There’s money in the packages. Three cheques, hidden in three books.
‘Fucking hell,’ Charlotte says. ‘How much have you both got?’
The van is in a service station just outside Cirencester. About five minutes ago, Charlotte got out and bought coffee for everyone, and then they all unwrapped their packages together, like Christmas.
‘Loads,’ Julie says, passing her cheque around. ‘Too much. She shouldn’t have done this. This is too nice.’
‘Luke?’ says Charlotte.
‘Same,’ he says, showing her. ‘She’s given us all the same.’
‘She’s so lovely,’ says Charlotte. ‘I would have been happy with just a book.’
‘Me too,’ Julie says.
‘We are such liars,’ laughs Charlotte. ‘Wow, this is amazing.’
‘This is lovely,’ agrees Luke.
‘I do like my book as well, though,’ says Julie. She shows the others. It’s a survival manual. ‘It tells you what to do in a plane crash, if a snake bites you, in the sea . . .’
‘Very you,’ says Charlotte. ‘What’s yours, Luke?’
Luke’s is a lot bigger. It’s an illustrated hardback called Nature’s Miracles. It has pictures of caves with stalactites and stalagmites in shapes of rabbits and dolphins and dragons; the highest mountains; the deepest oceans; the night sky; glaciers; insects; tsunami; and rare birds.
‘This is amazing,’ Luke says. ‘I want to go to all these places and see all these things.’
Charlotte’s got a book on creative writing. ‘Fucking hell,’ she says, looking through it. ‘I told Chantel I wanted to be a writer but I didn’t totally mean it. I mean, everyone on my English course wanted to write. Why else would you do an English course? They were all pretentious wankers. That was one of the reasons I left. Anyway, I’d be shit as a writer.’
‘Why?’ Julie says. ‘I think you’d be a good writer.’
‘Well, I suppose it is the only thing I’m qualified for, apart from yoga teacher,’ she says, laughing. ‘But I haven’t got anything to write about. I had a short story published once – did I ever tell you that? Anyway, that was shit, too, all self-conscious angst and taking myself too seriously. Still, with this money . . . Oh, I don’t know. It’s all too easy, isn’t it? Really I should use this money to totally fuck myself up. That’s what I’m best at.’
‘You know that isn’t true,’ Julie says. ‘Come on, we’d better get going again.’
It’s just gone eight o’clock. Julie checks the map and then sets off again, trying to stick to small roads. Having money suddenly makes her want to live even more than before. But she also feels weirdly superstitious – surely all this good luck can’t continue? She vaguely remembers Leanne promising to put everything right and then the rain stopping and Chantel saying she was pissed off with having the money. Then Julie reminds herself that she’s a scientist not a fucking palmist and what she’s thinking is utterly ridiculous. Maybe a butterfly flapped its wings in Kansas. Who knows?
Charlotte’s fiddling with the radio again. Somehow she finds a station playing ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’. ‘Cool,’ she says. ‘My all-time favourite song.’ She starts singing along.
‘So can we stay at the hotel now?’ Luke asks when the song finishes.
‘Not really,’ says Charlotte. ‘We can’t spend this money till it’s in the bank, can we? Unless . . . Jules, have you got any actual money that we can use? I mean, I know you’re skint but have you got a credit card or anything?’
‘Huh? Yeah, I might have enough emergency money to pay for the hotel, I suppose, if we all share one room. I mean, if I know I’m putting this cheque into my bank account, it’ll probably be all right. We need to get petrol as well, and food.’ She thinks for a moment. ‘Yeah, it should be all right. I’ll just draw out the last of my wages and use what’s left on my credit card and hope for the best.’
‘You’re not going to have to find another job for a while, anyway,’ Charlotte says. ‘You can spend all day doing maths or something.’
‘You make that sound so exciting,’ Julie says, smiling.