulder collides with mine a touch too hard to be an accident, though I’m not sure if that’s him or me.

‘Addie?’

I step out into the cooling summer evening and press the phone to my ear. Deb sounds . . . strange.

‘Are you OK?’ I ask.

‘Probably,’ she says. ‘Probably.’

‘Are you crying?’

‘Yes,’ Deb says carefully. She sniffs. ‘I’m having a bit of a crisis.’

‘What can I do? What’s wrong?’

‘Well. Hmm. I think I may be pregnant.’

Deb is breathing hard, like she’s preparing to leap off a diving board, or maybe in the very early stages of labour. Her expression’s weird. Way too serious. I hate seeing my sister looking worried, it’s like seeing Dad cry.

‘It’s just a stick,’ I say. ‘All you have to do is look at it, and then you’ll know.’

‘It’s a life-changing stick,’ Deb corrects me, looking down at the pregnancy test half hidden in her fist. ‘And I’m finding looking at it totally impossible. Because then I’ll know.’

‘Yeah,’ I say weakly. ‘Yeah, that makes sense. I probably oversimplified, really.’

Deb pokes at her boobs with her free hand. ‘They’re not that sore,’ she says. ‘It’s probably just a menstrual thing. I’m probably just about to start my period. My very overdue period.’

‘Yes. It’s probably that. So just take a little look at the stick and then . . .’

‘Or I could be pregnant.’

‘You could be pregnant.’ I give the pregnancy test a significant look. ‘If only there were some way to tell.’

‘You’re not being very supportive,’ Deb tells me.

‘I’m sorry, it’s just the suspense is killing me. Please look at the test. I can’t stand not knowing. We are basically one being, Deb. Your womb is my womb.’

Deb pauses in thought. ‘That’s very sweet of you to say,’ she says. ‘I think.’

There’s a long silence. I shift a little on our parents’ bathroom floor. It’s carpeted, a worn dark-blue carpet that’s always speckled with white flecks of toothpaste spittle and soap suds. I feel a sudden pang of homesickness. Everything’s so easy here.

‘If your womb is my womb,’ Deb says, ‘will you take this child, if there is one growing inside me?’

‘Wow, err . . .’

‘Oh,’ Deb says in a small voice. She’s shifted her hand and looked at the pregnancy test result.

I grab it off her. One line. Not pregnant.

‘Thank God,’ I say, clutching the pregnancy test to my chest, and then I remember that Deb just weed on it and chuck it across the floor.

I look at Deb. She’s crying quietly with her lips pressed together.

‘Oh, Deb, hey,’ I say, nudging her shoulder with mine. ‘Hey, it’s OK. You’re not pregnant, it’s OK.’

‘Yes,’ she says, wiping her cheeks. ‘Yes, it’s OK. It’s good. I’m just . . . Well. I’d imagined it, I suppose. That’s all.’

‘Imagined it? Like . . . imagined being pregnant?’

‘Yeah.’

I wait, a bit lost.

‘I’m never going to have a baby, am I?’ Deb says.

‘Do you . . . want to? I thought you didn’t?’

‘Me too. I don’t know, now. I don’t want a boyfriend. I don’t want a husband. But I sort of wanted this baby for a minute. In the abstract. Which makes me think maybe one day I might actually want one in the concrete.’

‘You don’t need a husband for a baby!’ I wave a hand towards the discarded pregnancy test. ‘Look! You nearly just got one, all on your own!’

Deb laughs wetly. ‘I guess. I’ve just always tried extremely hard not to. So it’s a bit strange to think that maybe I want to have one after all. Don’t I know myself at all?’

She looks genuinely perplexed.

‘Sometimes you don’t know what you want until you nearly have it,’ I say.

‘Well, that’s a terrible system,’ Deb says, scrubbing at her teary cheeks. ‘Right. Life crisis over. No baby. Do you want a drink?’

I glance at the time on my phone. I ought to go back to the pub. Dylan will be hoping for that, and Marcus won’t – all the more reason to go. But I want to stay here, at home, where everything smells of comfort and Mum’s favourite washing powder. I want to stay with Deb, who always makes me feel like enough.

‘Board game and wine?’ I say.

‘Perfect. Help me up, will you? My life crisis has made me weak.’

Dylan

Addie and I suit the summertime, I think – all the raw sunshine and long days, Pimms with strawberries and thick, velvet peach slices. As we adjust to living together, as we find new quiet patterns and learn who likes which mug best for their morning coffee, the thick dread feels far away from me, like someone I knew in another life.

We go up to London one weekend in Addie’s holidays, to see a play – she was initially reluctant, claiming that everything I like is ‘incomprehensible’, but I talked her around with promises of famous actors and ice cream in the interval. It becomes clear within minutes that I have chosen very poorly: the website claims that