‘It will be good to have a change of scene, even if this won’t exactly be a relaxing holiday,’ she said to him now. ‘I’ll go and tell Mum after work tonight, she’ll be thrilled.’

  ‘How are things going with Dave?’ Gordon asked, as she stood up and began to fill the kettle.

  She grimaced. ‘Awful. He keeps texting, despite the fact that I haven’t replied for the last week. You’d have thought he’d have got the message by now?’

  ‘He doesn’t want to give up on you,’ Gordon said. ‘That’s not surprising.’

  ‘You’re sweet, Gordy.’ She smiled and threw a plastic teaspoon across the table at him. It missed by a mile. She really didn’t know what to do about Dave. They’d made contact through a dating app, but within five minutes of meeting him, Lily had known it wasn’t going to work. Dave was extremely intense and talked a great deal about himself, leaning too close across the table while telling her about his love of astrophysical engineering. He had a beard (she hated beards), he had awful clothes sense (she knew it was shallow, but couldn’t help judging him by his lime-green nylon jumper) and his breath smelt like he’d eaten an entire loaf of garlic bread. When they parted at the end of the first evening, Dave had moved in for a kiss and, as she tried to pull away, his wet lips had landed awkwardly on her ear. She had no idea why the dating app had matched them. He liked Procul Harem and Pink Floyd, she liked The Smiths and Elbow; he listed golf and British Military history as his hobbies, she had put on her profile that she liked gardening, watching soppy romcoms and eating cake.

  ‘Shall we meet again?’ he’d asked eagerly. ‘It’s been a wonderful evening, Lily. I’ve really enjoyed your company.’

  No! screamed the voice inside her head. I’d rather stick needles in my eyeballs!

  ‘Yes, that would be lovely,’ she heard herself saying.

  Poor Dave. The second date had been as terrible as the first, but at the end Lily had managed to come out with a mumbled excuse about being incredibly busy and not very good company and perhaps they should leave it a couple of months? He’d looked so sad, she nearly caved and agreed to see him again. Thankfully, she’d managed to hold back. But he was still texting, hoping she’d change her mind.

  ‘I’ll finish it properly,’ she said to Gordon, now. ‘I really will.’

  ‘Well, stone me,’ said Gordon, reaching across to take his cup of tea. ‘Is that a pig I see flying past the window?’

  After work, Lily drove to Moira’s flat.

  ‘Right, it’s all sorted,’ she said, following her mother into the small sitting room. ‘We can leave this weekend! Start thinking about what you’ll need to pack, and I’ll book us a hotel for the first night in Cirencester. Mum, what’s that smell?’

  Moira frowned. ‘I can’t smell anything.’

  ‘There’s a strange smell coming from somewhere.’ Lily went into the kitchen and saw Moira’s slow cooker sitting on the worktop. Lifting the lid, she found it had been turned on and was full of sodden tea towels. ‘What’s going on? Why are these in here?’

  ‘Don’t touch them!’ said Moira. ‘I’m boil washing them. It’s the most hygienic thing to do with tea towels. It’s how we always used to clean them in the old days.’

  ‘Mum, this is a slow cooker! It won’t boil anything. What’s wrong with using the washing machine?’

  ‘Oh, Lily,’ tutted Moira, shaking her head and walking away. ‘Your new-fangled ways aren’t always the best.’

  Lily unplugged the slow cooker and pulled out the tea towels, cold, rancid water dripping onto her shoes as she lifted them across to the sink. This road trip was beginning to feel like a very bad idea.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lily dragged the van’s side door shut and walked round to the driver’s side. ‘Right, we’re off! Buckle up, Mum – do you want me to help with that?’

  ‘I can do it.’ Moira was jabbing the metal end of the seat belt into mid-air, several inches away from the buckle. ‘Stupid thing won’t reach. These belts are too short.’

  ‘Here, let me…’

  ‘No, I’ve nearly got it.’

  Lily sat back and sighed, briefly closing her eyes. It had been a stressful morning. When she arrived at Moira’s flat, she had found her mother sitting on a camping chair on the pavement, surrounded by two suitcases, a polka dot shopping trolley, a picnic hamper, a huge cardboard box held together with Sellotape and numerous bulging plastic bags.

  ‘What’s going on, Mum? You can’t possibly take all this?’

  Moira had crossed her arms and tutted, raising her eyes to the sky. ‘Lily, why are you so negative about everything? These are just a few essential bits and pieces I can’t do without.’

  Now, an hour later, with most of the clutter back in Moira’s flat and just one large suitcase loaded into the van, they were ready to set off. Lily was already exhausted, and her temples were throbbing, but she smiled brightly as she turned the key in the ignition and the van’s engine roared into life.

  ‘Here we go!’ she said. ‘Isn’t this exciting?’

  There had been some weak wispy rays of sunshine glancing off the pavements earlier, but now clouds were gathering along the horizon in ominous steely grey puffballs, and spots of rain dotted the windscreen as they drove along Moira’s road. The wipers screeched half-heartedly across the glass while Lily turned on the radio and started tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as something vaguely familiar from the 1980s filled the van. This was all going to be fine. Better than fine, it was going to be great. They were on their way; her mother was happy and the trip was going to be fun.

  ‘Goodbye, Brighton!’ called Moira, as they went past a row of shops. ‘How long will it take to get to Cirencester? I’d quite like a coffee. Can we stop for a coffee soon, Lily?’

  ‘Mum, we’ve only just started. Let’s at least get round the M25.’

  They didn’t make it that far. Twenty miles up the road, the van limped into the service station at Pease Pottage, with the temperature gauge rising off the scale and a series of bangs and clanks coming from the engine in the rear. Lily pulled into an empty space in the car park and began to scroll through numbers on her phone. ‘Damn and blast, bloody thing,’ she muttered. ‘I should have the RAC on speed dial.’

  ‘Didn’t you call them out last week?’ Moira asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And earlier in the month as well? When you broke down on that roundabout?’

  ‘Yup, then too.’ Lily got out and walked round the van as she waited for the call to be answered. Moira wound down her window and sighed. ‘I’m surprised they still keep coming out when you call. You must be one of their main customers.’

  ‘Stupid thing!’ Lily kicked the front tyre, but the toe of her boot slid to the side and caught on the metal wheel arch. ‘Ow! Bloody hell.’

  ‘Swearing at it, won’t help,’ said Moira.

  ‘That’s rich, coming from you!’

  ‘I’m just telling you to stop kicking it.’

  ‘Mum, will you shut up for a second?’

  They glared at each other through the open passenger window.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ Moira continued, ‘is that there’s nothing we can do. We just have to sit here and wait.’

  ‘Great. Thanks for the advice,’ Lily snapped. ‘Since when did you get to be so patient and calm?’

  When the operator answered, she ran through what had happened with the practised shorthand of someone who knew exactly which details the breakdown service did and didn’t need to hear. ‘We’re two women travelling alone,’ she added. ‘And my mother is elderly and extremely frail.’

  Moira’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I’m bloody not!’

  ‘Yes, you are!’ Lily hissed.

  The woman on the other end of the phone asked more questions.

  ‘Well, no we’re not exactly in an awkward location,’ Lily answered, reluctantly. ‘No, we’re not by the side of the road. No, there isn’t much passing traffic. We’re actually in a service station off the A23 at Pease Pottage… Well, yes, it probably is quite safe, but my mother is still elderly and frail!’

  ‘What’s the point,’ she said afterwards, as she rubbed her bruised toe, ‘in offering priority assistance to vulnerable women when you then downgrade them again because they don’t happen to be stuck on a verge beside a motorway? Vulnerable is vulnerable, wherever you are.’

  By the time flashing lights heralded the arrival of the RAC, an hour later, Lily had bought them a second coffee from the Costa machine inside the garage, and played four games of solitaire on her phone. Moira had opened her new notebook and was hunched over it, scribbling away intently. ‘I’m not sure if I’ll use all of this, but it’s useful for background,’ she muttered when Lily asked what she was writing.

  The young lad who jumped out of the RAC van had a chin splattered with acne and was wearing an outsized orange high-vis jacket that skimmed the top of his knees.

  ‘He doesn’t look old enough to have passed his driving test,’ Moira said.

  ‘I know,’ said Lily. ‘But he’s all we’ve got.’

  ‘Ladies,’ he said, having assessed the problem in minutes. ‘You’ve got dirt in your carburettor. It’s quite common with older vehicles like this.’

  ‘But I just had it serviced,’ Lily said.

  The lad shook his head and sucked in air through his teeth like a man four times his age. ‘I’d change your mechanic, if I was you,’ he said. ‘Older vehicles like this often need specialist care.’

  ‘Young man, what’s your name?’ Moira asked.

  ‘Alfie.’

  ‘Alfie! What a fine name. You are going to be making an appearance in my book as a knight in shining orange.’

  ‘Right.’ The boy took a step back, his face screwed up in confusion. ‘Thank you for that.’

  ‘Sorry about this, Mum,’ Lily said, as they sat listening to him banging something loudly against the engine at the rear of the van. ‘If I’d have known we were going to break down quite so soon – or at all – I’d have thought about hiring a car instead.’

  Moira looked at her in surprise. ‘Well, that would have been a waste of money!’

  ‘At least it would have got us further than halfway up the A23.’

  ‘It will be fine,’ said Moira, who was still writing notes in her book. ‘I’m very fond of this little van.’

  ‘That’s sweet of you, I love it too. But it isn’t comfortable. The suspension is shot, for a start, and when I go over seventy, it rattles so badly it feels like something’s going to fall off.’

  Lily ran her hand along the inside of the door beside her. She really did love this little van. It was two-tone, white on top with the lower section a pale sky blue, with alloy wheels and a shiny white bumper. On either side of the metallic VW logo, its headlights peered out at the oncoming traffic like a pair of eyes, wide with surprise.

  ‘Don’t you think this is a bit silly?’ Eleanor had asked, the first time she saw it parked outside Lily’s house, three years ago. ‘It’s so old – look at the rust! What was wrong with your Ford Focus?’

  There had been nothing wrong with the Ford Focus, but Lily had fallen in love with the campervan and everything it stood for. She loved the fact that the doors opened with a loud clunk and needed to be slammed hard to shut properly; she loved the fact that, when she turned the key in the ignition, the engine kicked into life with a throbbing rattle; she loved the little wooden cupboards that lined one wall in the back and the curtains that hung at the windows; she really loved how other VW drivers tooted their horns and waved at her as they went by.

  ‘And when,’ Eleanor had asked, ‘will you be going camping?’

  ‘I’m not sure exactly,’ Lily had said. ‘But it will come in very useful.’

  Of course she had never spent a night in the van. She wasn’t the camping type and had no intention of rearranging the seats into an uncomfortable little bed and trying to sleep on it. But she wasn’t going to admit that to Eleanor.

  ‘It’s a mid-life crisis vehicle,’ her daughter had sniffed. ‘How tragic.’

  ‘I’m only forty-seven!’ Lily had exclaimed.

  Eleanor had just shaken her head. ‘As I said, mid-life crisis.’

  By the time Alfie drove off in his RAC van and they got back on the road, it was raining properly and the windscreen wipers squealed across the glass, leaving bleary streaks in Lily’s line of vision. She had hoped to get to Gloucestershire by lunchtime, but it was mid-afternoon before they arrived at the small village north of Cirencester, following signs directing them up a narrow lane. An overgrown graveyard came into view, dotted with stocky yew trees guarding the church like soldiers.

  ‘It’s partly Saxon, you know,’ said Moira, as they got out of the campervan.

  ‘Stand there, Mum, in front of the gate,’ said Lily. ‘I’ll take a photo of you.’

  Moira puffed out her chest, smiled and gestured at the church behind her with one arm. ‘Cheese!’ she yelled.

  At least the rain had stopped and the sun was streaking tentatively through high, feathered clouds. The wooden door of the church squeaked loudly when Lily pushed it open. As her eyes adjusted to the dark interior, she smelt the mustiness of ancient prayer books mixed with the chemical tang of floor polish.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ she whispered to Moira. She had no idea why she was whispering but not having set foot inside a church for decades, she felt strangely cowed, as if reverence was not just required but expected.

  ‘Smaller than I remember,’ said Moira, her voice echoing as she walked up the aisle. ‘Isn’t that strange? We had more than eighty guests, but it doesn’t seem as if there’s room for that many people in here.’

  There was a crash from the front of the church and they both jumped and turned towards the noise.

  ‘Can I help you?’ A deep voice came out of the gloom beside the altar, then a man appeared, with a thatch of grey hair and huge overgrown eyebrows that clung to his forehead like caterpillars.

  ‘Hello,’ said Moira. ‘The door was open so we let ourselves in.’

  He strode towards them. ‘The House of Our Lord is open to everyone,’ he boomed.

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Moira. ‘I got married here, nearly fifty years ago. I wanted to come and visit again. To see if it had changed!’

  ‘Why would it have changed?’ the man bellowed, running a finger around the inside of his dog collar, as if trying to tame an itch. He was right up close to them now, and specks of spittle flew from his lips as he spoke. Lily took a step backwards.

  ‘Well, it might have done,’ said Moira, standing her ground. ‘Fifty years is a long time.’ She was smiling, but the vicar didn’t smile back.

  ‘Madam, that is a mere drop in the ocean of the history of this church,’ he said. ‘It’s Saxon, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Moira, mildly. ‘With a Norman arch. I googled it.’

  His eyebrows knitted together as he glared at her; he had clearly been about to blast them with some well-rehearsed church history.

  ‘This is my daughter,’ Moira said. ‘We’re doing a little trip together, to visit some of the places that have been important to me throughout my life. Obviously, we had to start here.’

  He harrumphed, glancing briefly at Lily. ‘Well, I can’t stand here all day, talking, I’ve got a sermon to write.’ He spun on his heels and walked back down the aisle. ‘Shut the gate on your way out,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘We don’t want sheep getting into the graveyard.’

  He disappeared through an arch at the far end and a door crashed shut behind him.

  ‘Rude,’ muttered Moira. ‘That’s someone who should never have devoted his life to other people’s happiness.’

  They spent a few more minutes wandering around the church, but the romance of the moment had been punctured.

  ‘Come on,’ Lily said. ‘That’s the first pit stop ticked off our list. Onwards.’

  Ten minutes later, they were approaching Cirencester when Lily’s mobile began to ring. It was in its holder on the dashboard and she could see Eleanor’s name and photo flashing on the screen.

  ‘Damn,’ she said to Moira, pulling the campervan over onto the side of the road. ‘I’d better take this.’

  ‘Hi, darling!’ she said, putting a finger into the ear that wasn’t against the phone. Even when idling, the engine made a lot of noise, and the old van trembled around them. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Where are you?’ demanded Eleanor.

  ‘Well, right at this minute we’re parked up on a lane just outside Cirencester!’

  ‘What? I can’t believe you’ve actually left!’ Eleanor was breathing heavily. It sounded as if she was walking; she’d probably come out of work to make the call. ‘This whole road trip thing is crazy. When I talked to you on Thursday – oh, hang on a minute…’

  There was a high-pitched beeping and Lily pictured her daughter striding across a pedestrian crossing back in the centre of Brighton, phone pinned to her ear with one hand, her Louis Vuitton bag clutched to her side with the other.

  ‘When I talked to you before, I thought you’d realised it was a terrible idea?’ Eleanor carried on, as the beeping faded into the distance. ‘I can’t believe you’re going ahead with this. You should know better.’

  ‘We’ve had this conversation so many times…’ began Lily.

  ‘Well, let’s have it again. We’ll keep having it until you see sense. This trip isn’t just foolish, it’s downright dangerous. Put me on to Granny, let me talk to her.’

 

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