Five Hundred Miles From You: the brand new, life-affirming, escapist novel of 2020 from the Sunday Times bestselling author

by Jenny Colgan

  Aonghas turned round.

  ‘Whit are you talking aboot?’ he said, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘I’m just saying,’ said Lissa, ‘abuse is nothing to be ashamed of. There are people out there who can help. Who care.’

  ‘That my cow kicked me halfway to kingdom come because I had cold hands?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Oh,’ said Lissa. ‘Oh!’

  Her hand flew to her mouth.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought . . .’

  ‘You thought what?’

  ‘I thought Maisie was your wife.’

  ‘Maisie?’

  Aonghas couldn’t suppress a laugh.

  ‘I tell you, lass, if I had to marry one of my cows it wouldn’t be that grumpy aul bitch!’

  Lissa suddenly found herself bursting out laughing.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness,’ she said. ‘Sorry. It’s a horrible part of my job.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Aonghas reflectively, as Lissa disinfected the wound area without him even wincing. ‘Must be.’

  ‘Want a bit of lunch?’ he said as she finished up with cream and rewrapping the bandage. Normally Lissa would have said no, but she was so unutterably starving hungry. Plus somehow being around the farmyard and out in the open air had done something to her appetite.

  Aonghas got up and stoked the fire, then brought over an ancient stained tea-pot with fresh tea, a cup of foaming milk, a vast loaf of fresh white bread, a glass jar full of unidentifiable objects and a hunk of cheese. He handed Lissa a long thin metal prong which she had never seen before in her life. She took it and followed his lead as he sawed off a huge rough slice of the bread, poked his toasting fork through it and held it out just above the flames. Then he did the same with the lump of cheese until it was melting on the outside, just turning brown around the edges and starting to drip into the grate, whereupon he roughly spread it on the doorstep of bread, opening the glass jar and taking out a home-pickled onion, which he took bites of as if it were an apple.

  Living in London, Lissa had taken advantages of the many amazing and varied cuisines the capital had to offer. She’d tried kangaroo; she’d eaten vegetarian mango curries with her fingers; she’d watched people throw things in the air at Benihana and lift up glass bowls of smoke and told to breathe in straw fumes. Kim-Ange had even once gone to a restaurant where everyone had to eat in the dark, and had a very happy evening confusing the other patrons and waiting staff.

  But this was one of the strangest dining experiences she’d ever had. And yet the thick nutty bread, slightly charred around the edges, the strong melting cheese and the tartness of the sour onion ll taken together when you were absolutely starving, and washed down with the foamy milk, was one of the most delicious and satisfying meals she’d ever tasted. She sat back in front of the fire with a smile, the sun now streaming into the bare room, the silence total except for the ticking of an ancient clock on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said eventually. ‘That was very kind.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Aonghas. ‘I’ll be sure to pass on your regards to Maisie.’

  Lissa grinned.

  ‘Okay. Listen, don’t get it wet, try to sleep on your front and I think you can take the bandage off yourself in a week. Otherwise call the service and they’ll make you another appointment.’

  Aonghas smiled.

  ‘Ach, lass, I think I can manage that.’

  ‘I think you can too,’ said Lissa. ‘Good luck with Maisie.’

  ‘She’s an aul bitch,’ said Aonghas.

  And as Lissa drove away from the farm, she stopped by the side of the field where a clutch of extremely contented-looking peanut-butter-brown and white cows peacefully grazed in the cold sunshine on a field that glowed with buttercups, and they all looked beautiful.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After several more house calls and both of them getting lost countless times – with a near-miss when Cormac and a cyclist who called Cormac several names Cormac hadn’t heard before and didn’t feel he entirely deserved, and Lissa realising that, off-puttingly, people knew more and more about her as she did the rounds so that by the time she got to the last house someone was sending good wishes to her mother – each collapsed at home, equally exhausted. Lissa wasn’t at all sure this placement was quite as restful as HR had thought it was, although she had rather enjoyed the twenty minutes she’d had to sit stationary in the car while a flock of sheep were herded up the road. She must take a book with her for next time, she found herself thinking, then realised what a long time it had been since she’d even felt unstressed enough to consider reading a book. Interesting.

  Cormac, by contrast, was feeling antsy and oddly full of nervous energy for someone who was normally a pretty laid-back person. It was as if London had this static electricity that buzzed through it, making you wriggly. Maybe that was why so many people here were so skinny.

  Also, Lissa thought, she had to log on to her Skype session with her therapist next and she was looking forward to that about as much as a plate of snake spaghetti, so she might as well get the emails over with first.

  It was a very odd experience, sitting in someone’s front room, with their telly and their Xbox and their sofa and their cups and plates, and introducing yourself to them. Biting her lip slightly, Lissa picked up her laptop and began.

  Hi, this is Alyssa Westcott. Thanks for the notes; they were really helpful

  She lied. She would definitely read them later.

  The house is cool.

  She didn’t mention how the idea of having an entire house to yourself, with a garden and a spare bedroom and a stove and a stream, was insane. She was sitting in about five million quids’ worth of real estate, if it could only be shifted 583 miles south.

  Here’s what to look out for tomorrow. I don’t know much about dogs, but I’ve learned this: James Felixton’s dog will try and eat you, but Lee Cheung’s is fine. James’s is a little dog and Lee’s is a big dog. Please don’t try and talk too much at the Pooles; they have form for reporting people. And park in the home car park on the Effinch Estate but pay for street parking at the Widdings Estate as they’re buggers.

  Cormac looked at it. Well, that was a bit more useful. She didn’t seem very friendly though. Which was pretty much what he’d heard from the villagers, who always had a lot to pass on about this kind of thing. Bit English and stand-offish and distracted was the general sense. He really hoped Kirrinfief wasn’t going to turn out more stressful than London for her. Also, she hadn’t asked him whether he was enjoying London. Probably assumed that he’d absolutely have to love London; who wouldn’t? He felt a little bristly about this.

  Hi Alyssa, thanks for all of that. Let me know if you need me to draw you any maps – I know some places are hard to find. Also I like drawing. How are you settling in? Are you liking it?

  But Lissa had already moved on to the next thing she had to do – the appointment she was dreading – and didn’t reply. Well, so much for you, thought Cormac, leaving his phone and moving to the window, trying to open it to circulate the stale, trapped area of the heavily populated building.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lissa made herself a huge cup of tea. Anything to postpone the inevitable. She knew lots of people had therapists. She didn’t see any stigma in it, but she’d never felt the need for one herself. But that was before. And now it was 6.30. It was time.

  The figure on the other side took a few moments for the pixels to rearrange themselves, but finally settled down on a woman of about fifty, but well put together, with a humorous tinge around her mouth and a level gaze visible even through the camera lens and the poor reception. She also appeared to be eating something from a bowl.

  ‘Alyssa Westcott?’ she said briskly and rather indistinctly.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Lissa, finding she was sitting cross-legged with her arms around her chest on the floor in front of the laptop.

  The woman put her spoon down and squ
inted.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘All I can see is knee. Do you mind?’

  Lissa changed position but suddenly wasn’t sure what to do. She moved the laptop onto a coffee table, then found herself awkwardly kneeling in front of it like she was in church, which she didn’t like either. She tried sitting up and looking down into the screen, but in the little self-image, all she could see was her face looming over from above which wasn’t a great concept. She was also increasingly aware of the fact that the more time it took her to make a decision about how she ought to be and sit, the more that would probably mean to the psychiatrist on the other end of the line, sitting waiting patiently, which made her start to blush and feel uncomfortable.

  ‘Sorry!’ she said, her voice sounding high and completely unlike herself, rather like some posh English woman asking if she was on the right train. ‘I’m not quite sure where to sit!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said the woman calmly which of course convinced Lissa that it did, very much, matter a lot, and she twisted round in a panic. She ended up back on the floor again, her legs tucked under her like a little girl.

  Anita the psychiatrist was still smiling calmly at her, even with a quick glance at the upper right-hand quadrant of the screen which Lissa interpreted, correctly, as a glance at the clock on her computer.

  ‘Um, ha! Hello! Sorry about that!’

  ‘Don’t spill your tea,’ said Anita.

  ‘No! Ha, it’s not tea – it’s vodka!’

  Lissa had absolutely no idea why she just said that. Anita smiled politely, as if it didn’t matter to her if it was tea or vodka.

  ‘I’m only kidding! Look!’

  Lissa tilted the cup towards the camera with predictable results, which lost more precious seconds in finding a tea towel and reconnecting the computer.

  Anita continued to smile calmly and Lissa was just about to apologise and suggest they start over when a voice suddenly screamed, ‘Mummmyyy!’

  Anita’s calm face winced, just a little.

  ‘Mummy’s busy, darling,’ she hissed out of the side of her mouth.

  ‘SAMOSA DONE FALL IN THE TOILET.’

  Lissa and Anita both froze.

  ‘Um, do you want to go sort that out?’ said Lissa.

  ‘No, no, I’m sure it’s fine,’ said Anita, doing her best to look unflustered. ‘Now, where were we? What we’re going to do is carefully go through everything that happened that day, look carefully at the details . . .’

  ‘I JUST EATING IT.’

  There was another long pause.

  ‘Just go,’ said Lissa, even as Anita jumped up, knocking over a tall pile of notes and case files spilling onto the floor in view of the camera as she went. Lissa glanced at them as she heard a lot of yelling and negotiation taking place off screen. ‘PTSD’ was written on hers: she could make it out, bold as brass. She stared at it. Was that her? Was that who she was? Some crazy person? With a label and a title and a padded cell and . . .

  Anita came back, her smooth dark hair ruffled, noisy crying still happening offscreen.

  ‘So,’ she said. She started clearing up the papers, spilling her coffee cup in the process. She screwed up her face.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Some days . . .’

  ‘I know,’ said Lissa. ‘You work for the NHS. I know what it’s like.’

  But inside she was burning up with her diagnosis.

  ‘So I have PTSD?’ she found herself saying abruptly.

  ‘What?’

  Anita’s phone was ringing. She glanced at it, hung it up. It started ringing again.

  ‘That’s . . . that’s what you think I have?’

  ‘I think it’s a . . . sorry, I just have to get this.’ She grabbed the phone. ‘Where are you?’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Well, where’s your bus pass? But if you don’t take your bus pass how can you expect . . .? I’m working here! . . . Well, you’ll just have to wait. Where are you? Well what can you see?’

  She made an apologetic face at Lissa who was beginning to wonder whether this was, in fact, the therapy, designed to make her feel better about being all by herself in the middle of nowhere.

  By the time Anita had untangled herself from the complexities of the phone call and was nervously eyeing something Lissa couldn’t see but could only assume was almost certainly her car keys, their time was almost up.

  ‘Whether it is or whether it isn’t PTSD,’ said Anita eventually, ‘we’ve found the standard treatment protocol helpful.’

  ‘I know the standard treatment protocol,’ said Lissa a little snappily. ‘You want me to go over it all again.’

  Anita nodded sympathetically.

  ‘It’s certainly something we’d want you to try.’

  Her eyes meandered sideways again. Lissa saw red suddenly.

  ‘But I do. I go . . . I go through it in my head. Every day. All day. Every time I close my eyes. Every time I see a teenage boy, or hear a yell or a shout.’

  ‘I realise that,’ said Anita as patiently as she could. ‘That’s why you have to start from the beginning and go through every inch of it. So it loses its power. So. Tell me about that day.’

  ‘That actual day?’ The knot in Lissa’s stomach tightened. She took a very deep breath.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Right now?’

  Anita nodded again.

  It was painstaking, painful. Every detail. The sun on the window frame. The saying goodbye to old Mrs Marks. The noise of the car revving up . . . its speed, faster and faster, the gleam of the phone in the air . . .

  ‘I was looking at the boys shouting at each other . . .’

  Lissa dissolved into sobs.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can,’ said Anita softly. ‘You can, Lissa. You were looking at the boys shouting at each other . . .’ she repeated. ‘You were watching them. What did you notice?’

  Lissa shook her face, creased with tears. Then she took another breath and opened her mouth.

  ‘Mummy!’

  A tiny, sweet face appeared, marched up to the screen, seemed to stare directly at Lissa, and then, to the surprise of everyone, slammed the computer shut.

  Lissa felt completely stranded. The tears still falling down her face, she re-opened the computer but the connection was gone and she couldn’t call Anita back; that was how these consultations worked.

  She went defeatedly upstairs and turned on the taps to the bath. The pounding of the hot water and the fizzing over of the bubbles gradually overtook her tears. But the fear remained. There was something wrong with her. That’s why she’d been sent away.

  She grabbed her book, retrieved her tea and sank slowly into the bubble bath. Every time her thoughts spun towards the trauma, she forced her attention back to her book and took another slug of tea. As her mind quieted, she listened to what was outside, to the wind whistling through the trees and the calls of distant owls, and instead of finding it threatening, she found it calming instead.

  She knew, even in the brief time they’d managed to discuss it, that on one level Anita was absolutely right. She would have to think about it, would have to be able to work it through in her head to stop the panic attacks and the anxiety.

  But right here, in a warm bath with a book, even if she still couldn’t really concentrate on it, it still felt nice to feel the weight in her hands, almond-scented bubbles, a cup of tea and the sound of the wind through the trees instead of traffic and sirens and helicopters . . . well. She wasn’t going to think about it. Not right now.

  Chapter Fifteen

  And Lissa did feel better when she’d woken up after another surprisingly long night’s sleep. It had to be the fresh air; every breath felt like she’d never properly opened up her lungs before. It was very early, the light creeping through, and suddenly the fear had returned. She looked out of the window at the waving daffodils in the garden, trying to calm herself, then gave up and scrolled through Instagra
m until it was a decent time to get up.

  Her first appointment wasn’t until later so she popped to the little grocer’s and picked up some amazingly cheap eggs (though she didn’t know they were cheap as she’d never bought eggs) direct from Lennox’s farm, some local butter and milk and some sliced bread from the baker, and she had time to make herself some scrambled eggs on toast. The sun had risen by now; there was a chill wind, but she discovered, out of the back of the cottage, the small patio next to the wall was an almost perfect sun trap, warm enough to sit out in regardless of the wind.

  She tried to block out what had happened with the psychiatrist the evening before. Just to change the mental subject, she checked in with Kim-Ange, whose Instagram was full of her dressing up and wearing different hats in what looked suspiciously like the millinery department at Peter Jones, where they tended to take rather a dim view of that sort of thing. She missed her suddenly; missed her old life completely. It was practically the weekend. They would have been up to all sorts. Then she looked at her file casing for the day and her heart skipped a beat.

  She knew she wasn’t supposed to know. But seriously, you couldn’t avoid it. Young, female, heart transplant, and the dates matched. They hadn’t pulled this placement out of thin air. Not at all.

  Cormac’s notes were very straightforward: he’d typed ‘BRILLIANT’ at the top. Lissa did not think it was at all brilliant; she thought he was being unusually tactless.

  She stood up and washed her dishes, then found herself making up a packed lunch – a packed lunch! Who was she?! But then it wasn’t her fault there wasn’t a Prêt for two hundred miles. She took a picture of it and sent it to Kim-Ange to make her smile: a cheese sandwich, augmented with something she found in Cormac’s cupboards that she very much hoped was home-made pickle. No tofu. No beansprouts. No cronuts and no bento boxes. She added a couple of russets and contemplated buying a flask and smiled, just a little, wondering again who she was.