The air smells of hot, dry grass trampled underfoot. It smells of diesel, of cider and cigarettes and burgers and ice cream and the ends of things. The end of the summer. The end of us: of Steffan and Jared and me.
This is the story of a road trip. The story of three best friends crammed into a clapped-out car full of regrets and secrets, on a journey that will change their lives for ever. A story of love, lies, grief, friendship and growing up. A story you’ll never forget.
Listen to songs inspired by The Last Summer of Us by The Bookshop Band
“A perfect summer read: romance, beaches and a music festival but it’s emotional too, tackling grief, lies and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.” The Bookseller
“Perfectly captures that moment in teenage friendships when life pulls you apart from each other.” Holly Bourne, author of The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“The Last Summer of Us is a beautiful story of grief, friendship and hope, and one that has left me in complete awe.” Once Upon a Bookcase
“A sparkling debut with one of the best slow-burning romances on the YA scene.” The Mile Long Bookshelf
“A perfect road trip story which is full of heart.” The Overflowing Library
“A story of loss, regret and friendship cleverly disguised as a summer road trip filled with humour and future anecdotes.” Sarah Churchill, vlogger
For everyone we’ve lost, and everyone we’ve found along the way
about The Last Summer of Us
praise for The Last Summer of Us
dedication
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
chapter seventeen
chapter eighteen
chapter nineteen
chapter twenty
chapter twenty-one
chapter twenty-two
chapter twenty-three
chapter twenty-four
chapter twenty-five
chapter twenty-six
about the author
q&a with Maggie
songs inspired by The Last Summer of Us by The Bookshop Band
share your feelings about The Last Summer of Us
acknowledgements
copyright
“Limpet?”
Steffan has always called me Limpet, ever since the first time we met. Why should the day of my mother’s funeral be any different?
“How’re you doing?” he asks.
“You’re seriously going to ask me that? Today?”
“You’ll feel better when it’s over.”
“Did you?”
He shrugs.
Everything’s off, everything’s uncomfortable. Even the way he’s looking at me: like he’s still him, and I’m still me, but there’s glass in between us, like we’re somehow distanced from each other; different. In his case, it’s the outfit. I would barely recognize him if I passed him in the street dressed like that: black suit and tie, and looking as smart as I’ve ever seen him – right down to the polished shoes. I’ve never really seen him wearing actual shoes outside of school before. Trainers, yes. Those ridiculous hiking boots he wore with shorts for the entire summer a couple of years ago? Sadly, yes. They were unforgettable – and not in a good way. But actual black-shiny-leather-shoes-with-laces? I can only think of one other time. I want to be normal, to make a joke, to smooth down his dark hair – which is still sticking up in spikes like a hedgehog with a headache, however tidy the rest of him might be – but his dad’s waiting for him with a hard look on his face and I guess I’m not supposed to make jokes today.
Today I have to be…someone else.
It’s been twelve days since my mother died; twelve days since the noises in the night. The sound of footsteps and the front doorbell seeping into my dreams. Twelve days since the voice in the small, dark hours of the morning, saying: “I think your mother’s dead.”
Steffan’s barely gone inside before someone else says my name, and Jared’s standing behind me. More at ease in his funeral get-up than Steffan – or me, because however hard I try to ignore them, my shoes really hurt – he looks like one of those Hollywood stars you see in old films. He does that. Look good, I mean. He has that Steve McQueen, young Paul Newman thing going on. Tall and blond and cool and broad-shouldered, with his hair swept back, looking like he doesn’t even have to try. He probably doesn’t. Take today, for example. Jared looks like he’s about to walk the red carpet. It’s effortless for him. Meanwhile, Steffan looks like a backing singer for a wedding band. And me…?
Well, I look like crap. Moving on.
Jared, Steffan and me.
I guess the usual thing would be to say we’re some kind of triangle, or a tripod, or something else that makes you think of the number three. Inseparable. Something which goes wibbly at the corners and collapses if all its sides aren’t there. But us, not so much.
We’re more like that poster you see on the wall in mechanics’ workshops; you know the one? A triangle with the words QUICK, GOOD, CHEAP written along the sides (feel free to insert your own joke here, by the way – you know you were thinking it). The point is, the diagram’s telling you that getting the combination to work is rarer than hens’ teeth. The three sides of the triangle, however you look at it, always break down into “two-plus-one”. You’ll get a repair done quickly and it’ll be good…but it won’t be cheap. Or you could get a cheap, quick repair which won’t be good…and so on. Same with us – in any number of ways, we’re always two-and-one. Never quite three. But somehow, we kind of fit. You might not think it, but we do – that’s why I like it; like us. We’re…unexpected.
Jared, Steffan and me. Less the Three Musketeers, more the Mechanic’s Paradox. Glamorous, right?
And by the way, if we were the Three Musketeers, I’d totally be Athos. Except for the shoes. I bet you anything Athos never had to put up with shoes like these.
Like everything else I’m wearing, they’re new. New shoes, new dress, new bag. Normally, I’d be feeling pretty good about that – but the magic of it’s lost on me right now. In the shop, I handed over the cash as the assistant folded the dress into tissue paper, tucking everything into a thick paper bag with woven ribbon handles. She passed it across the counter to me and smiled and said, “Treating yourself to a new outfit? Lovely.” She meant it, too. I guess maybe to her it didn’t seem weird for a sixteen year old to be buying a bunch of black stuff that makes her look like she’s thirty-five or something. Maybe it’s not – not in that kind of shop, anyway.
As if the shoes weren’t enough of a pain, there’s the thing with the flowers. Which is…awkward. The florists have forgotten to attach the cards to the wreaths, and apparently as I’m the one who organized them all, it’s up to me to fix this. Me, and the funeral director – who I find kneeling by a pillar in the church, poking at the flowers and getting his black morning suit all dusty. A few paces behind him, a little knot of family are talking quietly.
The funeral director sees me coming and stands up, brushing his knees.
“I wondered whether you might be able to…” He nods at the flowers. “I wouldn’t want to get it wrong.” Why he couldn’t ask my dad, I don’t know – and then, with a sinking feeling, I realize that he probably did. Like he’d be any use.
“Men and flowers, right? Clueless.”
He blinks at me, and – exactly three seconds too late – I remember the Be Somebody Else Today rule. Keep your chin up and your mouth shut. Suck it up and choke it down. All that. So I try to look solemn and start matching cards to flowers as everyone takes their seats in the narrow pews, and I’m barely done before the coffin’s at the door.
“Do you want to see her? Do you?” Twice, my dad asked me that, and each time I answered it got harder to stop my voice from cracking.
“No. I don’t want to.” Three thirty in the morning, and we were waiting for the coroner’s officer. I made tea. It’s what you do, isn’t it? Don’t ask me why, but when everything goes wrong, you make tea. So that’s what I did. Constantly. The two police officers who’d come with the ambulance waited with us. At first I thought they were just being, you know…nice. But then a little voice in the back of my head piped up and asked whether it wasn’t more likely that they were, essentially, guarding the body. Guarding my mother – or at least, what used to be her. The shell of her.
I ignored the little voice and made them tea. Lots of tea. And to their credit, they drank every single cup.
Or poured it on the houseplants when I wasn’t looking…
“Lovely service.”
“Beautiful service.”
“Your eulogy was perfect. You had her exactly right.”
“Just what she would have wanted.”
“Such a beautiful funeral.”
The handshakes and platitudes go on for ever, and I feel like my skin is inside out: every part of me is just one big exposed nerve. I smile and nod and dig my fingernails into my left palm and remind myself that I’m someone else today and she will be keeping her cakehole firmly shut. Because no funeral is lovely. No funeral is beautiful – mostly because it’s a fucking funeral and you only have them when somebody’s dead. And my mother would, I’m sure, really rather not be dead. What she’d want right now is to be on a cruise around the Caribbean. Or lying on a sunbed by a pool with a stack of books. Not shut in a box that’s about to be dropped down a big hole.
But today’s not the day for telling the truth. Today’s a day for lying, and pretending you don’t know that everyone else is lying too. I’m not sure who I hate more: all of them for lying to me – lying with me – or me for almost believing them because it’s what I thought I needed.
It’s done. Over. Dead and buried, and people are starting to move away from the graveside and towards the cars. Some are looking at the flowers. A great-aunt I think I’ve met twice in my life is crouching next to one of the wreaths, switching the cards round.
“Are you kidding me?” I say it a little louder than I probably should, but seriously? She stops and makes a loud tutting noise before scuttling off, clutching her handbag. She passes Steffan on her way to the cars, giving him a dirty look. He sticks his tongue out at her. Seventeen years old, and he still sticks his tongue out at people. He winks at me across the graveyard and I wonder whether it was more for my benefit than his.
Most of the funeral party have drifted off – after all, there’s tea to be drunk and sandwiches to be eaten and the carcass of a life to be picked over. My dad’s hanging back by the grave and I know I should go to him – but I just…can’t. The hole’s too deep and too cold and so very, very lonely. So I wait, leaning against a tree midway between grave and gate, getting hotter and hotter in this ridiculous dress in the summer sun, and when Jared slips out from behind the tree he scares the life out of me and I barely hold back a scream. I had no idea he was there; I hadn’t expected him to wait. He gives me one of his Hollywood smiles.
“You going to move over?”
“It’s a tree, Jar. It’s, y’know…round?” I edge sideways, keeping my back against the tree. Making a full circuit of it, I slide all the way round and back to the front so I’m next to him again, on the other side to where I started. He doesn’t seem impressed.
“Jokes? Today?”
“Piss off.” I was doing so well.
We stand there, neither of us speaking for a while. And then he says: “Dad’s back.”
“That was quick. I thought he had another year before he got out?”
“Good behaviour, wasn’t it?” Jared sticks his hands in his pockets. “Bet you a tenner he gave them the speech.”
“He’s got a speech?”
“Probably. He’s had enough practice by now, hasn’t he?”
“Are you okay?”
“Don’t have much choice, do I?”
“What does your mum think?”
You’d have to be standing as close to him as I am to notice the way his jaw sets and his shoulders tighten before he answers. “Mum’s moving in with Marcus.”
Marcus is Jared’s mum’s boyfriend – the latest in a long line. The first time they met, Marcus took the time to sit Jared down and tell him, man to man, that he had absolutely no interest in building a relationship with him; that his mother was the only part of this package he was interested in. That he already had enough kids of his own and wasn’t interested in raising someone else’s, let alone some scumbag convict’s boy, thank you very much.
We don’t like him a whole lot. Jared’s Jared, so he’ll tell you it isn’t a big deal…but wow. I mean, wow.
So Jared’s father is back from his latest stay at Her Majesty’s pleasure just in time to see his estranged wife move in with the latest loser, and as usual Jared’s stuck in the middle and watching the whole show from his grandparents’ place, which is where he spends most of his time these days.
And I thought I had problems.
The car ride is uncomfortable. Prickly. Silent. My father stares out of one window, I stare out of another. Never on the same side: why break the habit?
I never realized how big the space my mother filled was. You could put your arms around it and your hands wouldn’t meet on the other side. And without her, without something solid in that space, my father and I are absolute strangers. Strangers with the same last name, and the same nose, sitting beside each other in the same car and mourning the loss of the same soul… But strangers.
A five-minute car journey has never, in the history of mankind, taken so long.
I picked the pub for the wake. It has roses round the door, rusty-red against the white paint, like blood on sheets.
I can’t go in.
I was never going to.
Instead, I walk out of the car park, and turn right into the road. It’s quiet – it always is round here – and even though I can hear traffic on the bypass, there’s not a car to be seen. So I walk in the road, and I walk, and suddenly, without quite knowing when it happened, I’m running. Running in the stupid black shoes and the stupid black dress, away from the stupid pub and the stupid wake and the stupid, stupid people, right down the middle of the road.
I’m running to the bridge. To the river.
Thanks to the hot summer, the river’s low and the ground on the other side of the wooden stile is dry, cracked and dusty soil instead of ankle-deep mud like it is in winter. There are potholes in the path where there are normally puddles, and pebbles big enough to turn your ankle over if you’re not watching where you put your feet; forks branch off into the trees on either side, with the river close enough for you to land in if you don’t know where you’re going. But I do. I’ve spent my whole life here – here, or wishing I was here – and when I come to the tree with the twisted branch and the old nail sticking out of it, I know I’m almost safe and I step off the path and into the undergrowth.
It’s cool in the trees, out of the sun. The shadows have kept the moss damp, and it’s green and soft. There are ferns everywhere, and the heels of my shoes keep catching in tangles of ivy – so I take them off, and just hope no one’s been chucking bottles about again. I trod on a roll of barbed wire here once when I was a kid. It’s not an experience I’m keen to repeat, I’ll be honest. But treading on the moss is like treading on pillows, and it tickles. Something pulls on the hem of my dress and I don’t care. I don’t care if it gets torn to shreds. Instead, I pick up my shoes and push through the branches, sliding down a steep grassy bank that smells like summer should…and there they are.
Steffan and Jared, waiting at the river’s edge. With beer.
They’ve taken off their ties and their jackets and hung them on a tree. Jared’s shirt is hanging open and he’s sitting on a rock in the sun with his head tipped back and his eyes shut. Steffan (less movie star and a bit more…movie-set builder – and as self-conscious about it as ever) has his sleeves rolled up and is standing right by the water, poking at the bottles they’ve stashed in there to cool. It feels like there’s half a conversation hanging in the air – bitten off and swallowed the second I appeared. I have enough grossed-out experience to realize that I probably don’t want to know what they were talking about. Steffan takes one look at me and laughs.
“Come through the hedge backwards, did you?”
I’m not rising to it. Nope. Not me. But that’s not because it’s today, and it’s not because I need to be someone else any longer. It’s because I’m safe and I’m home and they were waiting for me.
And there’s just one thing I have to do right now.
I pick my way down to the water…and standing right on the edge alongside Steffan, I throw my shoes as far into the river as I can.
Jared opens his eyes when he hears the splash and sits up. Steffan’s mouth drops open.
I give them both my best smile and grab Steffan’s open bottle of beer out of his hand, take the biggest swig I can manage, and throw myself down onto the bank.
“You’re welcome,” says Steffan, pointedly. He’s not that bothered. There’s more beer in the river. Besides, he’s had plenty of time before now to get used to me, and today isn’t the day he’s going to have a strop. People who don’t know any better usually think we’re brother and sister when they see us together. Might as well be, I suppose – although I’m pretty sure my chin is nowhere near the size of his.
Neither of them tries to talk to me. Neither of them asks me how I’m feeling; if I’m alright, if there’s anything they can do. Thank god for that. One more apology, one more lie, one more well-meaning sympathetic face and I’m going to smack someone. But Jared and Steffan, they wouldn’t. Not here, not now. They know what I need more than anything.
Beer and the river and my friends.
Maybe not in that order.
So we’re silent, and Steffan gets himself another beer from the collection they’ve wedged in the water with a pile of stones and opens it, and the current hurries on past us like we don’t matter and that’s just how it should be.
When we’ve been there long enough for the sun to have moved all the way round, and for there to be more empty bottles in the plastic bag beside Jared’s rock than there are in the water, Steffan looks up from the label he’s peeling off his bottle and says: “You know what we should do? Road trip.”
Jared raises an eyebrow.
And I’ve had just about enough beer to say yes.
Beeping. There’s a beeping sound. Somewhere.
Somewhere in my room.
It’s annoying.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-bloody-beep.
Being the genius that I am, I have forgotten to switch off my alarm clock and it’s now jingling merrily away at me from the other side of the room, telling me it’s funeral o’clock. Which it’s not.
I’m still going to have to get out of bed, just to shut it up. I resent this. A lot.
Seven thirty in the morning is an ungodly time to be out of bed in the summer holidays. Until yesterday, I wasn’t entirely sure there was a seven thirty in the morning in the summer holidays; I just sort of assumed the clocks skipped from somewhere around one a.m. through to nine o’clock or so. To punish my alarm clock for spoiling this illusion, I stick it in my cupboard. That’ll teach it.
Seven thirty. The only way I can possibly cope with this is coffee.
In the kitchen, I find my Aunt Amy. Or most of her, at least: she’s perched on the window sill and has somehow managed to contort most of her upper body out through the open window. When I walk in, she twitches violently enough to almost fall out completely – but she catches her balance and comes back inside…along with a plume of cigarette smoke.
“Subtle,” I say, filling the kettle.
“Don’t.” She shakes her head, looking embarrassed. There are dark circles under her eyes and she looks like she’s aged five years overnight. Well. Maybe not overnight. Maybe over two weeks.
“You could just go out in the garden, you know.”
“It’s too early to be sensible. Are you putting the kettle on?”
I like my aunt. She’s stupidly disorganized and is always late for everything, which makes her a lot like me. I haven’t seen her smoke since I was little – she gave up years ago – but she just lost her big sister, so I guess it’s not exactly shocking. Even so…
There’s a pile of bin bags in the corner of the kitchen which definitely wasn’t there when I went to bed. I shoot a look at Amy – who’s taken the mug I passed her and is apparently trying to inhale her coffee – and she shoots one back.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the pile.
There’s a second’s pause. The look that crosses her face is complicated and I don’t really understand it.
“I thought it might be an idea to…get rid of some old things.” She sets the mug down on the table, and her hands are shaking.
“Mum’s things?” I nudge the bottom bag with my toe. There’s something heavy and solid inside it; lots of heavy, solid things, and they clank as they shift in the bag. I recognize the sound. Bottles. Lots of bottles. Bottles from where? Everywhere. Bottles from under the sink, from under the stairs. From the airing cupboard or the garden shed.
She pretends she didn’t hear the sound. “No, not that. That’s not what I meant. It’s too soon, and I wouldn’t do that without you. Or your dad.” She adds him like he’s an afterthought, which I guess he is, still asleep in the living room with the door closed. His world has shrunk to just that one room. He won’t sleep in their…his…bedroom. It took him a week to even set foot in there afterwards. I changed the bed, picking up all the sheets off the mattress and the floor where they’d fallen and throwing them straight into the outside bin. What else was I supposed to do?
“Listen…” She pulls a chair out from the table and sits down, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “I’m going to ask you something, and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. So can you, I don’t know, try not to be a teenager for a minute?”
“Charming!”
“You know what I mean.”
“What is it?”
“I think you might want to…not be here for a few days. Can you go stay with a friend, maybe?”
“Can’t I stay with you?”
“I’m going to be here.”
“Oh.”
I should have picked up on it when I saw the cigarette. I sit down at the table with her. “You’re going to be here? And you’re asking me not to be? What’s going on?”
“Look, your dad… He needs something. Some help. You know that, don’t you?” She pauses, obviously not sure whether she should wait for me to answer. She decides to hedge her bets.
“He can’t cope and I’m worried that—” I cut across her. “You know what? I can’t hear this right now. I’m sorry. I just…can’t.”
A look of pain crosses her face and I regret it. I regret everything she’s having to deal with and I regret the words that just came out of my mouth, the ones that sound like I don’t care. I do care. That’s the thing. I couldn’t care more, not less. She bites her lip and her face smoothes itself out, the lines and the creases disappearing behind a mask. “There’s someone coming to see him later. A doctor.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know what happens after that. A lot of it will depend on your dad, I suppose. How he wants to take things forward, what he wants to do.”
“Oh.” I stare into the bottom of my mug. The last few drops of coffee have started to dry into rings. Can you read coffee rings like tea leaves? I wonder. Will they tell me the future if I look hard enough? Will I like it?
Amy’s watching me, waiting. She’s treating me like a bomb carved out of crystal: one jolt and it’s over for everyone in a twenty-mile radius. Maybe twenty-five. Her eyes are red. She’s been crying, and I should say something – anything – but I’ve had almost two weeks of everybody else’s feelings, and I don’t think I can handle any more. So I don’t. And when she asks me again whether there’s anyone I can stay with, I say: “There’s Steffan…”
There’s always Steffan. Solid. Dependable. My Steffan. Ever since I fell down the steps on my first day of secondary school, and found myself being picked up again and set back on my feet by a boy with hair that stuck out in fifteen different directions and a school tie that had been cut off so short he could barely even tie it. He was an impossibly confident Year Eight compared to me, lost and bruised and embarrassed on my first day and scrambling to pick everything up and shove it back into my bag. And that was it. He was always around after that; like I say, I was the kid sister he never had.
It was me he called when his mum’s cancer came back two years ago. I spent the whole of that Christmas in the family room at the hospital with him, while, across the hall, drips pumped poison into her in the hope of saving her life. They hit it hard, but it hit back harder and by the next Easter she was gone, and it’s still the only time I’ve ever seen Steffan cry.
I remember sitting in the chapel, looking down from the gallery as he followed his mother’s coffin in his own pair of brand-new shoes – the ones I’ve only seen him wear to funerals now – and I understood that one day it would be me in his place.
I never thought I’d be doing it so soon after him.
Is it better to lose someone slowly, or fast? Is it better to see them fade – knowing you’re helpless to hold on to them and watching them slide into the darkness – or is it easier to have them torn away from you in the night? Easier to say goodbye a hundred times, never knowing for sure which will be the last, or to say goodnight and never speak again? Which hurts the least? I don’t think either of us could tell you.
That first morning, when the coroner’s officer and the police and the body had gone, when I’d thrown the sheets in the dustbin, when my father was locked in the bathroom with his mobile and a bottle of Scotch, calling what seemed like everyone he’d ever met to tell them his wife had died, and when my aunt was in her car, driving as fast as she could towards us… That first morning I knocked on Steffan’s door and he opened it and took one look at me, and just like that he knew, and he put his arms around me and held me tight. He didn’t know all of it then – there are some things you just can’t say out loud at times like that, not even to your best friend – but he knew enough. He always does.
There’s always Steffan. There always has been, always will be.
There’s always Steffan, and up until this moment, I never realized just how much that means.
Amy nods and rubs her eyes, and I guess the conversation’s closed. She looks tired. So tired. But I can’t take on any more – not right now. So I push away from the table and slouch back up to my room and wonder whether I’ve actually got any clothes that count as clean enough to be worth putting into a bag.
From downstairs, I can hear snatches of my aunt’s voice: she’s on the phone, and although I’m trying not to listen – because, dear god, I don’t want to hear – I make out the words “doctor”…“treatment”…“Steffan”.
I switch the radio on, and start picking T-shirts up from the floor.
Amy’s too distracted to be worried about my plans for the next few days. I’m a big girl, right? I’m suitably vague – and so is she.
I find my phone and send a hopeful text to Steffan: hopeful because it might occur to him to come and pick me up, him being the one with the car, rather than leaving me to walk all the way across town with a bag full of clothes. I know town’s not exactly big, but that’s not the point, is it? I carry on slinging things into my bag (toothbrush, deodorant, flip-flops, shorts, a jumper that probably needs a wash but which is just going to have to do) until my phone beeps. His reply is typically Steffanesque.
You’ve been watching too many sappy films. It’s two, three nights, tops. How much stuff do you need?!
Right, so no chance of a lift, then. My second text is maybe a touch on the passive-aggressive side.
What time shall I bring all my stuff over to yours, then?
He pings back:
Whenever. We’re set. Just waiting for you.
The sound of something being dropped in the kitchen – and Amy swearing – makes me jump. I’d almost forgotten that she was here. Almost forgotten…but not quite. I shove the last of my clothes into my bag – which is probably twice as full as it needs to be – and make my way downstairs. Amy’s listening intently to someone on the other end of the phone line. She holds up a hand asking me to wait, but I just want to be out. I want to go, to get away from here, this house and everything it means. Tapping my watch, I make the international sign for “I’ve got to go,” and she nods. She smiles and points at me, then at her phone, and mouths the words “Call me.” I nod back. As I pass the closed living room door, I think about knocking. But I don’t.
When I walk out of the door, I can’t stop myself from looking back over my shoulder. I don’t know what I’m expecting, exactly: maybe to see a big black cloud hovering over my house? Whatever. It’s not coming with me. I take a deep breath and set off down the street.
The sun’s not as hot as yesterday – not yet, anyway – and there are birds singing, and the river’s rushing under the bridge and there are cars on the bypass and everything feels obscenely normal. I guess this is normal now, though. The new normal. Everything that’s happened in the last two weeks has been a kind of limbo: shifting from one normal to another. Now the funeral’s done, it’s all over and it’s time to move on.
Steffan’s car is parked in the driveway in front of his house, the bonnet open and a pile of bags on the ground next to the boot. There’s no sign of either Steffan or Jared (who, living a hell of a lot closer than I do, must be here already – I’d recognize the tatty red rucksack with graffiti all over it anywhere) but the front door is open, so I dump my bag with the others and head inside to find them, following the sound of a radio.
They’re in the kitchen and between them on the table is the biggest plate of bacon I’ve ever seen. I’m not kidding: this is Mount Bacon. Explorers could lose themselves on its lower slopes for a month; it must have taken at least fifteen pigs to make this much meat. And Steffan and Jared are cheerfully ploughing their way through it. It’s either impressive or disgusting – I’m not sure which. Could go either way. It’s not exactly a shock, though – I mean these two can eat. Jared’s been banned from the school canteen for repeatedly finishing not only his own lunch but everyone else’s too. In his defence, he did ask first – it’s not like he swiped a handful of fish fingers from some starving Year Nine’s plate – but apparently it’s “inappropriate” from a senior. (If you ask me, I think the flirting with the canteen staff to get a third helping of cake every Friday lunchtime was probably the last straw.) As for Steffan, I’ve seen him put away an eight-egg omelette and still be hungry.
Sticking your arm into the middle of all that is a bit like sticking it into a bowl of cartoon piranhas: you kind of expect it to come back gnawed to the bone. However, I am brave. And I like bacon. I emerge triumphant, clutching two whole rashers and having my hand slapped at only once by Steffan. Feeling mightily pleased with myself, I perch on the closest worktop.
“Sure you want to eat that? You know it had a face once, right?” Steffan sniggers at me.
He’s referring to my infamous vegetarian period, which happened when I was thirteen and lasted precisely a week and a half (and ended when I realized that almost everything I like to eat had, at some point, eyes, ears and a tail). You’d think by now he’d be bored of bringing it up. You massively underestimate Steffan’s love of taking the piss.
I pull a face and they chew and the local radio DJ waffles on about the temporary traffic lights on the bypass and, dear god, does he not have anything better to talk about? This is the thing about living in a small town: however small it is, it might as well be the whole world. As far as some of the people who live here are concerned, the universe stops just past the end of the dual carriageway – and it only goes that far because the garden centre’s off the roundabout, and if you lose that, you lose your begonias and your coffee shop with Sunday carvery. Mrs Davies who lives at number 32 in our road? She’s never left town. Not at all. Not even for a holiday. Can you imagine? She’s so comfortable here that she doesn’t want to be anywhere else, to go anywhere else. She’s content to simply be where she is; where she’s always been. What a thought.
The bacon is gone. I know this without even looking at the plate, because Jared’s pushing his chair away from the table and no way does Jared leave a table with food still on it. I don’t know where he puts it all: “hollow legs”, my grandmother used to say. If that’s true, then Jared’s hollow all the way down to his toenails.
“What’s the plan?” he asks, looking from Steffan to me and back again.
“Don’t ask me,” I splutter back at him. They’ve worked their way through the whole pile of bacon, and I’m still chewing my second piece. “This is his party.” I wave my hand in Steffan’s general direction. He responds by stealing the last bite of bacon from between my fingers and eating it, winking at me.
“No plan, is there?” he says. “Just us, in the car. Driving.”
“Driving where, though?” I slip down from the worktop and wipe the bacon grease off my fingers with the kitchen towel. “You can’t just…drive.”
“Why not? That’s the whole point of a road trip, isn’t it? It’s all about…” His eyes glaze over as he stares into the distance… “The journey.”
“During which you usually see stuff. Or do stuff. World’s biggest ball of string, Grand Canyon, that kind of thing? Hence it being ‘A Journey’ and not just ‘three of us sitting in a car, listening to your dodgy taste in music’.”
“I resent that. I have excellent taste in music.”
“Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that.”
“Oi! I— Woah there. No.” Steffan breaks off from insulting me and darts across the kitchen, slamming the fridge door shut. While he was busy Not Having A Plan, Jared’s started poking around the cupboards. Honestly, he’d eat the furniture given half a chance. “Not the fridge,” says Steffan firmly.
“Get in trouble for the beer, did we?” Jared doesn’t sound even the least bit sympathetic.
“Not exactly.” Steffan looks sheepish for a second. “Might do for this, though.” He grins and jerks his head towards a flat, oblong box sitting on a shelf near the door. It looks like it’s made of cardboard, and I haven’t the faintest idea what’s in it. There are what look like flowers and women in flouncy dresses printed on it, and some kind of gold sticker sealing it shut. The seal’s been broken.
“What’s that?” I ask, but neither of them pays me any attention. Of course they wouldn’t: it’s two-plus-one. Two in the know, one not, in this case. Mechanic’s Paradox, remember? Always the bloody way.
Steffan yawns louder than he needs to and stretches, tossing the box into a carrier bag. “Are we going then, or what?”
“Seriously. The plan?” I say. I’m not daft enough to buy this all-about-the-journey bollocks he’s trying to sell me. In fact, I’m vaguely insulted that he thinks I’m thick enough to believe it – wrung out and messed up as I might be. I step between him and the door. “The. Plan.”
He looks shifty. “Just, you know, driving… The usual places. All that. A couple of nights, like we talked about…”
“And the rest of it. Come on.”
He gives me the same look Amy did. Fragile, it says. Handle with care. Danger: stay back two hundred feet.
And then he gives up and ruffles his hands through his hair, which he knows makes him look about nine years old, and he meets my gaze and says: “I want to go see Mum. I need to. I just thought, you know, it would be good to do something else too. Go other places on the way. Have some fun. Not make it all about…” He clears his throat again and sticks his hands in his pockets, the way he always does when he’s nervous or uncomfortable. Or both.
Ah. I see.
He doesn’t need to finish the rest of his sentence. I already know what he didn’t want to say. It’s not like I can deny him, is it? After all, this is what we do. We hold each other’s hands (metaphorically, not literally – god knows where his hands have been…) and we pick each other up. I never thought that hanging out at our respective mothers’ graves would become an integral part of our friendship, but life has a way of surprising you. So does death.
He doesn’t visit his mother’…’’–’’