By three o’clock the next afternoon everyone’s up except Luke. David and Chantel have been talking in low voices to each other for most of the day so far and Charlotte’s been pottering about with Helen, pestering her about her time at Greenham Common. Luke’s going to stay in bed until it gets dark, and Julie’s vaguely reading the Independent on Sunday, eating toast and marmalade, and thinking that she wishes she was in motion again, like yesterday.
‘Where’s the nearest big town to here?’ Chantel asks Helen suddenly.
‘What for?’ Helen asks.
‘Stuff . . . I’m not sure. A bookshop, big shops in general . . .’
‘There’s Wantage but for a good bookshop you’d need to go to Oxford.’
‘Oxford’s a city, isn’t it?’ Chantel says.
‘Of course it is, stupid,’ says David, smiling.
‘I want to go there, then,’ Chantel says. ‘Can we get a cab there?’
Julie looks up from the paper. ‘I’ll drive you,’ she says.
‘Super cool,’ says Chantel. ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’
‘Are you sure?’ David says to Julie.
‘Yeah. I might even try a red road.’
It’s not raining.
‘Fucking hell, what’s that?’ David says once they’re outside.
‘What?’ Julie says.
‘Up there. Blue sky. Fuck me.’
‘You scared me then,’ Chantel says. ‘I didn’t know what you meant.’
In daylight, the van just looks like a van. Last night it felt like a mini-universe; their whole world, like an orange womb on wheels.
‘You sure about this red-road stuff?’ David says, as they get in.
‘Yeah,’ Julie says. ‘Bring it on.’
‘So what’s happened to you, then?’ Chantel asks once they’re on the A338.
‘Huh?’ says Julie, concentrating.
‘Why aren’t you freaking out?’
‘She drove through this big puddle yesterday when you were asleep,’ David explains. ‘It gave her a buzz.’
‘How do you know it gave me a buzz?’ Julie says.
‘I was there, mate. You were well buzzing.’
Julie smiles. ‘I wanted to do it again afterwards.’
‘I know you did.’ David looks at Chantel. ‘You should have seen it,’ he says to her. ‘Me and Charlotte were fucking bricking it and Julie’s like some kind of fucking kid going down a slide or something – again, again. It was mental.’
‘I like water,’ Julie says.
The red road isn’t too bad. It’s a single-lane main road, and there’s a lot of traffic, so Julie just has to concentrate on following the brown Sierra in front of her. And she’s already decided that she’s just going to follow the signs to Oxford from now onwards and not worry about which roads she goes on. She’s fucking terrified but it can’t be that bad. She looked at the map before she set off anyway and the bit of dual carriageway into Oxford looks a bit like the section of the A12 that goes into London. Julie’s hoping for a similar forty-mile-per-hour speed limit, lots of traffic lights and plenty of slow-moving traffic. As they get closer to the city centre, Julie remembers she likes town driving and that something about the density of the traffic and the lack of open spaces around her makes her feel almost invincible. Without really noticing, she finds she’s driving more like the way she used to drive when she was eighteen, nipping out to overtake slow Metros and buses at two-lane junctions, cutting it fine, getting a thrill from occasionally cutting it very fine. Julie had forgotten she was even capable of this – and in a VW Camper, as well.
Why? Something about the floods, and Charlotte, and telling secrets. And maybe something about seeing her mother. Not that seeing her mother has been great so far, but it’s been real, and comforting, and she still exists, and Julie knows what her house looks like. At the next set of lights, she races a Mini and wins.
David shakes his head. ‘You’ve gone feral,’ he says, smiling.
It’s almost four o’clock when they get to the centre of Oxford.
‘Where are we going, then?’ Julie asks Chantel, when she’s parked the van in a multistorey carpark.
‘A bookshop first, then a travel agent.’
‘A travel agent?’ Julie says. David and Chantel just smile.
‘Why don’t we all meet back here at five?’ Chantel says.
Oxford.
Julie sits in the van and looks out at the dirty concrete walls of the carpark. She’s been to Oxford once before: to do the entrance exam for mathematics & philosophy, the course she probably would have done if she hadn’t failed her A levels. They offered her a place conditional on her obtaining three A grades as long as two of them were maths and further maths. She could have got those grades easily but she didn’t. Would she still be sitting here if she’d got the grades and gone to Oxford? Probably not. She’d probably know a better place to park.
Coming to Oxford to sit the test was one of the last things she did with her mother and father together. They all drove up in her father’s Volvo. While Julie took the test her parents went for coffee and cakes in a nearby teashop and looked around some of the city.
‘Would you really want to come here?’ her mother asked her as they drove through the old city on their way home.
Julie looked at her mother’s face. Helen was frowning as if she thought there was something wrong with Oxford University. Julie knew that look very well. Her mother was objecting to some whiff of patriarchy, power and influence she could sense in medieval-looking honey-coloured buildings all around them.
‘I’d love it,’ Julie said.
The rest of the way home Helen read a magazine she’d picked up in an alternative bookshop and Julie replayed the maths test in her mind as if she’d just taken part in an exciting sporting event or theatrical production. Her dad listened to a Stone Roses tape over and over again. Later it would be discovered that his art-student girlfriend had given him the tape as a birthday present.
Julie gets out of the van and finds a small newsagent a couple of streets away. She buys three cartons of Ribena and lots of sweets. Then she goes back to the carpark. She drinks two cartons of Ribena and eats all the sweets while she scribbles numbers on an oily scrap of paper from the glove box in the van. At about five she stops and rubs her eyes. The light isn’t very good here. At ten past five, Chantel and David walk towards the van, holding hands. Julie looks at them as they get closer. She does a double-take. They’re actually holding hands? God.
In her free hand, Chantel’s carrying a Waterstones bag. She and David get into the van and Chantel starts taking items out of the bag. She gives David two envelopes, then hands three book-shaped packages to Julie, each in a paper bag, sellotaped shut. One has a C written on it, one has an L, and the last one has a J.
‘Don’t open these until you get back,’ Chantel says.
‘Huh?’ says Julie. ‘You sound like you’re not coming back with me.’
‘I’m not,’ Chantel says. ‘I mean we’re not. Me and David.’
‘Oh . . .’ Julie frowns. ‘Where are you going?’
‘We’re going to America,’ David says, waving the envelopes. ‘Get my balls fixed. Go surfing. Chan’s just got the tickets, look.’
His eyes sparkle as he waves the tickets around in the half-dark of the van.
‘America?’ Julie says, grinning. She looks at Chantel. ‘Really? You’re going to America so David can get cured?’
‘Yep.’ Chantel grins. ‘David’s taking a year off university, if he can. We’ve been planning this all day. We’re going to go and stay in a hotel for the next couple of nights so we can have our passports sent to us – I hope your mum doesn’t mind us not going back there, but David’s never stayed in a hotel, so I thought it would be nice. Also, your poor mum doesn’t really have enough room for us all. I’ve spoken to my mum and she thinks I’m a bit mental but she’s OK about it. I’ve just got to spend this money. It’s pissing me off now.’
‘Oh, wow,’ is all Julie can say. ‘That’s . . . amazing.’
‘Tell me about it,’ David says. ‘I thought she was winding me up this morning.’
‘That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard,’ Julie says.
Chantel laughs. ‘Well, we’ll see. Dave’ll probably ditch me in a month.’
‘Might give it two,’ David says.
Chantel’s still laughing. ‘We’ll just see how it goes,’ she says.
This is still the most romantic thing Julie’s ever heard.
‘Neither of us have ever been abroad,’ Chantel says. ‘It’ll be an experience, anyway. I like the idea of travelling. I suppose our journey’s going to be a bit longer than yours, but if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be on a journey at all, so we wanted to say . . .’
‘Thanks,’ David finishes, leaning over and kissing Julie awkwardly on the cheek.
Chantel hugs her next. ‘Yeah, thanks,’ she says. ‘And say thanks to the others as well. I got you each something – only something small. Well, it’s books, you can probably guess that.’ She laughs. ‘But still don’t open your package until you get back. I’ll be embarrassed, because I’m shit at choosing books.’
David and Chantel are both getting out of the van. This is happening so quickly.
‘What about the van?’ Julie says, getting out and standing next to them. ‘It’s yours and . . .’
‘Just look after it for me,’ Chantel says. ‘We’ll be back. Don’t worry about that.’
‘OK,’ Julie says. Her voice echoes in the half-empty carpark. ‘Well, have fun.’
‘We will.’
‘And send me a postcard,’ Julie says.
Chantel throws her arms around Julie again. ‘I’m doing the right thing, aren’t I?’ she whispers into Julie’s hair.
Julie thinks about Chantel’s grandmother. ‘Yes,’ she whispers back.
‘Well,’ Chantel says, pulling away and smiling at Julie. ‘See ya.’
‘Yeah, bye,’ says David.
Then David and Chantel walk off with their little bags and their travel tickets without looking back.