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) 📖

an explanation?’ I say to Marcus, as we drink whisky on the floor of the cabin, in amongst the clutter of takeaway boxes. ‘What if there was a reasonable explanation?’

‘Like what?’ Marcus is pale, almost gaunt, his eyes bruised with exhaustion. ‘Just look at the photo, Dylan. Who she really is, right there in high definition.’

Addie

I know at least half of my suffering is the after-effects of what I’ve been through with Etienne. But all I can find is grief at losing Dylan.

I don’t feel like he left me – I feel like he died.

He didn’t even let me speak. The man I love would always let me speak. So who’s Dylan?

Dylan

It’s Deb who tells me the truth of it.

One week on from the night at the school, she turns up on the doorstep of Marcus’s log cabin with her face twisted in disgust.

‘You son of a bitch,’ she says. ‘You are an absolute piece of shit and I hope you burn in hell.’

She puts down a large box of my belongings and turns her back on me. ‘The rest of it is at the end of the lane,’ she says over her shoulder. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t drop it in your fucking lake.’

‘Hey,’ I say. I dither in the doorway – I’m in just socks – and then chase her anyway. ‘Hey! How dare you!’

She keeps walking.

‘She cheated on me! She cheated on me! And you’re here telling me I’m the one going to burn in hell?’

She spins on her heels then. ‘Dylan. You’re an idiot.’

She has never looked more like Addie, small and fierce and conceding nothing.

‘What are you talking about?’ I yell, but I’m starting to shiver now, a sense of wrongness settling on my shoulders through the drizzle. ‘Marcus saw them. And Etienne told me everything.’

Perhaps the wrongness was there already. For the last few days I’ve drunk more than ever, because I’ve begun to see through the haze and remember my Addie, strong and honest, and it’s impossible to assimilate that person with the Addie Etienne and Marcus showed me as I stood weeping outside the school.

‘Marcus saw them, did he? And what was he doing there?’

This isn’t the first time I’ve wondered about that. Looking out for you, is all Marcus said when I asked him. But he was right, wasn’t he, and so following Addie didn’t look like madness, it looked like foresight.

‘And Etienne told you everything. Etienne. Do you know what it says about you that you believed the word of a man you don’t know over the word of the woman you love?’ Deb says.

The wet grass soaks up through my socks. My heart pounds.

‘He forced her. Yeah, she drank some wine. She flirted a little, maybe. And then he tried to rape her.’

Raindrops snag in the loose strands of Deb’s dark hair. She holds my gaze.

‘But maybe you don’t care,’ she says. ‘Maybe you still want her stoned in the village square, Dylan.’

I double over then and throw up on the grass.

Addie

He’s sorry. Nobody has ever been sorrier. He’s a mess of a person, he’s awful, the worst, he’s too easily led, he sees that now, he knows he has to sort himself out, he should never have assumed, he should never have left me, Deb told him everything, he knows now, please, please, he’s sorry. He sits on my doorstep and weeps.

I don’t open the door. I send him one message in response to the stream of gut-wrenching apologies that come that day.

Don’t tell Marcus what really happened, I write.

I can’t explain it, exactly. Perhaps I see something of Etienne in Marcus. Perhaps he makes me feel vulnerable. Perhaps it’s that Marcus has always said he can see darkness in me, and my heart’s never felt darker than it does now.

I just can’t stand the thought of Marcus knowing.

Promise me that, I say. And then, please. Don’t send me any more messages. I know you’re sorry. I understand why you did what you did. But please. Don’t contact me again.

NOW

Dylan

Marcus’s nose is bleeding; a drop falls on the back of Addie’s pyjamas as she bends over the toilet, retching, and it spreads on the fabric like red ink, its edges fuzzing. There isn’t enough room in here for all of us. My head throbs where Marcus punched me in the temple.

‘Addie, hey,’ I say, pushing Marcus aside to kneel beside her.

He staggers back against the bath. Deb shoves through the bathroom door behind me and I glance up at her for a moment before looking back to Addie, who is clutching the toilet seat with shaking fingers. Her face is washed-out white, cream gone sour.

‘Something she ate?’ Marcus says.

Deb reaches out and flushes the toilet, ever practical.

‘Come on. Come on. What am I missing?’ Marcus says. ‘Why’s everyone acting like I’m the bad guy when she’s the one who forced herself on a guy who wasn’t Dylan?’

‘She did not fucking force herself on anybody,’ Deb says, and then closes her eyes for a moment. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Ads, I – it wasn’t my place.’

‘Everything all right in there?’ Rodney calls from outside the bathroom door.

‘All fine, Rodney,’ I say, keeping my voice steady. ‘Just go back to bed.’

‘Right,’ he says uncertainly.

After a long moment Addie sits back, pulling the sleeves of her pyjamas over her hands, wincing as she jolts her injured wrist. She’s not looking at me. Deb crouches on the other side of her, so all three of us are sitting on the bathroom floor, with Marcus standing over us, backed up against the bath. He’s got a lump of loo roll held against his bleeding nose, and his eyes are already beginning to bruise, but even through all of that I can read his expression, and he looks afraid.

‘What do you mean? What really happened that night?’ he asks me. ‘What didn’t you tell me?’

‘She asked me