Us by Nicholls David Read Free Book Online Page B

a change of shoes. I’ll be fine, it’s just …’ She placed both hands on her chest. ‘I need to walk this off and if I’m by myself I’m going to … crash into something. Or someone.’
    â€˜I’ll come with you,’ I said.
    A moment passed. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’
    â€˜I should go and say goodbye.’
    â€˜No.’ She took my hand. ‘Let’s make a French exit.’
    â€˜What’s a French exit?’
    â€˜It’s when you leave without saying goodbye.’
    â€˜I’ve never heard that before.’
    A French exit; no
thank you for having me
,
no
I’ve had a lovely time
. To just walk away, cool and aloof. I wondered if I could.
25. mr jones
    The morning of departure we awoke at five thirty a.m. and said a fond goodbye to Mr Jones, who was to be cared for by our neighbours, Steph and Mark, for the month-long duration of the Grand Tour. We were always surprised by how much we missed Mr Jones. Even in canine terms he is basically an idiot, perpetually running into trees, falling into ditches, eating daffodils. A ‘sense of humour’, Connie calls it. Throw Mr Jones a stick and more likely than not he will return with a pair of discarded underpants. Monumentally flatulent, too – weapons-grade. But he is foolish, loyal and affectionate and Connie is entirely devoted to him.
    â€˜Bye, old pal, we’ll send you a postcard,’ she cooed, nuzzling at his neck.
    â€˜Don’t think there’s much point sending a postcard,’ I said. ‘He’ll only eat it.’
    Connie sighed deeply. ‘I’m not really going to send him a postcard.’
    â€˜No, no, I realised that.’ We had been wilfully misinterpreting each other’s jokes since Connie’s warning of departure. It hummed away beneath everything we did, however innocuous. Even saying goodbye to Mr Jones contained the question: who will get custody?
    And so we roused Albie, for whom rising before eight a.m. was an infringement of his basic human rights, then took a taxi to Reading and crammed onto a commuter train to Paddington, Albie sleeping en route, or pretending to do so.
    Despite my resolutions, we had argued the night before, in this instance about the acoustic guitar that Albie insisted on dragging across Europe – an absurd and impractical affectation, I thought – and there was the usual stomping up the stairs, Connie’s familiar sigh, her famous slow head-shake.
    â€˜I’m worried he’s going to busk,’ I said.
    â€˜So let him busk! There are worse things a seventeen-year-old can do.’
    â€˜I’m worried that he’s going to do those, too.’
    But it seemed the guitar was as essential as his passport. Needless to say it was I who bundled the case through the turnstiles at the Eurostar terminal, lugged it through security, crammed it into inadequate luggage space on the train as we took our seats where I began swabbing with napkins at the hot coffee now dripping from my wrist. There’s a particular grubbiness that comes with travel. You start showered and fresh in clean and comfortable clothes, upbeat and hopeful that this will be like travel in the movies; sunlight flaring on the windows, heads resting on shoulders, laughter and smiles with a lightly jazzy soundtrack. But in reality the grubbiness has set in before you’ve even cleared security; grime on your collar and cuffs, coffee breath, perspiration running down your back, the luggage too heavy, the distances too far, muddled currency in your pocket, the conversation self-conscious and abrupt, no stillness, no peace.
    â€˜So – goodbye England!’ I said to fill the gap. ‘See you in four weeks!’
    â€˜We’ve not left yet,’ said Albie, his first words to me for twelve hours, then produced his Nikon and started taking close-up photographs of the bottom of his shoe.
26.