Chapter 23
JOSIE
I’m feeling optimistic about Scarborough and we’re not even there yet.
I’m thinking hot dogs and ice cream (choc-mint chip this time) and jangling amusement arcades.
Plus, it’ll be another stage of the tour completed which means we’re over halfway through, with just two stops left – Pontefract and Huddersfield.
Then home! Mission accomplished! Although that doesn’t feel quite as alluring as it had a couple of days ago.
Perhaps it’s being by the sea, which I’ve always loved. When Cora was a baby, and things were rocky with Dale, she and I would escape for a day at the coast. Could I build a life without him, just for the two of us? Those breezy Brighton days made me believe that it might be possible.
Or maybe it’s Shane, and being together isn’t as torturous as I’d expected? Fun even, at times. So I have a feeling of quiet optimism about the day ahead.
However, by the time we reach the town’s fringes, along with its sweeping coastal views, Scarborough has something unexpected to offer us.
Torrential rain. It’s gushing down, as if from a gigantic overhead shower, like the kind Cora and Zack had installed.
She turned it on once to show me how powerful it was.
We pull into a lay-by where Shane goes to buy our now customary bacon rolls from a roadside kiosk. While he waits, I check my phone and see that Lloyd has messaged me.
Lloyd
Hope trip going well! Wanna see what I’ve built for you?
Josie
Of course!
I am picturing expertly constructed shelves, fitting snugly into my kitchen alcove.
Lloyd might be annoying, in the way he fazes off sometimes when I’m chatting to him and I realise I might as well have been talking to a potato in the vegetable rack.
But he’s handy, and that’s no small factor.
Dale could barely operate a pepper grinder.
I glance out to see Shane waiting in the small queue, sheltered by a candy-striped awning from which rain is pouring, bouncing in puddles on the sodden ground.
My phone pings: Lloyd has sent me a picture.
It’s not shelves, after all, but a kind of shallow rectangular wooden trough, filled with what looks like soil.
Josie
What’s this?
Lloyd
Our first prop.
Josie
For what? Don’t understand!
Lloyd is typing. I look out to see Shane being served by a large man in white overalls.
Lloyd
The idea is we’ll get your feet in here, get them all muddied up and I’ll film you—
The driver’s door opens, and I plonk my phone face down on my lap. ‘Thanks,’ I say, as Shane hands me my roll and coffee.
‘No problem.’ We chomp away in silence for a few moments.
That trough was in my flat, I noticed. Lloyd has built it there, and the thought of it awaiting my return causes my stomach to shift uneasily.
Videos are what the punters like. And if they ask for anything you don’t want to do, we’ll just block them.
Have I turned into a prude? Am I the vanilla one now?
I catch Shane looking at me. ‘Everything all right?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I say quickly. ‘Apart from the weather…’
‘Yeah. Bit grim, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Hopefully it’ll brighten up soon.
’ But as we drive to the campsite, the rain comes on even more heavily, if that were possible.
Doris’s antiquated windscreen wipers can barely handle the deluge.
We pull up at the roadside, a little way from the entrance.
I glance at Shane, wondering if he’s thinking what I’m thinking.
‘What are we going to do here?’ I ask. ‘It’s quite a hike into town and we don’t have umbrellas or proper rain gear.
At least, I don’t…’ I think of my friend Nisha teasing me that I never have the proper attire for climatic conditions.
‘That hike we did in the Lake District,’ she’s fond of reminiscing, ‘when you wore your Converse!’ I couldn’t see what was wrong with that.
‘We could wait and see how the day turns out?’ Shane suggests.
‘I guess so.’ In the lull that follows, I sense him turning over alternative plans. I can read him, I realise. I’ve never been able to do that with Lloyd. Does he really think I remember Churchill as prime minister, or does he just enjoy winding me up?
Shane turns to me. ‘Or,’ he says, ‘we could just head on to Pontefract?’
‘You mean, miss out Scarborough?’ I exclaim.
‘Well, no,’ he says quickly. ‘We’re here, aren’t we? We’re within the town’s boundaries.’ He pulls a mock-furtive expression as if Ravi might be watching us, beadily.
‘We should do the photo, at least,’ I announce.
And so, with the distinct feeling of our old friend directing us, we drive into town.
Cockles, our former venue, was once a tacky little club with feeble disco lights and a dry ice machine that nearly choked us.
Now it’s a bar called Ricky’s, not yet open for business at 11.
30 a.m. and looking rather sterile inside.
We take our picture outside it, huddled in the rain with Shane’s arm slung around me, our hair plastered to our heads. ‘Thanks, Ravi,’ he chuckles.
Mild hysteria is rising in me and soon we’re laughing at the absurdity of this. ‘This is mad, isn’t it?’ I turn to him, grinning, as rain drips down my face.
‘Just a bit,’ he agrees.
But I’m glad we’re doing this, I want to tell him.
I’m glad I’m here – soaked to the skin – with you.
How kind he was about my stupid panic attack I reflect as we head back to the van.
And how willing and stoical he is, with not a moan about the mattress situation, even though I’ve caught him stretching out his lean body, as if easing out his knotted muscles, as I do.
I’ve tried not to watch as he does this.
‘So, what now?’ he asks.
‘Let’s just stay,’ I say.
‘What, forever?’ he teases.
‘Of course!’ I laugh. ‘I want to spend the rest of my life here. It’s my dream.’
Shane smiles. ‘You mean stay at the campsite tonight, right?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We might as well do it properly, rather than skipping a night.’ So that’s what we do, parking up at the site, after which hot showers are necessary, followed by hot chocolates in the campsite café.
We while away the afternoon there – it doubles as a games room – joined by a family with many children who delight in the extensive selection of board games.
‘Buckaroo!’ I exclaim, as the dad sets it up at the next table. ‘It was our favourite,’ I tell Shane, ‘when Cora was little.’
In turn, he tells me about Ryan and Liv, and how fiercely competitive they were at games; the stakes sky-high, even with seemingly innocent KerPlunk. ‘How are things now?’ There – I’ve dared to ask. ‘I mean, how d’you manage things with Paula and your kids?’
He glances towards the café window, although it’s opaque with steam. ‘We’ve managed okay, I think. She has a new partner now and their lives are pretty full…’ He trails off. ‘You know what kids are like with their hectic schedules.’
‘I do,’ I say, detecting the stoicism in his voice. He misses them, is what he means.
‘D’you have any pictures?’ I ask.
‘Sure.’ He opens his photos and hands me his phone across the table. ‘That’s a recent one of Liv,’ he adds. ‘Her eighteenth birthday.’
‘Oh, she’s gorgeous!’
‘And also appalled that her brother’s shoved his way in,’ he adds.
I chuckle, noticing the side-eye directed at her goofily grinning brother.
Both Liv and Ryan are a merger of Shane and Paula: her dark auburn hair, high cheekbones and aquiline nose; his soft greenish eyes and full, expressive mouth.
‘Can I see some more?’ I ask.
‘’Course you can. Scroll away.’ And so I do, through all the sports days and holidays and Liv playing an acoustic guitar, perched on a stool in a garden.
Big smiles, wistful gazes and don’t-you-dare-take-a-photo-Dad glares.
Then a picture of Paula and the kids, all three attractively tousled by the wind on a boat somewhere.
While Shane is up at the counter, perusing the cakes on display, I study Paula more closely.
She was easily the best-looking girl in our school year.
A giant photo of her was displayed in the window of Headlines, the hottest hair salon in town.
As their model, she had her hair cut for free; to me and Ravi, this seemed on a par with being a minor celebrity.
She is still a beauty, but in a more polished way.
Her bouncy auburn mane is slicked back now, and her teeth appear to be bright white and neatly aligned, rather than being the normal, everyday teeth that she – in fact, everyone – used to have.
I’d been surprised when I’d heard that Shane and Paula had got together.
Not because he wasn’t good-looking, or a lovely person; just that normally, she’d gone for slightly older guys in their mid-twenties, with cars and well-paying jobs and even mortgages, which seemed unthinkable.
But then, what did I know? Having convinced myself that Dale was the love of my life, I’d already moved to London.
It felt good to be away from all that; the gossip and constant reminders that I’d messed up.
Anyway, if Paula loved him, then I’d never have stood a chance.
That’s what I told myself because she – the hair model! – was queen.
I look up as Shane reappears at our table and hand him his phone. ‘Your kids are lovely,’ I say.
‘Thanks.’ He smiles warmly and cuts the last remaining brownie in two, so we can share it. Having shown him a photo of Cora – ‘She’s the image of you,’ he insists – I rub a patch of condensation from the window and see that the rain has eased.
‘Fancy a walk along the coastal path?’ I suggest.
‘Sure,’ he says, so we head out, grateful for the cool freshness after the downpour.
Fuelled only by sweet hot chocolate and that tiny brownie, we are relieved to finally spot a pizza place.
It’s really nothing special. Yet somehow, as we devour hot dough and lashings of cheese, I sense this faded restaurant imprinting itself indelibly on my mind.
‘So, after tonight,’ I remark as we stroll back to the campsite, ‘there’s just Pontefract and Huddersfield, and then we’re done.’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘God, we’re over halfway through.’
‘Are you pleased?’ I prompt him.
He shoots me a quick glance. ‘Actually, not really,’ he admits.
I blink at him in surprise. ‘You mean you’re not keen to get home?’
We’ve reached the campsite and pass an ebullient family gathered around a table on the grass, and realise it’s the group from earlier in the café.
After a brief exchange about the break in the rain, we cross the site towards Doris.
‘There’s just a bit of a situation in my flat,’ Shane explains, as he opens up the back door. ‘The, erm… the woman I’m living with—’
‘Elaine,’ I cut in without thinking.
He looks at me curiously as we clamber in. ‘That’s right, Elaine.’
‘You said something to her, that time we spoke? When I called to say I was up for doing the trip…’ Obviously, it’s totally normal behaviour for me to have lodged her name in my head all this time. I will my cheeks to stop burning as I pull my pyjamas from my rucksack.
‘Oh, did I?’ he says.
‘Yes, I just wondered, I—’
‘Well, um… it’s a kind of housemate situation,’ he explains.
‘Really?’
He smiles grimly. ‘Yeah, I know that sounds ridiculous at this age.’
‘You mean she’s your lodger?’ I ask.
‘No, no. It’s not really that either.’
I nod, still unclear about the kind of situation he’s talking about. ‘She’s a friend then?’
‘Um, not really. Well, I guess so.’ He starts delving into his rucksack. ‘We worked together in a pub a few years ago,’ he adds. ‘The shop was going through a shaky time, and I’d picked up a few shifts.’
‘And?’ I smile.
‘I ran into her again and she was in a bit of a state about being evicted. So I said she could move into my spare room as a stopgap.’
‘That’s very sweet of you,’ I say. Why am I pleased that she’s not his girlfriend?
He shrugs, pulling out the black joggers and white T-shirt he’s been sleeping in. ‘Well, it was only meant to be a short-term thing.’
I study his face, detecting a hint of relief that he’s told me. Three days ago, he had a perfunctory, let’s-just-get-this-done! vibe. Beyond the basic facts – the shop, his kids and his split from Paula – I’d known virtually nothing about his life now. ‘How long has she been at your place?’ I ask.
‘That’s the thing.’ He scratches at the back of his neck that’s a little tanned, I’ve noticed, from our Bridlington day. ‘It’s been six months.’
‘Six months! Do you mind? Is it okay, or—’ I break off, realising that he might not want to go into it all. But as he tells me how it is, with Elaine frying onions at all hours, it’s clear that it’s far from okay.
‘So what are you going to do?’ I ask.
He pulls a face. ‘I really don’t want to ask her to move out, but…’
‘You want her to go, though.’
Shane nods slowly. ‘I’m sort of feeling that it’s time.’
‘Tricky,’ I say. ‘Is she seeing anyone?’
He brightens. ‘Yeah, she is actually. Seems pretty keen. But it’s very new—’
‘But you’re hoping they’ll rush into living together?’ I smile.
‘It has crossed my mind!’ He laughs.
Later, lying side by side on the mattress, we continue to concoct a scenario in which Elaine and her new love are not only flat hunting, but browsing the IKEA website and picking a sofa as we speak.
And by the time we say goodnight, we have convinced ourselves that everything will resolve itself brilliantly.
Shane is sleeping now. I can tell by his slow, steady breathing. The way it’s been tonight, I reflect, it’s as if all the bad stuff never happened. Somehow, everything has been made better, just by us being thrown back together in a rattly old van.
I never imagined we’d be friends again, and tonight, on this campsite in Scarborough, I barely sleep a wink. My head is full of it all; full of Shane and me. And I’m right back there, with him, on the night that changed everything forever.