We Were on a Break

Chapter 1

1

CALLUM

I’m so shocked that I can’t speak; all I can do is stare.

Approximately thirty seconds ago, I felt like the luckiest man alive. I was too hot and my feet were pinching from semi-jogging three miles across Rome pulling a suitcase, but when I rounded the corner into this street and saw the camper van parked at the opposite end, I was practically euphoric.

I need – needed – this lift. Flights across Europe are grounded indefinitely due to ash from an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano. I have to get back to London, and this is apparently my only option. So, I was desperate for it.

Now, though…

Now I’m wondering whether I might need a hole in the head more than the lift.

Because now I can see the woman who offered me the lift.

I’m so stunned that all I can do is keep on bump-wheeling my case across the cobbles towards her, my eyes focused on her face, with my mind and my mouth… not working.

I come to a halt a few feet away from her.

To give my brain a rest from trying to process what’s in front of me, I focus on the pale blue van behind the woman. It’s parked haphazardly – diagonally half-on, half-off the pavement, between an overflowing skip and a motorbike – but is clearly well-loved, with its shiny bodywork and cheery flowery curtains.

My eyes switch back to the woman herself. She has dark brown hair tied in a high, thick ponytail, she’s tanned and she’s wearing a green mini-dress and gold flip-flops. Very Emma.

She is, indisputably, her.

‘Emma,’ I state. The way the two syllables come out of my mouth sounds very odd, like I’m trying out speaking for the first time ever.

‘Callum?’ she replies. Genuinely. Like that. Like it’s a question.

I just continue to stare. And then she begins to stare too.

I’m staring because she’s Emma .

And she’s staring in a way that indicates that she thinks she might recognise me but she can’t one hundred per cent place me yet. Which I think I would find extremely offensive if I weren’t busy thinking – in weird slow motion – what the actual…

I carry on staring while, with what feels like a huge effort, I rewind things in my mind.

Emma and I didn’t speak in person when we agreed this lift; we just messaged. It was literally just words to the effect of Hi, I hear from Azim that you need a lift back to London; yes I do, thank you so much; no worries, let’s meet tomorrow at eight thirty, I’ll send you the address; thank you again, I’ll pay for fuel, you’re a lifesaver .

Emma seemed rushed, and I was busy on a client dinner that Janet, one of the executive assistants at my law firm, had set up for me, so I wasn’t keen to chat either.

All my friend Azim – who’d put us in touch – told me was that Emma was mint (his word), and I trust Azim.

Azim knows a lot about me, including, broadly, the fuck-up that my life was before we met at law school, but he doesn’t know the specifics. Emma was a specific.

I know from the contact details he sent over that he has her saved in his phone as ‘EM’, which I assumed was ‘Em’, but now I realise might also be ‘Emma Milligan’. I wonder what he has me saved as. Clearly not with my surname, or Emma would presumably have realised that I’m me.

Azim told me that Emma’s a good friend of his wife, and is in Italy on a road trip following a big break-up with her ex. Which is fine. The ex thing. Obviously there is no reason that she shouldn’t and wouldn’t have had boyfriends since me. I mean, it’s been twelve years. Of course she has. I mean, I’ve had other partners. Of course she has too. My slight feeling of – I don’t know what, surely not jealousy – is entirely irrational. Due to shock, obviously.

God, though.

I cannot share this journey with her.

Twelve years is a really, really long time, and I am entirely over her, obviously, but equally, Emma was my first, maybe my only, love, and it nearly killed me staying away from her. I don’t want to sit in an enclosed space together for sixteen hours. I clearly have moved on from her, because I lead a happy, functioning, great life, but I don’t, I realise, want to know how she’s been or what she’s like now. I don’t want to be reminded. I don’t want to have any flashbacks. I just want to keep on moving forward with my nice, happy, Emma-free life.

I do, however, really need to get home.

When everyone was sending me ‘Mate, you’ve done so well landing yourself a free extended break in a luxury hotel in Rome’ messages, all I could think about were all the things I have on in London, not Rome, in the coming week.

I have at least five important in-person work meetings, and, crucially, an appointment with a gold-dust plumber to have the leaking tap in my kitchen fixed. The plumber’s part of a highly successful women-only plumbing company and she has a nine-week waiting list. I need to be there when she arrives because last time she came, I was out, and my neighbour, who had recommended her, slept through the doorbell, and that was that. The tap still leaks and the drips still stop me getting to sleep and the tiles underneath are getting wrecked (and I still had to pay the one-hundred-and-ten-quid daylight-robbery call-out charge). I’ve tried and failed to find another good plumber and I need her.

I also have Azim’s daughter’s christening at the end of next week and I have to be there because I’m a godfather.

And most importantly of all, I need to get back to Thea; I can’t be away from her for too long.

I do therefore very much want to go home.

Maybe I don’t have to go with Emma, though. Maybe she isn’t really my only option.

An image of Janet comes into my head. Janet is always right. This morning, for example, as predicted by her, there were apparently no free taxis in the whole of Rome, hence my three-mile sprint.

One of her last messages yesterday was:

Your ONLY hope is to find a car share with someone who does not mind your VERY INCONVENIENT lack of driving licence.

(Janet can be very emphatic.) She went on to reiterate the lack of trains, boats, coaches, taxis, and non-driver car shares, and the total lack of response to her registration of my plight with the hotel reception, the British embassy and all online sites. She also told me that she’d fruitlessly explored buying a car and paying a driver.

On my side I messaged literally everyone I know asking about friends of friends who might happen to be anywhere near the Rome area and heading for London.

Janet’s view is that I’d be insane to pass up a lift, even if it’s in an ancient camper van. She thinks Emma is my only option.

She’s obviously right.

So either I stay in Rome indefinitely or I grow up and deal with spending two days in a van with someone who is in fact just an ex from a very long time ago. That’s all.

I can absolutely do it. I was being irrational before, from shock.

Of course I can do this.

I googled the journey yesterday. It’s sixteen hours on the road, which I’m guessing will be two eight-hour days. There’s no need for us to talk beyond basic pleasantries. We don’t have to eat together this evening or tomorrow morning. We don’t even have to stay in the same hotel. It will be absolutely fine.

I can definitely do this. Definitely.

As long as Emma’s happy to.