Chapter 34
ERIN
The envelope was a prop really, now. They already knew they were going to St John’s but Erin dutifully opened it and there was a moment when she wondered if they were going to surprise them with a different checkpoint. Her heart stopped for just a second until she saw the words on the paper.
Your final checkpoint is St John’s
They had watched Harrison and Sam leave from the viewpoint of their bedroom window exactly three hours ago.
Erin felt as if she were never going to see Sam again, which clearly wasn’t true.
She was twenty-five but the feelings rolling around her body and mind were those of a teenager.
She wanted to laugh at how silly she was being but she just couldn’t stop it.
They had walked the gardens of the guest house after dinner the previous evening and had made small plans to meet up in Marlow.
He was going to teach her to row, which terrified her.
And they’d talked about him coming to her place where Erin wanted to cook him something special.
They had held hands and kissed and Erin was glad in one way they’d not had the opportunity to sleep together.
She liked the idea of an old-fashioned courtship.
The building up of a friendship before next steps.
She’d had a couple of one-night stands before Hamish.
Both had left her feeling nothing at all.
Hamish and she had fallen into going out after a mutual friend introduced them and Hamish had considered Erin his girlfriend as some sort of default setting.
On what should have been their second date – which was actually drinks with his friends at the rugby club – he had introduced her as his girlfriend, as if they’d been going out for months rather than the reality, which was that those drinks were only the second time she’d ever seen him.
It wasn’t that she wanted to take things particularly slowly with Sam, more that she hoped it would develop naturally without either of them forcing the other into something they weren’t comfortable with.
The thought of seeing Sam again made her whole body fizz with excitement.
She wondered if Martha felt the same way about Harrison. She wasn’t about to ask.
‘Right,’ Martha said. ‘We know what we need to do; get back to Charlottetown and get to the ferry port.’
Erin checked the notes she’d made in her journal.
‘There are four ferries to Caribou today,’ Erin said. ‘I imagine we might make the third at three. It’s not likely we’ll get there early enough for the second at ten and the one at seven left an hour ago. I doubt even Harrison and Sam got that one.’
‘Right,’ Martha said decidedly. ‘I think we should start walking and if a car passes us, we do it the old-fashioned way – we stick out a thumb.’
‘What? Are you kidding? We might get murdered,’ Erin said.
‘I very much doubt a serial killer is prowling the northern shores of Prince Edward Island,’ she said. ‘And are they going to take out a producer and a film crew too? It’s more likely we’ll come across a lovely local or a tourist. Come on, what’s happened to your new-found sense of adventure?’
‘It might be all used up,’ Erin said, but Martha wasn’t listening.
She was hoisting her rucksack up onto her back and already walking away from the front of the guest house.
Noah looked less than delighted but he shook his head when Erin suggested they just give them a lift.
So the three set off on foot with Cally and her car trailing a little behind them.
The road back towards the south of the island was devoid of any traffic, which was just as well because there wasn’t a pavement.
It was pretty, though. The landscape was fairly flat, green and lush, and had the odd property set back from the road down little tracks.
They were mostly covered in white-painted boards and Erin wondered out loud if there was some sort of covenant on what could be built here.
‘I imagine so,’ Martha said when she voiced this. ‘They will want to maintain the picturesque look of the place. I doubt they’d want a block of flats shoved up.’
They’d been walking for twenty minutes when they came to a café and what might be considered a hamlet as there were a number of properties too.
‘I think we should treat ourselves to a coffee and see if anyone is going into town,’ Martha said, but Erin didn’t hold out a lot of hope as it was so quiet and there was only one car out the front.
‘Thank God,’ Noah breathed.
The bell jingled above the door as they opened it and they walked into a lovely little place where a couple of people were eating brunch. Martha approached the woman behind a counter and asked for two coffees.
‘Can you do them to go, please,’ she said. ‘We’re in a race and trying to get the ferry to Caribou at three.’
‘Oh, you’re the TV people. We heard you were coming. My daughter was up at the museum yesterday trying to get in shot, bless her.’ She stopped what she was doing and looked at her watch. ‘Why are you in here getting coffee if you’re in a race? You’ll miss that crossing.’
‘We’re running out of cash and were trying to get a lift but not a single car has passed us. I wonder if we could use your phone too and call a cab, please.’
‘You can, but that will be costly. Let me see if my daughter is about, I’ll just bet she’d love to give you guys a lift. You can tell her all about the show.’
‘That would be amazing, but surely you’re not old enough to have a daughter that drives?’
Erin looked at her grandmother. Had she completely lost the plot? Too much, she wanted to say. That’s the sort of cringy compliment a man might try, but the woman was laughing and touching her hair.
‘Oh, bless you for saying that, but Bronwyn is twenty-five.’
‘Same as Erin here,’ Martha said with a big desperate smile plastered on her face.
The woman disappeared through a door to the back and Erin rounded on her grandmother.
‘Really? You can’t possibly be old enough,’ she said in a simpering voice and then stopped when she remembered Noah was just behind her.
‘Oh, shut it,’ Martha said. ‘I’ll do anything to get on that ferry by three.’
Bronwyn was a sparky woman, slightly overexcitable perhaps but Erin was just delighted to be in her car on the way to the ferry with every chance of getting the three o’clock crossing.
They even had two complimentary coffees.
Noah was also very happy not to be trudging down the road with his camera.
‘It’s just so exciting,’ Bronwyn said as she took off at quite a pace. Erin held onto her seat belt and Noah held tight to his camera. ‘Are you winning?’
‘Not yet,’ Martha said. ‘But this lift might help us to jump up a bit. We really do appreciate it.’
While Martha nattered away with Bronwyn in the front, Erin watched the world go by out of her window.
It was beautiful really, this rolling countryside with pretty houses and rivers and lakes, but Erin felt a strong tug for home.
She missed her crappy flatshare and even her grumpy flatmate, Sue.
She was tired of being on the road now and could quite easily call it a day.
Martha seemed full of beans somehow, though.
They would not be giving up. The end was in sight.
She looked at the map again and thought about the sixteen-hour ferry with a little dread.
There were only three a week. The next one to go was in two days.
They had a deadline or they would be out of the race, she was sure.
Bronwyn dropped them at the road leading down to the port and Martha was hugging her as Erin climbed out of the car. The coffee had done nothing to energise her.
The tickets were $11.50, just as the guy from the bus station had told them, and by three they were sailing away from Prince Edward and onto Nova Scotia.
‘What’s up?’ Martha asked her as Noah disappeared inside the ferry.
They decided to sit outside on the deck as the ferry departed but it was a little windy. Erin’s hair was blowing in her face and Martha had pulled the hood of her jacket up.
‘Just a bit tired, a bit homesick actually,’ she said.
‘Hardly surprising,’ Martha said, taking Erin’s hand and holding it in her own lap. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t been homesick before. It’s probably just because the finish line is in sight and you know you’ll be going there soon enough.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Erin said. ‘I wonder where everyone else is?’
‘That is something I’ve thought about on every leg of this journey and it turns out we never know.’
‘Do you think we’ll win, Nana?’
‘I’d love to think we will but we have to face the fact, the men have a decent head start,’ Martha said.
‘It really depends on the choices each team makes. I think we’ve made the best choice personally.
The ferry to Newfoundland we’ve chosen might be long and more expensive, but it’s guaranteed passage.
If others choose the short one and struggle to get across the land with their remaining funds, then who knows. Did you tell Sam what we were doing?’
‘No,’ Erin said. ‘I wanted to. I really like him, Nana. It feels wrong to be sneaky.’
‘What goes on in The Trip of a Lifetime stays in The Trip of a Lifetime,’ Martha said, and Erin laughed. ‘No, seriously, this is just a TV show, but if you and Sam are meant to be, then it will happen back at home without the gaze of everyone else.’
‘I’m glad you’re feeling better, Nana,’ she said.
‘I am,’ Martha said. ‘I was exhausted and felt so weighted down but now, it’s as if I’ve been offered a huge boost of energy. I don’t really know why.’
‘Harrison?’ Erin suggested with a sly smile.
‘Maybe a very little,’ Martha said. ‘But it’s us too. I’m so glad we had that chat. Let’s keep doing that.’
And it was true. It was as if Martha had had a second wind and one that Erin hoped would see her over the finish line.