Chapter 31
MARTHA
I was officially exhausted and I really didn’t know where I was going to find the energy needed to even get me to this next checkpoint on Prince Edward Island, let alone the finish line.
The thought of my lovely flat at home with my books and paintings, my boho rug and my colourful throws made me feel a bit tearful for a moment.
Oh, to be curled up with a book and coffee, the window open to the throng of the street below and birdsong coming from the plane trees in Hoxton Square gardens.
I didn’t care about what Priya was up to now but it was quite clear to me that she was the person who paid, or enticed, or whatever she did to persuade Sergio to trick me in Madrid.
Perhaps she was just having a bit of fun, perhaps she was trying to get Harrison on his own, maybe she honestly thought she’d get to the finish line first.
Now, this information should have emboldened me, given me that extra fighting spirit to see me to the end, but it hadn’t. I was replete and just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. I was going to be relying heavily on Erin on this leg. I already was relying on her.
We were on the first bus out of the city after a very early start. We’d taken our breakfast with us, never having had the opportunity to sample Rudi’s pancakes. The bus tickets set us back $115 and I really did feel, at this rate, we’d be coming into St John’s on fumes.
Our aim was to get to Rivière-du-Loup as quickly as possible and even though I was looking in the guidebook at all that Quebec City had to offer, Erin was ushering me onto another bus.
It was going to take us about three hours and she handed over another $120.
She wanted to cover as much ground as possible, saying she could feel the others breathing down our necks.
I wanted to curl up on the nearest park bench.
I did check the map and it seemed as if we were only inching our way to the checkpoint despite the money we were haemorrhaging.
‘I’m praying we get a lift, at least some of the way,’ Erin said. ‘It will mean finding a gas station and approaching strangers again. It doesn’t seem to bother me so much now. Maybe I’m getting desperate.’
She laughed then and she looked so much like Clare with her hair pushed up in a ponytail that it made my heart hurt.
By mid-morning we were outside a gas station in Rivière-du-Loup and Erin was asking if anyone was heading south towards Fredericton.
I had our bags with me and was perched on a large rock on the edge of the area.
The producer car with Cally and Noah was parked off out of shot and felt like a huge tease.
Just give us a bloody lift, I wanted to say.
I did consider telling them I was ill again – goodness knows I felt pretty terrible – but I couldn’t do that to Erin now.
She was in her element. She was thriving under the pressure.
‘I feel like I’m begging,’ Erin said after half an hour of nothing.
I got myself up then. A lot of people spoke only French and I was aware that mine was very rusty, but Erin’s was non-existent so I needed to pull my weight.
Erin handed me the sign she had fashioned out of the back of a cardboard box she’d got from behind the bins and a pen she’d charmed out of the guy on the till.
It now had ‘FREDRICTON’ written on it. For the next ten minutes I approached everyone filling up their cars and some dismissed me with nothing more than a non, while others were a little less hostile – Désolé, je ne peux pas vous aider.
‘I’m going to get us both a coffee,’ Erin said and strode off towards the shop.
I didn’t stop her to tell her we couldn’t afford it. I was desperate for the caffeine. She was gone for ages and I was beginning to get worried about her and then she came out with a huge smile on her face.
‘I found us a lift.’
Behind her was the biggest man I had ever seen. He had a coffee in one hand and a huge bag of crisps in another. His head was bald but to compensate, he wore a ginger and grey beard that hung down to a point over his chest. His eyes were warm and friendly.
‘This is Curtis. I met him in the crisp aisle. He has a huge lorry and has offered to get us as far as Moncton.’
‘Curtis,’ I said, holding out my hand to shake his. ‘I am very grateful to you.’
And I was. The idea of a lift in a warm cab was wonderful.
‘I think you might have just won us the race,’ Erin said to him, which had him grinning.
‘Bit premature,’ I ventured, but Erin waved a hand of dismissal.
‘Positive mental attitude,’ she said.
‘That’s the spirit. I’m happy to help you both. My truck is parked over there.’
Curtis smiled warmly at us both.
‘Noah will have to come with us,’ I said. ‘Are you okay with that?’
‘A chaperone for you ladies won’t be necessary but he’s welcome all the same.’
‘It’s not that,’ Erin said, and I smiled at her confidence. The woman who didn’t want to get in a car with a stranger at the start of this race was now jumping into lorries with bearded truckers. ‘That TV show I told you we were on, he’s the cameraman.’
‘I see,’ said Curtis. ‘I was about to reassure you with the fact that tomorrow is my wedding anniversary. I’ve been very happily married to my husband for ten years.’
‘Congratulations,’ I said. Of course, the fact he was a happily married gay man didn’t automatically make him less likely to be a serial killer… or did it? I wasn’t sure. With the three of us, though, I felt we’d be just fine.
I’d never been in a big articulated lorry before and Curtis spent a few minutes showing us the luxuries of his cab. Then after we were settled in, he took out his phone.
‘Now, let’s get serious. No point jumping the gun here. Let me see how you can get from Moncton to Prince Edward Island easily. I mean, I can drop you off at another gas station and you might be lucky again, but let’s just check buses.’
He spent a few minutes looking at options but there wasn’t a bus that we’d be in time to catch.
With the best will in the world we wouldn’t arrive in Moncton until six this evening and the bus to the island left at two.
It would be an overnight stay and then another early start tomorrow.
I felt okay about that. We had managed to cover a lot of ground already.
He let Erin scroll through his phone and she found a hostel that she booked.
Curtis turned out to be so much fun and Erin spent the first couple of hours of the journey singing along to his top tunes.
He had an eclectic mix of favourites and as she had opted to sit in the front with him, they were belting them out together.
Noah spent more time on his phone than he did filming us.
He had set up the other camera in the front of the cab though, so that was doing most of the heavy lifting.
I let my head fall against the side of the cab and drifted off to sleep, dreaming about Erin and Clare running together in some unknown race to an unknown destination. It wasn’t a gentle dream, though, it was dramatic and dangerous and I woke feeling unsettled.
We rolled into Moncton at exactly six o’clock and Curtis dropped us as close to the hostel as possible.
He and Erin swapped details and she promised him she’d be in touch to let him know how we had done.
‘I’m just delighted to have been a small part of it,’ he said before he drove away with his horn blaring.
It was the positivity of Curtis that left us unprepared for the fact that when we turned up at the hostel, the room we thought we’d secured wasn’t available.
‘I wasn’t on duty, I didn’t book it,’ said a surly girl behind a desk in the small reception area. ‘You’ll have to find somewhere else as we have no room. Karla was mistaken.’
‘Karla was very clear when we phoned,’ Erin said. ‘She was really nice and kind, too.’
‘Well, she’s mistaken about a lot of things,’ the girl said and turned away.
We walked straight back out as there was little point getting into a row with her. She wasn’t going to magically find us beds. We walked over to a little copse of trees with a bench underneath and I dropped my bag down on top.
‘We’ll just have to find somewhere else,’ I said.
‘There weren’t any other hostel rooms available when I thought I’d booked that one, though. It will be this park bench or an expensive hotel,’ Erin said.
Noah and Cally had already driven off after they saw us through the door of the hostel, assuming that was us done for the night. Not that it mattered. They weren’t there to help us on our journey, just to document our progress, or lack of. Well, Noah was going to miss this one.
Erin was becoming flustered, I was just plain tired, it had started to rain and maybe those three facts were responsible for what happened next.
‘I’m not sleeping on a park bench,’ I said, despite my thoughts earlier in the day of curling up on one.
‘We need to be careful with our budget, though,’ said Erin. ‘We’ve spent a lot on bus travel over the last couple of days.’
‘You’ve spent a lot.’
I didn’t mean for it to be accusatory. I wasn’t quite sure why I said it. Erin had been brilliant, taking control, sorting things out. It was exactly what I wanted for her: to come out of her shell and challenge herself.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she snapped. ‘How would you have done it differently? Fired up your magic broomstick?’
I laughed then because it was funny, but it didn’t help.
‘You haven’t done anything wrong,’ I said soothingly. ‘You’ve been great.’
‘I’ve only had the money belt for a short time, what about all the money you’ve spent?’
‘Erin,’ I said, ‘I think you’re being a bit sensitive. I’m not accusing you of anything.’
The rain that had been light was intensifying and I was keen to get us out of it as quickly as possible. We both pulled our hoods up at the same time.
‘Sod the money,’ I said. ‘Let’s just get a hotel room and dry off, get some sleep. If we run out of money before we get to the finish line then so be it. We won’t make it to the finish line if we die of exposure out here tonight. Tomorrow will look better, I guarantee it.’
Erin sobbed then. It erupted out of her in a burst and she put her hands to her face.
‘Oh, love.’ I reached for her but she took a step back. ‘Is it about your mum? I know you don’t like to talk about her and that is something I just have to accept.’
‘It’s not that I don’t have anything to say about my mother, it’s just that I don’t think you want to hear what I have to say.’
The rain was rolling down her face and beginning to drip off her chin.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘You can say anything about Clare.’
‘Can I? Can I really?’
‘Of course you can, darling.’
‘Okay, well I think she was bit selfish.’
I just blinked away the rain and said nothing.
‘I don’t think she was a very good mother, sometimes. I didn’t like her dramas. They unsettled me.’
Erin was on a roll now, finally.
‘There’s a reason I spent so much time with you over the years and why we have such a good relationship, and it’s because my mum wasn’t always there for me. You were. Do you remember my school awards ceremony?’
I nodded.
‘Of course you do, because you were there. Mum? She was up a mountain. I saw the pictures she posted on her Facebook and they were posted at the same time I was receiving my award. I used to think when she was older she’d slow down and then I’d get to know her.
Maybe she might have more time to get to know me.
I’m sorry, Nana, if this makes you sad and I did love her, but I’m not sure she liked me all that much. ’
And there it was, finally.
‘And I never say any of this because I worry it will affect our relationship and you are seriously the best thing in my life.’
And then the tears began to mix with the rain and Erin was sobbing again.
‘Erin, darling. Nothing you ever say will affect what we have. Nothing, do you hear me?’
I drew her to me and our soaking clothes collided, making it hard to properly hold onto her but I was determined not to let her go.
* * *
We found the cheapest hotel we could. I ordered us some soup and bread rolls and it was brought to our small twin room. It was so much more expensive than the hostel but we had little choice and I didn’t care, not now. We needed warmth and security.
The room was basic but clean and we sat on our beds dipping the bread in the hot broth. We didn’t say anything for the longest time and it was only when we were both underneath the covers and Erin had turned out the light that her voice came to me in the darkness.
‘What I said about Mum,’ she said. ‘It won’t affect how you remember her, will it?’
‘Of course not, darling,’ I said. ‘Clare was selfish at times, I know. I had blazing rows with her about all sorts of things. I was so angry after your school ceremony and when she got back from France, I told her she was lacking as a mother. She didn’t speak to me for a few days but when she did, she said she was a free spirit and needed to follow her truth.
I told her she needed to grow up and set a better example. ’
‘Did you really?’ Erin said, sounding surprised.
‘Just because I choose to remember the good stuff doesn’t mean I don’t recognise her failings.
I remember the little girl I used to walk to school who wanted to stop and look at all the little bugs on the pavement, the toddler in her high chair, hands and face covered in the dinner she insisted on feeding to herself, the baby I spent hours nursing in the chair my father made me.
And sometimes I also remember what an absolute pain in the arse she was. ’
I stopped then because I was beginning to feel overwhelmed and Erin must have sensed it because she climbed in next to me and wrapped me in her arms.
‘But I also remember the young woman who came to me and told me she was pregnant and how much she wanted you. She loved you, Erin. She wasn’t perfect, far from it, but she considered you to be her greatest achievement.’
Erin fell asleep before me and I lay awake for a while overthinking. Clare had wanted a big life and she had had one. A short one, but a big one. She didn’t see that compromises would have to be made. She wanted it all but failed to understand that she couldn’t have it.
I pushed my thoughts back to the race. Getting me and Erin over the finish line seemed more imperative now than ever. It wasn’t about first place any more. It wasn’t about beating Harrison. It was about getting to the end. Finishing what we had started. The two of us, together.
I decided that before we did anything else we would need to find out our sailing options to Newfoundland and how much they would cost. That would really decide how the end of this race would play out.