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

by Jenny Colgan

  Jake’s voice went quiet for a while. Then he started up again, and it had an uncharacteristically dreamy tone to it Cormac hadn’t heard before, certainly not when he was talking about Ginty McGhie.

  ‘Well,’ Jake said eventually. ‘You know Meghan Markle . . .?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Nothing at all like her,’ clarified Jake. ‘I mean. Not really. I mean. She’s curvier, aye, and, well, no, she doesn’t look . . . But she’s got these freckles. And they’re . . . they’re dead cute. And all this hair! She’s just got loads and loads of hair and it’s all ringletty and it’s everywhere and . . . anyway . . . Anyway. No, I havenae seen her.’

  ‘Jake Inglis! You think she’s cute!’

  ‘I do no’.’

  ‘Well. There you go! She’s lonely. You can ask her out and thank me later.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘That proves it then,’ said Cormac. ‘I know how you work. You ask everyone out and run the laws of statistics. If you’re not doing it, it’s because you’re sweet.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Jake, although he did and had never seen anything wrong with it. Jake liked woman in the abstract and found something attractive in practically every one he’d ever met. Holding back was very uncharacteristic.

  ‘Well, I’m just glad you’re no’ harassing her.’

  ‘I don’t harass anyone!’ protested Jake. ‘I’m charming!’

  ‘That is very much a matter of opinion,’ said Cormac, although four hours later he would be sitting in an overpriced club full of weird, squawking, beautiful people, wishing he had just a touch of the old Jake charm.

  Now, Jake was standing in the middle of the village square, tongue-tied for once in his life.

  ‘The what?’ Lissa repeated.

  ‘The shows.’

  ‘Like, waltzers and stuff?’ She still looked confused.

  ‘Yeah, and, like, a funhouse and you can win teddy bears on shooting ranges and stuff?’

  ‘Oh, you mean a fair?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Jake. ‘There’s a fair. And it’s mostly run by travellers who do that in the summer but help with the harvest and stuff, so we know them all more or less . . . It’s grand.’

  ‘Well . . . wait, sorry, do I have to work at it?’

  ‘Oh! No. Nobody’s fallen off the Ferris wheel for at least a year.’

  Lissa wasn’t sure whether he was joking.

  ‘I’m kidding. The St John Ambulance do it. No, I was just telling you in case you wanted to go.’

  Lissa smiled to herself. She did love going to fairs: the bad boys spinning the waltzers; the clashing scents of popcorn and hot dogs and candy-floss; the sense of danger as night drew in. She used to go with her girlfriends, slipping out of school, turning up their skirts, but hadn’t been for a very long time, as if it had been banned, left behind with being grown up and having responsibility, being a health-care professional.

  ‘Um, I’m still here,’ said Jake, colouring. He couldn’t believe this was going quite as badly as it was. Normally a cheeky wink and a story or two about a particularly daring and possibly slightly exaggerated ambulance call-out and it was a done deal, more or less, or if it wasn’t, well, thank you, next, plenty more fish in the sea.

  ‘Thanks for telling me,’ said Lissa, slipping out of her reverie. ‘Okay, well, good to know it’s there.’

  Jake put his hand on the back of his neck.

  ‘Actually, I was asking if you wanted to go. With me.’

  Lissa’s eyebrows shot up. It was the oddest thing – another side effect, she supposed – she hadn’t been thinking about boys at all.

  Of course, she’d had the same problems dating in London as every other girl she knew – competing for decent men with approximately infinity other people. And then there was Ezra, of course. The ghoster. She had sent him one short, consoling letter about Kai, hoping against hope he didn’t think it was another ploy to get his attention. She hadn’t expected to hear back from him, and indeed she hadn’t. But to be ghosted had been so painful. The internet was just such a tough place to meet men.

  So she was extremely surprised and jolted to be ‘asked out’ – London men never asked you out. You hung with them or you met via the internet. They didn’t just walk up to you in broad daylight and . . .

  Jake put his hands up as if he was reading her mind. He’d gone puce.

  ‘Sorry!’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to frighten you! It’s all right, don’t panic, just a thought, didn’t want to trouble you.’

  And before she could rearrange her face into something vaguely appropriate, he had gone.

  Lissa went back home and called Kim-Ange, who was out with her phone switched off, and of course Lissa couldn’t get her on social media any more. Then she pulled up the laptop and realised she’d like to ask Cormac about Jake. But he hadn’t sent anything over . . . He was also out, she realised. It was Friday night and everyone was out except her. She wondered where he was. Surrounded by happy people having an absolutely brilliant time, she imagined. While she was just here.

  Perhaps she should say yes to Jake.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cormac was very much not having a brilliant time. He got up to use the bathroom – nobody really noticed, he thought, although he also wondered if they would all start talking about him as soon as he crossed the room, which of course they did.

  He glanced around the large space. Every table was taken up with glamorous people: lipstick shining, hair in bold geometric shapes; tumbling blond or huge afros; incredible fashion and big, coloured glasses. Everyone was laughing and yelling at the top of their voices, or so it seemed. He recognised a few of the faces too: there was someone there who played a doctor in an incredibly popular medical television show that Cormac and Jake watched so they could slag off everything it got wrong about patient care and comment on how they were quite fond of the massive fires and car accidents and extremely not fond of the hard work afterwards to get people from simply not-being-dead to living, functioning humans again.

  Well, this was it, he supposed. He wasn’t, he thought, suited to being a Londoner after all. He wasn’t remotely cool enough, he didn’t have any facial hair, he didn’t have a bun and his trousers weren’t nearly ridiculous enough.

  He vowed to use the bathroom – which was pitch-black and covered in tiny spotlights and marble and was stupidly fancy and impractical which more or less summed up everything he was feeling about the night – then make up an excuse and go. He’d have to leave some money at the bar or something, paying with cash which would make him feel stupid and cheap but what choice did he have really, and okay it was humiliating but it wasn’t, he told himself, as if he’d ever have to see any of these people again. He had never wanted to be having a quiet pint in Wullie’s pub more.

  Cormac walked into the darkened lavatories, had a pee by touch mostly, then was just washing his hands when he heard a deep groan.

  He stopped. There was nobody else in the bathroom, or at least nobody at the urinals.

  The groan came again.

  ‘Uh . . . hello?’

  Silence. Then a weak moan.

  Only one of the toilet cubicles had a closed door. A thought struck Cormac: what if it was people having sex in there? That’s what happened at these trendy beautiful places, wasn’t it? It was probably two blokes having sex and he was about to make a bad evening a million times worse by interrupting something and having everyone laugh at him for what a rube and how easily shocked he was.

  It didn’t sound like a sexy groan though. He took a deep breath, finished drying his hands and spoke up one more time:

  ‘Are you okay?’

  There was a long pause. Then:

  ‘Heeelllllppp meeee . . .’

  The voice faded away. If this was a prank, it was a very strange one. But Cormac recognised the tone of voice. It was exactly how people spoke when they came into A&E or in the field or when he had had to free them from cars or from being trapped u
nder walls. He’d heard it a million times.

  He ducked into the cubicle next to the closed one and, hoping that expensive places cleaned their bathroom floors more thoroughly than cheap places, put his head down to the floor to look up under the partition.

  He got an almighty shock: instead of the pair of feet he’d been expecting, a man’s head was lying, inches from his, a pair of wide eyes, blown pupils, staring straight at him. It was so dark in there Cormac used his phone torch to see it clearly – clammy skin and trembling fingers.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he said. ‘Right. Hold on. Hold on and we’ll get you out of there.’

  There was no room to crawl under the partition; he scrambled out and kicked the door open with one foot, a move he had practised many times as being an invaluable part of the paramedics’ arsenal. He also yelled loudly, although he couldn’t imagine anyone being able to hear him over the din of the terrible music and the loud self-aggrandising shouting going on outside.

  It was still pitch-dark in the loo though. He dragged the skinny figure through the door and out into a little hallway that led to the toilets. Several beautiful people stared at them suspiciously and stepped over the prone figure, but Cormac wasn’t paying any attention; he needed space and room to work.

  ‘Move! MOVE!’ he shouted. The man was foaming at the mouth and going into a fit, and Cormac snapped his fingers at the bar staff, who immediately brought him the first aid box.

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ he yelled, but several people already had their phones out. Most were calling. One or two were filming, but Cormac couldn’t think about that just then.

  He put the man in the recovery position, opened his mouth and took off his tie. Then, as the man started fitting in earnest, he cushioned his head and opened his top button.

  ‘You’re fine,’ he promised. ‘You’re going to be fine; you’re going to be safe. Hang on.’

  The man had stopped thrashing but now seemed to be suffocating. He couldn’t catch his breath, and turned a horrible shade of blue as his head went back, banging onto the ground. Someone in the room screamed; the music had been turned off and the beautiful young bar staff were standing around looking panicked.

  Cormac immediately started doing mouth-to-mouth on the man, feeling for a pulse worriedly. He lifted his head briefly.

  ‘Have you got a defibrillator?’

  Someone nodded and a yellow box was opened.

  ‘Give it here . . . is there a doctor around?’

  Of course not, thought Cormac, as he continued to perform CPR. Real people with real jobs didn’t really belong here. He noticed out of the corner of his eye the man who’d played a doctor on television approaching.

  ‘You must be joking,’ he snarled.

  ‘Well, you see, I have done it a lot and performed it and I feel quite qualified.’

  ‘You’re fine,’ said Cormac shortly, and then, relenting.

  ‘Okay, hold down his arms.’

  There was no heartbeat at all now. Cormac knelt over his chest and took the defibrillator.

  ‘Right, when I say clear, leave him go. One, two, three . . . clear!’

  The man sat back as the body beneath him jolted. Cormac leaned over, listening for a heartbeat.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Come on, wee man. You can do it. Come on.’

  He shocked him again, fingers crossed. Honestly, once you got into this, he knew, as did anyone else who worked in actual medicine rather than TV medicine, that it was over. He had a horrible, horrible feeling that as well as looking like a tight, tongue-tied country bumpkin idiot, he was also going to look like a killer or a lazy and useless nurse according to people who’d only ever watched resus from the comfort of their own trendy leather sofas, where everyone had miraculous returns to life.

  ‘Clear! COME ON!’ He almost screamed in frustration, leaning back down to perform mouth-to-mouth, almost yelling into the man’s ears. ‘COME ON!’

  Suddenly the man’s body jolted. Cormac took nothing from this; aftershocks were incredibly common in the dead. He bent, though, lowered his head to the man’s chest. The relief he felt when he heard, slowly, first one thump then another, was one of the most gushing feelings of his entire life.

  ‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘Come on, billy boy. Come on.’

  An ambulance crew ran into the room through the now silent crowd, which had parted for them.

  ‘Asystolic?’ said the ambulance man, a large, sweet-faced Indian boy.

  ‘Ventricular fibrillation,’ said Cormac. The ambulance man nodded and threw him an oxygen mask, which he took gratefully with a thumbs up, placing it over the man’s mouth. After several more minutes of working on him, and with both the ambulance crew down, one setting up a drip in situ, they sat back on their haunches as the man, very carefully, opened his eyes.

  The three professionals regarded him.

  ‘How you doing?’ said Cormac finally.

  ‘You’ve been taking something naughty, haven’t you?’ said the ambulance man. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’

  The man, however, once he’d regained consciousness and looked around, realised suddenly where he was.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ he groaned, raising a shaky hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead. ‘Seriously? In front of these tosspots?’

  Worse was to come when the man was loaded onto a wheeled stretcher and it became apparent to everyone that he had peed himself on his very expensive suit. He was led out in front of everyone, and covered his eyes with his hands. ‘Christ on a bike,’ he said mournfully. ‘No photos. If anyone tells the Mail I will have you and don’t think I won’t.’

  ‘Oh my God, was it a speedball?’ came a very loud posh voice from the back. ‘Christ, how terribly 1990s.’

  The man on the trolley groaned and kept his eyes covered in shame.

  Cormac blinked as the ambulance man thanked him and took his name and address. The patient’s nose had started to haemorrhage everywhere and a waitress was screaming.

  ‘That’s our cue,’ said the ambulance man, wheeling him out. ‘Will take him for ever to get to sleep, then he’ll wake up tomorrow and won’t remember a thing about it.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Cormac. ‘Well, his friends all will.’

  The paramedic laughed.

  ‘Yup,’ he said. ‘Oh well. Cheers – you played a blinder.’

  And as they left, the entire room turned round towards Cormac – who was suddenly extremely worried about the state he’d gotten Kim-Ange’s jumper into – and to his complete surprise, gave him a round of applause, led by the man who played a doctor on TV.

  After that, it was mayhem. People vied to buy him drinks. Kalitha and Caggie were suddenly all over the hero of the hour. Various men came over and announced that they were just about to have done the same thing, or would have done the same thing if he hadn’t got there first (this was not, to be fair, an attitude confined to London clubland; it had happened pretty much at every single incident Cormac had ever attended). Finally the manager, an incredibly smartly dressed woman with a brisk manner, took him aside and thanked him from the bottom of her heart for not letting someone die on the floor of their toilets. ‘I mean, it’s terrible for business,’ she said. ‘Well, not at first – everyone comes to have a look – rubberneckers – but once that falls off. Well.’

  Cormac blinked at this.

  ‘Well, hopefully he’ll let you know he’s all right.’

  ‘He can’t,’ said the woman shortly. ‘He’s barred. Again.’

  They had moved from the high table, Cormac noticed, to a booth littered with vodka bottles and champagne. He realised to his shame that the relief that he wasn’t going to face the bar bill was absolutely on a par with the idea that he’d saved a man’s life.

  And then he looked around at the room full of laughing, joking, incredibly beautiful people gossiping and yelling at each other and, well, maybe it wasn’t what he was used to, and maybe he felt poor and out of place, but, well, a bit of glamour wasn’t the worst
thing in the world, was it? Everyone dressed up, trying to impress, to get on and have fun – it might not be real, but there wasn’t a lot of fantasy in Cormac’s life, or much glitter. He might as well enjoy a bit of it, he thought, even as a stunning brunette puckered very puffed up lips at him and handed him a glass of champagne.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lissa woke up on Saturday morning remembering she’d agreed to work it to catch up on some appointments she’d missed getting lost from one end of Loch Ness to another.

  But she didn’t mind, she found. She’d be quite glad of the company. And she didn’t feel bad, not really. Not stomach-clenchingly frightened. She watched the lambs jumping about the fields from her bedroom window, clutching a cup of hot tea in her hands. In the woods beside the cottage, she noticed something suddenly, and went outside – at first, she was embarrassed she was wearing her pyjamas, and then it occurred to her, with a sudden burst of freedom, that it didn’t matter: nobody could see her on the road! She could wander wherever she liked!

  She went inside again to pull a cardie over her old soft tartan bottoms and grey Friends top, scraped her wild hair back with a wide band and walked out into the waking morning.

  The birdsong struck her first as she opened the back door, the sun illuminating the dew on the grass. It was getting long. She frowned and wondered if she’d have to cut it. She hadn’t the faintest idea how one might go about doing that.

  Now she was closer to the trees, she could see them better, and she gasped. Suddenly, all at once it seemed that the wood had shimmered and completely changed from having bright green shoots everywhere, to now being completely covered with a sea of bright purple bluebells. The colour was so ridiculous it looked photo-shopped. A sea of them; countless thousands running up and over the hill to goodness knows where, for nobody, it seemed, except her.

  She knelt and breathed in their delicate heavenly scent. It was extraordinary. She found she didn’t even want to cut some for the house; they belonged together, a great, secret sea. She crouched down, still clasping the mug of tea in one hand, and took a dozen photographs, but none of them seemed to capture the thick velvety beauty of the sight, so she put her phone away and simply crouched still. As she did so, she was rewarded with a startle of movement in the distance; the flash of something white which she quickly realised was a tail. A doe was bolting through the forest, followed close behind by the most perfect honeycomb-coloured fawn, its legs impossibly spindly. The speed of them darting through the wood was such that it was as if she’d been visited by a magical creature and Lissa found herself gasping, then shaking her head, amazed at herself. Next thing she knew, she’d be getting wellies.