by Jenny Oliver
In the van, Julia laughed unexpectedly at the memory.
Next to her Amber said, ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing.’ Julia shook her head and turned her attention to the podcast and the crossword clue they were stuck on.
Every now and then, when Julia dropped off, her head would fall forward and then jerk back up again. Each time it happened, Amber snorted a laugh, so Julia promised herself it wouldn’t happen again and then suddenly her head was jerking again and she was saying, ‘Oh sorry, I fell asleep,’ and Amber shrugged and said, ‘You can do whatever you like.’
Julia woke up with her head against the window, a crick in her neck and an embarrassing film of drool around her mouth. The sun was no longer overhead but hovering on Amber’s side and they were out of the countryside, driving along roads lined with petrol stations, swimming pool shops and Mr Bricolage DIY stores.
Julia rubbed her eyes. She felt dreadful. She checked her phone.
Lexi had Instagrammed a Boomerang video of Hamish lifting her above his head and twirling her round on the makeshift dance floor. The scene played over and over, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. Giggle, grin, giggle, grin. Her white skirt pooling over him, his arm muscles bulging. Alicia was laughing in the background. ‘So much love xxx’
In contrast, Charlie had uploaded a picture of a particularly odd-shaped tomato.
Amber’s voice cut in, ‘Put your phone away, Julia, you’re missing out on what’s going on…’
And Julia glanced up to see they had driven into a town decked out like a carnival. Every street preparing for tomorrow’s antiques fair. There was bunting strung from lampposts and tissue paper flowers tied to railings. The cobbled streets with wonky mediaeval timber-framed buildings were blockaded, chalk pitch numbers scrawled on the narrow pavements. Bars were being built, scaffolding banged into place and beer barrels hauled out of lorries and onto trollies. Police were everywhere directing the traffic. Along the main road yellow cones stopped parking and hundreds of metal market stalls were under construction.
Julia wound the window right down, breathing in the scent of the setting sun and car fumes and café extractor fans. It smelt foreign and exciting and other. She stuck her head right out the window. She gazed at cafés with their red and white latticed chairs around little tables on the pavements, full to the brim of people. A kids’ merry-go-round played fairground music as one kid sat crying on a giant plastic elephant. The heat seemed to echo off the walls, the atmosphere loud and enticing.
All she could think was that Charlie would love it here. He would love the sights and the smells and the colour.
Next to her Amber swore about roads that were closed and where she was going to park. ‘That wasn’t closed last year. What are they doing? Where am I meant to go?’
A man in a bright orange official’s waistcoat waved his hands frantically at her when Amber turned the corner and started shouting.
‘I don’t know what he’s saying,’ Amber said.
Julia listened, ‘He says it’s a one-way street.’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Amber reversed. ‘Do you speak French?’ she asked Julia.
‘Not really, well not very well, I’m OK,’ Julia said. ‘My brother can speak Mandarin.’
Amber paused, checking the traffic as she backed up the road. ‘Fat lot of good that would be right now.’ Then she winced as she hit a bollard on the corner as she turned.
As Julia looked worriedly out the window to inspect the damage done to the bollard, which now tipped at a precarious angle, a voice shouted from outside one of the cafés, ‘You made it!’
Julia looked up to see Lovejoy sitting with a glass of pastis, Ray-Bans on, thoroughly enjoying Amber’s driving debacle. ‘You’re going the wrong way, Amber!’ he laughed, feet up on the chair in front, chucking an olive into his mouth.
Amber gave him the finger as she drove away.
Lovejoy smiled.
Tense now, and riled by Lovejoy, the heat exacerbating the stress, Amber stopped the van in the middle of the road, holding up the traffic behind and said, ‘I’m sure the hotel’s up by that café. It’s always up there.’ She chucked Julia her phone, ‘Can you google Hotel Croissant?’
Julia, who was uncomfortably conscious of the fact a lane of traffic was at a standstill because of them, said, ‘Oh I saw that back there. Down the road opposite Lovejoy’s café. I remember the name.’
‘Oh he could have told us,’ Amber muttered. ‘See, he’s an arsehole.’
Julia was itching to make her drive on. Horns were honking. Completely oblivious, Amber did a three-point turn and drove back towards Lovejoy’s café.
He started slow clapping when he saw them. Amber glared as she turned right and, about fifty yards up the side road, pulled into an underground car park next to a narrow hotel building with a giant gold croissant hanging above the door.
Amber was clearly bad-tempered and tired as she found a space. Getting out of the van she slammed the door so hard it echoed round the dull fluorescent dimness of the car park.
Julia cleared up the rubbish on the front seat and shoved it all into a plastic bag. Amber got her case out of the boot.
As Julia stood with her plastic bags, shaking the crumbs from her new dress, worries that had been percolating in the background suddenly sprang to the top of the list. Were there going to be twin beds in the room? And what about the bathroom? She made Charlie leave the room when she had to go to the toilet. If Amber was there she was bound to get stage fright. God, what was she doing here? She suddenly wished Charlie was with her.
Her phone beeped with a message from her friend Meryl: How’s it going?
Amber was checking stuff with the van, so Julia wrote back: All your and my texts got sent to entire road’s WhatsApp group inc Charlie. Shit hit fan. Am in France with a neighbour. Charlie and me not really speaking.
Four rapid-fire messages came back from Meryl.
Wow
Sorry.
That sucks.
You got your adventure!!!
Julia rolled her eyes. She looked around the grey, echoey car park, Amber swearing as she tried to get the boot on the VW van to lock, the sound of the fair setting up outside. Yes, she supposed she had got her adventure. She had wanted excitement and now she had it. She should embrace it, regardless of the bed and bathroom situation. If only the guilt re Charlie didn’t loom so large over proceedings.
Amber finally got the van locked. ‘Come on!’ she ordered briskly, picking up her case and dragging it across the car park. Julia followed, keeping all her questions to herself, because she knew instinctively that they were not things Amber would worry about – especially not with everything else she had going on. Amber pushed open the heavy metal fire door and they stood quietly side by side in the rickety lift. Rather than thinking too much about the room and how many beds there would be, Julia focused on the idea of heading to a café for a glass of wine and some dinner.
The lift doors opened onto the hotel lobby, a shabby beige area with brown tiles the texture of orange pith and smoked glass windows. There was a rack of leaflets about things to do in the area and an old telephone booth. On the floor was a brass jug filled with dusty dried flowers. A wispily bald man sitting behind a cracked glass hatch stood up and greeted Amber like an old friend, coming out through his little door to clasp her hand with his fat one and kiss her on both cheeks. Amber cracked her first smile in a while. ‘Bonsoir, Erik.’
‘Amber, ma chèrie. Lovejoy, he is already here.’
‘Yes I’ve seen him,’ said Amber, glossing over the news. ‘How are you, Erik?’
Erik made a so-so gesture with his hand then mused, ‘I am old, I am tired.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ Amber joked.
As they talked, Julia surveyed the hotel lobby. It reminded her of one of the places her and Charlie had stayed on that post-university trip. Stony broke, they had lived off cheese and one euro bottles of red wine for the
week. Charlie had insisted they didn’t book anywhere before they left to make it more of an adventure. The first afternoon had been spent traipsing round the boiling streets, trying to find a campsite that wasn’t where it said it was on the map. Then when they moved from their soaked tent to a hotel, the exact same thing happened, a morning searching for a hotel that wasn’t complet. They had finally stumbled on a place very similar to this. Down to the bowls of potpourri and the residual scent of vacuum cleaner. Like Hotel Croissant, it was the kind of place her parents would have immediately phoned the travel agent to complain about, and then high-tailed to the nearest functional business hotel until the mistake could be rectified and compensation arranged.
Instead, Charlie had forced her to enjoy the basicness of it. To see charm in the original brown tiles and the grumpy man behind the counter, to enjoy the scent of warm wool as the sun streamed through the old blanket curtains.
At the Hotel Croissant, Amber was still talking with Erik the owner, who handed her a key and said, ‘I save your favourite room.’
‘Merci, Erik.’
Julia followed behind Amber as they climbed the stairs, observing the wonky black-and-white pictures hanging on walls – papered with a similar patterned Anaglypta to the one in her own house – the mismatched door numbers, the carpet frayed under their feet, the bannister dark from greasy hands.
She couldn’t get that holiday out of her head. The rose-tint of memory made them honey-tanned and always smiling. Although Julia was almost certain she’d had a strop about wasting time searching for a hotel and used the patchy Wi-Fi to book the remaining three nights someplace different, much to Charlie’s dismay, but then he was happy because the next place was of an equal-level of shabbiness.
She would never think to have that kind of holiday now, ten years later, adults with proper jobs. She expected more luxury even though they were broke. She’d rather go nowhere. Save instead for something better. Her holiday bookmarks on her computer were of three resorts Lexi and Hamish had been to this year alone. Julia had noted down the names from their Instagram location pins.
Her and Amber’s room was on the very top floor, up in the eaves. Amber bashed the door with her shoulder to get it to open. ‘Here we are,’ she said, walking through into the bedroom, chucking her case onto one of the two twin beds.
Julia internally sighed with relief that they wouldn’t be sharing a bed.
‘Bathroom’s on the landing,’ Amber said. ‘You can do your business in private,’ she added with a laugh, as if she could tell just by looking that Julia was the type of person who would worry about things like that.
Julia put her plastic bags down on the other bed. The covers and pillows, curtains and carpet all the same shade of blue. There was an old veneer wardrobe and matching dressing table, a sink and a basket lampshade. It smelt of cleaning product and warm dust. The last of the sun was streaming in the paint-flaking sash windows and outside the evening sky was a rainbow of pink, red and orange.
Amber stretched herself out on the bed. ‘I’m exhausted,’ she sighed.
Julia looked out the window, it was half open, the room flooded with the sound of traffic noise, chatter from the cafés, the bashing and clashing of the antique fair stalls being built and from over in the park on a giant bandstand, came the music from a sound-test.
Julia could see Lovejoy and some antique-hunting friends at the café, Martin was at the bank next door getting money out. She could see the bunting and flags swishing between lampposts, the sparrows bobbing about in the road and the last arc of the setting sun silhouetting the starlings lined up along rooftops.
Julia wanted to tell Charlie that the light was different in France. The sky felt bigger and brighter. The sunset more majestic.
She was about to take a photo when she realised her battery was low. ‘Oh God, I don’t have a phone charger.’
Amber opened one eye. ‘You can use mine.’
Julia shook her head. ‘No, yours is an iPhone, mine’s a Samsung.’
Amber shut her eye again.
‘Oh no.’ Julia slumped down on the bed.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Amber.
But she did worry about it. How would she keep in touch with Charlie? How would she get the addictive, self-flagellating hit of Lexi’s Instagram and see what was happening at the party? How would she know if the Cedar Lane WhatsApp group said anything more about the humiliating screenshots? She turned back to where Lovejoy was sitting to see that more people had joined the table, Martin had stood up to air kiss someone, the group kept expanding. A waiter was frantically taking orders, a guy in a leather jacket said something to make Lovejoy laugh, Julia could see the deep grooves in his face, felt like she could hear his laughter. Strings of lights twinkled along the awning, a tabac sign shone red.
She suddenly wanted to be out there, to be talking, laughing. She wanted to be ordering an Aperol Spritz while Lovejoy – who of course was persona non grata but clearly held good hierarchy – suavely introduced her to everyone, not up here panicking about losing contact with everyone back home.
But when Julia turned around, to her dismay, Amber was wriggling underneath the covers of her bed, setting her alarm on her phone.
‘Are you going to bed?’ Julia frowned, taken aback.
‘I’m shattered,’ Amber yawned. ‘And it’s a really early start in the morning.’
Julia swallowed. ‘But you haven’t had dinner.’
‘We had those baguettes and I’ve eaten so much crap today I couldn’t eat any more,’ Amber said. ‘You go out if you want, the key’s on the table. I have to be up at five a.m. but you can stay in bed if you want.’ Pulling her red satin eye mask down she rolled over and seemed to fall immediately to sleep.
Julia stared in horror at the turn of events. Amber with her earplugs in snuggled down into her pillow. She looked back to the window, brows drawn, breath shallow. Where was her vin rouge as the sun set #livingmybestlife? She felt suddenly claustrophobic in the tiny rooftop room with all that light and space and company down below. Yes, she could don her white dress and head out on her own but what would she do? She couldn’t fraternise with Lovejoy, the enemy. She’d have to eat on her own – dwelling on how shit she felt about Charlie and working out how she’d face Lexi – before sloping quietly back to the hotel.
She flopped down on the bed and looked around the bare blue room, Amber snoring next to her. The feeling of foolishness washed over her again. Home seemed ever such a long way away. She missed Charlie. Not the reality of him, their argument and their falling-down house, but the idea of him: his smell, his warmth, the comfort of the crook of his arm. Everything amplified by the loneliness.
On the bed next to her, Amber rolled onto her back, mouth open, eye mask skewwhiff. She snored a couple of big snores, then turned again so she was curled up facing Julia. She slept as she lived, uncaring and sprawled. Julia anticipated herself lying straight and rigid drifting off lightly as she waited for the ungodly alarm.
There was a half-eaten bag of crisps on the dressing table. Julia reached over and hooking the bag with her finger started to shovel them into her mouth. Her phone bleeped a low-battery warning.
She took the risk that there was enough juice to call Charlie.
‘Hi,’ he said, voice bland.
‘Hi,’ she replied, suddenly feeling nervous that they were chatting. ‘I just rang because we’re at the hotel.’
‘That’s nice,’ he said, but didn’t sound like he meant it. He actually sounded like he was doing something else.
‘What are you doing?’ Julia asked.
‘Staking my tomatoes.’
‘Oh.’ Julia looked out the window, saw Lovejoy signal to the waiter for more drinks, unperturbed about a lack of sleep. The noise and chatter drifted up to the room. She knew Charlie was being defensive, had a shield up to protect himself, that was what he did when he was hurt, but rarely did he use it against her and she didn’t like it at all. ‘I am so
rry, Charlie.’
He sighed like he was over it all. ‘Listen, Julia, it’s fine. Just go and do your thing. I’m really tired. Give your bored brain some excitement, I’ll be here, doing my stuff. Oh and sorting out the damp patch that’s appeared on the ceiling.’
‘What damp patch?’ Julia frowned.
‘It’s fine. I’ve turned the water off,’ he said. ‘And called the plumber.’
She knew it wasn’t fine. ‘Sorry I left you with that to deal with.’
But he said, ‘Easier probably, on my own.’ And that felt like a blow. She could feel him closing in on himself.
Her phone bleeped critical again. ‘I’m going to have to go. I don’t have any battery and I don’t have a charger. I’ll try and buy one in the morning.’
‘OK.’ He sounded nonplussed. Distracted again by his vegetables. ‘Well, you’d better go, save your battery.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Bye,’ he said.
‘Bye.’
Julia sat on the bed, phone in hand, uncomfortably hollow inside. She didn’t know what she wanted from Charlie but nonchalant disinterest certainly wasn’t it. Her dad would raise bushy eyebrows and say, ‘Be careful what you wish for, Julia.’
Then a Cedar Lane group WhatsApp pinged through. Julia’s finger hovered over the screen before she could bring herself to read it. It was the first message since the Hamish fantasy screenshots. She felt sick as she clicked to read. It was from Linda at number eighty-seven who was a nurse and hadn’t gone to the party because it clashed with a work shift, Guys, just FYI, 40% off at Boden till midnight! Quick, grab a bargain!
Julia exhaled. God, even the Cedar Lane WhatsApp had moved on.
She finished the crisps, licking out the remaining salt crumbs from the ripped open bag. She scrolled through Instagram despite the fact her battery was dying.
Nothing new there – pictures of her brother posing by his new Audi, her work-colleague’s new puppy, her parents holding up a trophy having won the tennis club league again, then another from Lexi of her, Nicky and Alicia, their blonde heads together posing in the hot tub with #pornstarmartinis. Julia stared at the picture, feeling so foolish for how much she had tried to impress them.
