‘Juliet?’ Charlotte says for the fifth or sixth time.
‘Shut up,’ says Julie.
‘I think it’s a cool name. You should start using it again.’
‘I like just being Julie, thanks.’
It’s still not raining. Luke’s sitting in the back of the van and Charlotte’s up front again with Julie. They’re driving through the country roads towards the bigger B-roads that will take them to Wales. Julie has told Charlotte she might be able to manage the odd red road on the way but Charlotte’s style of map-reading is somewhat unusual, so who knows where they’re going to end up.
Julie’s been explaining vaguely what happened with her mum, and about David and Chantel, and how she managed a red road on the way to Oxford, and how happy David and Chantel looked, and how she almost cried when they walked off together. Since then, Luke’s been fiddling around in the back redoing his tin foil with the rolls David left, and Charlotte’s been taking the piss – in a nice way – out of Julie’s name.
‘Parents really fuck you up, don’t they?’ Charlotte says suddenly.
‘My mum meant well,’ Julie says. ‘It was just a misunderstanding, really.’
‘Pretty big misunderstanding.’
‘Yeah, well.’ Julie sighs, then focuses on the road for a few seconds.
Charlotte laughs. ‘Juliet.’
‘Shut up,’ says Julie, smiling. ‘Why don’t you try to work out the square root of i or something.’
‘Ha ha,’ says Charlotte, putting her feet up on the dashboard.
‘Are you OK?’ Julie asks Luke, trying to catch his eye in the rearview mirror.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I’m fine. Just trying to see out of the window.’
‘There’s not much to see around here,’ Charlotte says.
‘I wonder how Leanne’s getting on,’ says Luke, sitting back down.
‘She’s probably gone home by now,’ Charlotte says.
‘No, I bet she’s still there,’ says Julie. ‘She was serious about wanting to do it.’
‘Hmm.’ Charlotte starts rolling a cigarette. ‘Oh, shit,’ she suddenly says. ‘I should ring Wei, shouldn’t I, and tell him when we’re arriving and find out where we actually need to go. Can I borrow your phone, Jules?’
‘Sure. Luke, have you got the phone?’
He’s been using it to check his e-mail. ‘Yeah,’ he says, chucking it over to Charlotte. ‘Here.’
Once, in Windy Close, there was a power cut that lasted almost a whole night, and Luke had to check his e-mail on the mobile phone then, as well, even though he’s not really supposed to use mobiles. He remembers the absolute dark of that night, when even the street-lamps in the road outside went off, and there was no vague glow from the industrial estate and no lights from any of the other houses on the street. Leanne’s mum often fell asleep with the TV on in her bedroom, and sometimes you could see strange moving lights casting shadows on the street all night. Luke remembers suggesting to Julie that she was actually being abducted by aliens or interfered with by some sort of sex ghost. Now, when he tries to look out of the window, he sees pretty much the same as that night, except that tonight there’s sometimes a hint of grass or a hedge as the headlights briefly pick things out then move on.
‘Weird,’ says Charlotte. She tries to shut the phone. ‘Jules? How do you do switch this thing off?’
‘Give it to me,’ says Luke.
‘What’s weird?’ says Julie.
‘We’ve got to meet Wei in a Travelodge, in this place I’ve never heard of . . . Hang on, let me have a look at the map. Oh, I see. It’s in Wales, but . . . Not where I thought we’d be going.’
‘Where did you think we’d be going?’
‘Jemima and Walter’s house. I thought we’d meet him there.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s been staying with them. I told you they flew him over to do Walter’s book.’
‘Oh. So what do you think’s going on?’
‘Dunno. I’ll phone Jemima. Luke? Can I have the phone back?’
‘Yeah, here.’
Charlotte dials a number. ‘There’s no reply,’ she says. ‘Oh, wait, hang on, there’s an answerphone message with a mobile number. I’ll replay it. Have you got a pen?’
Luke scrabbles around in the back. ‘There was one here . . .’
‘Just read the number out,’ Julie says. ‘I’ll remember it.’
‘You sure? Oh – here it comes.’ She says a long number. Then she sort of fiddles with the phone to try to end the call and start a new one. ‘Fucking thing. OK, what’s the number, then, babe?’
Julie recites it back. Charlotte punches it in wrong, so Julie recites it again.
‘It’s amazing that you can do that,’ Charlotte says. ‘Oh – hi, Jem, it’s Charlotte here . . . Yeah, cool, thanks . . . Yeah, we’re on our way . . . Hmm? . . . Yeah, we just spoke to him. He wants to meet us in a hotel . . . Oh, really? . . . Oh, no, you poor things . . . Yes, sure . . . OK . . . Huh? Oh, right . . . Actually I’ve been thinking about that . . . I’ll talk to you about it when we see you, or I might ring you later . . . Are you? . . . OK, well, we’ll check into the Travelodge as well, then . . . No, no problem . . . OK . . . Cheers. Bye.’
‘What was that?’ Julie asks.
‘Their house got flooded so they’re staying with Jemima’s parents. They checked Wei into the Travelodge, because there was no more space at her parents’. I guess you don’t take an important guest you’ve flown over from America to stay with your parents, do you? So we’re going to have to check into the Travelodge as well or sleep in the van. Wei is going to see us just before dawn tomorrow morning, i.e., later tonight, in his room at the Travelodge.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Julie says. ‘I’ve hardly got any money left.’
‘Same,’ says Charlotte, sighing.
‘We’ll have to sleep in the van, then.’
‘Yeah.’ Charlotte lights a cigarette. She sighs again. ‘Oh, bollocks. Chantel goes and you realise that stuff actually costs money. And Leanne could have magicked us some sort of tent or something but she’s fucked off. All the useful members of the group have gone. This is like one of those videogames where you accidentally take a party member out of the group and they run into the forest and never come back and then you get killed by a load of bandits because they had all your best weapons.’
‘Things are going a lot better now, though,’ Julie says. She laughs. ‘Maybe Leanne’s working some magic from afar. It has stopped raining, for one thing.’
‘Like she caused the rain in the first place,’ Charlotte says.
‘What’s all this?’ Luke says. ‘Have I missed something?’
‘No. Well, Leanne thought she caused the floods, that’s all.’
‘Oh.’ Luke laughs. ‘OK.’
‘Oh, God,’ Julie says suddenly. ‘The packages.’
‘What packages?’
‘Chantel got us all presents. I completely forgot.’
‘What presents?’
‘Books, I think. They’re in the glove box.’
‘Presents?’ says Luke.
If this was a story, there’d be money in those packages. There’d be money in the packages and they could stay in a hotel and Luke would get cured and everyone would live happily ever after. But, Luke’s realising, life isn’t actually a story.