Chapter Four
‘Are you ready for this?’ said Jonno. ‘I have big news. Huge.’
‘Where are you?’ asked Lucy, grabbing the handrail of the seat in front as the double-decker bus took a bend at high speed. ‘Are you already at the airport?’
‘I haven’t even left home yet. Olly’s organised a cab, it’s due any minute. I’m picking up Sasha on the way. He and Maya are getting a different one.’
Lucy watched the suburbs of south Bristol fly by, glad that she hadn’t accepted Olly’s offer of a taxi, which came with the risk of having to make small talk with a chatty driver. The Airport Flyer stopped just down the road from her house, and only took fifteen minutes. ‘What about Fran?’
‘That’s why I’m ringing. She’s not coming.’
‘Whaaaaat?’ screeched Lucy, prompting everyone else on the bus to turn and look at her in alarm.
‘I shit you not. She’s torn her Achilles tendon.’
‘Ouch,’ winced Lucy. ‘How did she do that?’
‘Not sure, some kind of incident at spin class, apparently. Got her foot caught in the pedal, fell off the bike, ping.’
‘Holy shit,’ gasped Lucy, swallowing down a dry heave at the thought of how much that must have hurt. ‘Is she OK?’
‘Apparently she’s been to hospital and she’s got crutches and one of those plastic boot things for now. They might need to operate.’
‘Wow, that’s bad.’
‘It’s the gym I feel sorry for. Imagine the chaos Fran’s going to unleash once she’s off the painkillers and fully lawyered up. Still, great news for the rest of us.’
‘What’s happening to her space on the trip?’
‘No idea. Sasha was sorting it out last night.’
‘Maybe it’ll be Derek. He deserves it.’
‘Nope. He’s got a thing, remember? With a bunch of delinquent teenagers. Anyway, I need to chase up this cab, it should be here by now. See you in a bit.’
Lucy suppressed a squeak of excitement. ‘Can’t wait!
’ She ended the call and sat back in her seat, her mind racing as she tried to process this unexpected turn of events.
Fran not coming was definitely good news, unless of course you were Fran.
Then again, if Fran’s space wasn’t taken by somebody else, Sasha would almost certainly latch on to her and Jonno, given that Maya and Olly were their own special kind of mayhem.
So maybe it wasn’t such good news, after all.
Her phone vibrated in her hand with a message from her mum, checking if she’d left the country yet. She took a deep breath and tapped out a reply.
I’m on a bus to the airport. I’ll message when I get there.
The reply came through instantly. Please don’t forget. And give me your flight number, so I can get your dad to check when it’s landed.
Lucy took a screengrab of her boarding pass and sent it to her.
Sometimes it was hard not to feel suffocated by her mum’s need to be in control, but given everything they’d been through as a family, it was understandable.
It came from a place of worry and fear, which Lucy supposed was a kind of love, in its own way.
She put her phone in her pocket and relaxed into her seat, already anticipating swapping the grey, drizzly skies of Bristol for the fresh, crisp chill of the mountains.
It would be good for her to get out of this city for a few days, even if the idea of it made her feel nervous and jittery.
She’d moved here to be closer to Leo, but she could take him with her to Switzerland.
Like emotional carry-on baggage, but since she was only taking a cabin bag, she was limiting her memories to the good ones.
Lucy was lost in her thoughts when the bus pulled up outside the terminal, the air brakes hissing as they came to a stop.
She grabbed her wheely bag and hurried through the revolving doors into the warmth, heading straight to the spot where she’d agreed to meet the others.
But the only person there was . . . Nate.
She came to a halt by a pillar ten metres away and watched him for a moment, not yet ready to get caught up in the awkwardness of stilted conversation.
He had one hand buried deep in the pocket of his dark grey ski jacket, the other scrolling through his phone.
A set of headphones were pulled down around his neck, half-covered by his curly hair.
He had the same twitching, nervous energy she’d seen outside the pub, like he’d downed one too many espressos and couldn’t keep his hands or feet still.
Presumably being dragged into this had been pretty last minute, so perhaps he’d had a sleepless night hunting down appropriate clothing while Fran tried to make her accident all his fault.
It seemed obvious now that he would be her replacement, but somehow she hadn’t expected him to make the cut.
Without the pressure of having to pick someone who actually deserved it, Lucy had expected Sasha to choose someone a little more client-friendly.
You can’t stand here staring at him all day, thought Lucy. Go and say hello. The idea of being alone in his company made her inexplicably nervous, but what did she have to fear from Nate Lambert? And anyway, Jonno would be here soon.
‘Hey,’ she said, giving him a warm smile as he looked up curiously. ‘I take it you’re standing in for Fran this weekend?’
Nate nodded, his blank expression suggesting he’d rather be anywhere else. Lucy felt a surge of annoyance that he was taking up a space when everyone on the team apart from Derek would have happily taken Fran’s place. ‘Did you hear what happened to her?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Lucy. ‘Jonno called me earlier. I hope she’s OK.’ Nate’s eyebrow-raise was almost imperceptible, but clearly communicated ‘I know you’re lying’, so Lucy quickly changed the subject. ‘Are the others here yet?’
‘No,’ said Nate. ‘I had a call from Sasha ten minutes ago. Apparently there was a problem with the taxis.’
Lucy blinked, wondering why Sasha had called Nate and not her. Perhaps she’d tried, but Lucy’s bus was hurtling through a signal blackspot. She quickly glanced at her phone for missed calls, but there was nothing. ‘What kind of problem?’
Nate shrugged. ‘I think Olly was supposed to book them, but it seems like he got over-excited about the trip and forgot to send a confirmation.’
‘Oops,’ said Lucy with a grin. ‘Are they all sorted now?’ Jonno and Sasha both lived in tiny villages over towards Bath, and getting a taxi during peak school-run time had probably caused a few headaches.
Likewise Olly lived somewhere up near Filton, but presumably he could get a train or a bus. Lucy had no idea where Maya lived.
‘I don’t know, Sasha said something about bad traffic and an accident.’ He looked wrung out, and Lucy felt a moment of sympathy that he’d clearly been on the receiving end of Sasha losing her shit in fifteen different ways. They’d all been there at one time or another.
‘How come you made it? Do you live nearby?’
Nate nodded. ‘Bedminster. I got the bus.’
‘Same, I’m in Southville.’
Nate checked his watch and nodded vaguely, like he couldn’t be less interested that they lived so close to each other. ‘We should probably go through,’ he said, gesturing towards the escalator. ‘I guess they’ll find us when they get here.’
Lucy nodded and glanced at her phone, hoping for a reassuring message from Jonno.
‘Have you checked in?’ she asked, wondering if he’d had time to do it online.
Nate nodded, so they rode the escalator and joined the queue for Security, Lucy standing behind Nate and wondering whether the curls on his neck were thick and wiry, or soft and fluffy, like baby hair.
She resisted the entirely insane urge to touch them, instead surreptitiously inspecting the contents of his incredibly organised plastic bag of toiletries.
Mostly grey Clinique Men bottles and tubes, and some generic Colgate toothpaste.
They said nothing to each other for twenty minutes while they waited in the queue, and by the time Lucy emerged from putting her shoes back on after Security he was at the entrance to Duty Free, already on his phone.
He pulled a face as she approached, then turned the handset to face her.
It was Sasha on a video call, prompting Lucy to feel a flurry of annoyance that she was calling Nate again, rather than her.
Presumably she was seeing him as a Fran substitute, which didn’t bode well for him this weekend.
Sasha loved a video call, and the consensus in the office was that she used it to check nobody was working at home in their pyjamas.
‘We’re not going to make the flight,’ she said, stony-faced.
‘What, none of you?’ asked Lucy, glancing at Nate. He was leaning in so close she could smell the woody scent of his shampoo, or maybe it was his aftershave. She forced herself to focus and not get distracted.
‘No,’ said Sasha. ‘Olly and Maya are on the train; there’s some kind of signalling issue and they’re not even in Temple Meads yet. We’re in Jonno’s car, but we’re stuck on a country lane, going nowhere. There’s been an accident. It’s clearly bad, an air ambulance has just flown over.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ said Lucy. Sasha turned the camera towards Jonno, who shook his head. She could see his jaw twitching with stress and frustration.
‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Lucy.
‘We’ll have to get another flight in a couple of hours. Olly’s trying to sort it out now.’
Lucy breathed, wondering if Sasha had unleashed the full extent of her fury on Olly yet, the poor bastard. ‘Do you want us to wait?’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Sasha. ‘Get out there and work your charm on Kristoff; he’s spent a fortune on this trip and we already look like fucking idiots. It’s down to you two to save the day.’
Lucy smiled gamely, although her nerves were already jangling. ‘When are they arriving?’
‘They got there yesterday; I spoke to Kristoff last night. They were planning a team-building day today, something to do with building igloos.’
‘Right. Sounds horrific.’