Page 33 of Road Trip to the Riviera
Hal is instantly attentive. ‘Is it your leg? Are you OK?’
But I simply can’t let him off the hook that easily. ‘I can handle it. I don’t need any help, Hal. It would just be nice if you didn’t hinder me for once. If you actually thought about anyone but yourself.’
‘I do!’ he says, suddenly firing back. ‘If you must know, I think about you all the time. Worry about you, whether you’re all right. And I think about Louis! And you know what, I’m starting to understand why he had to confide in me rather than you!’
This is like a slap. I feel myself crumple. ‘He confided in you? What’s going on?’
Hal takes a protective step back, palms raised. ‘No. He didn’t. I mean, not really. He just… when we spoke on the phone…’
‘You said that was about penis issues!’ My yell comes out louder than I expected and a man passing with his dog gives me, then Hal, a curious look.
‘Well, it wasn’t. He’s having doubts. And he didn’t want me to tell you.’
And this is the moment when it all overflows. The pain, the pressure of the journey, worries about the awkward conversation I’m going to have to have with Peter, worries about Louis’s wedding, about the pain in my leg and how it seems to be getting worse. Because the one thing I never doubted was that I’d given my son everything I could. And that Hal was the secondary parent, the add-on. The slightly helpful extra gadget that we didn’t honestly need in order to function.
But maybe Louis doesn’t see it that way at all.
16
HAL
Of course, idiot man that I am, I rush forward as soon as Sarah starts to cry. But she pushes me away. ‘Just leave it,’ she says.
‘Honestly, Louis didn’t reallyconfidein me,’ I say, trying to mitigate things. ‘It was just a case of normal cold feet, I think. He didn’t want to worry you. That’s all.’
‘Worry me about what?’
I shake my head. Because I promised I wouldn’t tell her. ‘It was just a chat, really. I’ve made it seem more than it was.’
But Sarah has closed up. Wiping the tears from her face as if annoyed at the water coming from her ducts, she straightens and faces me. And suddenly she’s no longer the girl I used to know, but someone older, colder, sterner. Terrifying.
‘It’s fine,’ she tells me coldly. ‘Don’t worry. It’s your van, your trip. And Louis is your son. There’s nothing to apologise for.’
‘But I?—’
She holds up a hand. ‘I need to get some work done, then we’ll get on the road. I’m sure Sébastien will find a way to manage in the back. It’s fine.’
In all honesty, I preferred it when it wasn’t fine. It feels a little as if the Sarah I’ve known has been replaced. But the look shegives me when I open my mouth to protest, to offer to uninvite Sébastien, silences me.
‘OK,’ I tell her.
She opens her laptop and begins typing furiously, and an insecure part of me longs to know what she’s doing. Is she really working, or just telling her friends just how useless I am?
To keep my mind off it, I open my own laptop. I check my emails, but it appears that Todd has handled everything. There’s a call scheduled for tomorrow, but other than that I have a clean slate. I try to console myself that at least I’m doing OK in one area of my life. Judging by the smoke practically flying off Sarah’s fingers as she types, I’m not getting such a good report from her.
Two hours later we’re on the road. Rather than simply reclining on the bed, or sitting on the floor of Betty’s living area, Sébastien has assumed a kneeling position behind our front seat, his arms spread proprietorially along the back of Betty’s black leather. His head rests in the middle, between our two, and for a moment I wonder if this is what it’s like to have a dog. A faithful, cute, but annoying mutt sticking its head over the front seat and wanting to be included. Maybe I should throw him a treat?
‘So, how long to the next campsite?’ he asks in his heavily accented English.
‘Three hours.’
He nods. ‘Wonderful.’ He rests his chin on the back of the seat, clearly in it for the long haul. ‘And you mention river swimming, in your itinerary?’
How has he got hold of that? ‘Er, yeah,’ I tell him.
‘Wonderful. There is nothing I like more than to be at one with nature,’ he says. ‘Sarah,ma chérie, don’t you agree?’
Sarah gives him a non-committal shrug and grimace.
