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) 📖

‘Yeah, we are,’ I say, picking up my bag and heading down towards the other end of the room, where the single beds are set out with the cot. ‘If you want to stay up, take a key.’ And then, on reflection: ‘And don’t do anything stupid.’

There is a wounded silence.

‘Mate. You’ve changed,’ Marcus says.

I should bloody well hope so.

I lie on my side, the polyester duvet pulled up to my chin. I can just make out Marcus in the darkness; for all his protestations about our early night, he falls asleep with enviable ease. He is now breathing heavily a couple of feet away from me, grainy and grey in the dim light creeping between curtains that don’t quite meet in the middle. Rodney is snoring in the way that my uncle Terry snores: very loudly, pig-like, almost grunting. It’s quite reassuring. At least if he’s snoring then I know he’s asleep, instead of standing over me with a knife.

I can’t believe the man who wrote Cherry all those terrible poems was Rodney. I hope my poems are better than his; I hope Addie didn’t read them all and secretly think I was a total Rodney.

I turn over; I can’t sleep. This is not an uncommon problem. I start to spiral, that’s the issue. I have one thought – for instance, I wonder what Addie thought when she read my poems – and then I’m away, following the natural steps down that path, coming to the conclusion that oh, God, I still love her, I know I do. I feel like I never won’t. Everyone says there’s no such thing as The One and there’s plenty of fish in the sea but every time I meet one of those fish, I just miss Addie more. I’ve given up on winning her back, and still that doesn’t seem to be enough to forget her – you’d think the agony of unrequited love would be sufficient to put your brain off the whole affair, but it seems not.

I get up. There comes a point where lying in the darkness becomes unbearable, and very suddenly, that is precisely where I am. I tiptoe to the en suite, passing Deb and Addie in the double bed, two indistinct, quiet shapes. The Gilbert sisters, as inseparable as ever. I used to think Marcus and I were just like them.

There’s not much to do once I’ve been to the loo – normally if I can’t sleep then I wander about, maybe read something, even write. But there’s nowhere to go here, except the car park outside, and I am one of the few members of my friendship group who is not quite eccentric enough to roam around a Budget Travel car park in my pyjamas.

Instead I look at myself in the mirror above the sink. There have been times, in the last year and a half, when even meeting my own gaze like this has been hard. Now I just see a sad, tired man who made bad choices, which is a step up from what I used to see.

I splash my face with cold water, letting it drip from the ends of my hair. I straighten up and let out a noise, then stop myself – the instinct to be quiet is still at the front of my mind. The door is opening; I forgot to lock it.

It’s Addie. She jumps when she sees me, but she’s quiet too, just letting out a little gasp, clutching a hand to her throat.

‘Sorry,’ we both whisper at the same time.

‘I’ll . . .’ I start moving towards the door.

‘No, I’ll go,’ she murmurs, hand on the doorknob. ‘I don’t even need a wee, I just needed . . .’

‘Out?’

‘Yeah.’ She smiles ruefully. ‘You’re still a bad sleeper, then?’

Worse, now – I never slept so well as when she was in my bed.

‘Rodney’s not helping,’ I say.

Addie clicks the door shut behind us, blocking out the sounds of three heavy sleepers.

‘The snoring? Or the creepiness?’ she asks.

‘He’s just so tragic,’ I say. ‘I read some of the poems he sent Cherry, you know.’

‘The one about how her vagina was like a strawberry?’

‘What? No?’

Addie covers her mouth with her hand. ‘Oh.’

‘In what way?’

‘Hmm?’

‘In what way was it like a strawberry? Because if it was the colour he was referring to, I’m not sure that’s . . .’

I trail off and Addie starts laughing, hand still at her mouth to stifle the noise. She bends, shoulders shaking, one hand gripping the counter by the sink.

‘Oh, God,’ she says. ‘We’re all idiots, the lot of us.’

‘And you think he’d go cherry rather than strawberry,’ I muse, ‘given her name.’

She laughs harder, and I feel myself grow taller. There’s nothing lovelier than making Addie laugh.

‘Dylan,’ she says.

I don’t know if she does it on purpose. She shifts her hand on the counter and suddenly it’s on top of my hand, on the edge of the sink, and she’s looking up at me, eyes bright with laughter. My heart is beating everywhere, right down to the fingertips beneath her hand. I can feel the joy growing, a great nuclear explosion from the centre of my chest, and gone is the idea that I ever stopped hoping she might love me again, because look, look how quickly it came back to me. It was never really gone.

She moves her hand. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, no,’ I begin, clenching my fist to stop myself from reaching out for her.

She lifts that hand to her face, lying it flat against her cheek, her forehead.

‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve tried so – I’ve . . .’

‘Addie?’

She’s crying. I step forward tentatively, and she moves too, into my chest, and as my arms close around her we’re two jigsaw pieces slotting into place. She fits perfectly; she belongs here.

‘Addie, what’s wrong?’ I ask. It takes all my energy not to dip my head and press my lips to her hair, the