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

by Jenny Colgan

  Lissa fell, got up, danced and constantly felt she was absolutely fine because it was still light outside, even as everybody else started to drift off. She wanted to dance on and on. The relief of it all was quite something.

  Finally, there was a massive circular ‘Auld lang syne’ and when the music stopped, you could feel, at last, the chill of the spring night come on them, and Lissa found herself shivering. Jake immediately took one of the blankets off the hay bales and put it round her shoulders. She smiled at him gratefully.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. She looked around. The previously shy teenagers were now snogging their heads off by the side of the barn. Cars had vanished from the fields, and the lowing of cows, disturbed, reached them across the distant fields.

  ‘Walk you home?’ said Jake, handing her a large glass of water that she downed in one.

  ‘Oh thanks,’ she said. ‘I needed that.’

  ‘Fierce stuff, the elderflower,’ said Jake.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Lissa as she put her foot into a massive muddy rut on the road and nearly stumbled over. Jake put out his arm to steady her and, once he had done so, left it there.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You had fun.’

  Lissa’s tongue felt thick in her mouth, the way you are when you’re trying to explain something but can’t quite remember how, but somehow feel that regardless, it’s still very important to get over what you mean. In other words, she was a little drunk. Pinpricks of stars were appearing overhead.

  ‘I did,’ she said. ‘I did, you know. And for the first time . . . for the first time . . .’ She heaved a breath. ‘I wasn’t . . . It was like I was just feeling lighter. Just living in the moment. Not anxious, not scared every second of the day. Not terrified for whether I was safe.’

  ‘Is that because you were pished up though?’ said Jake with a smile.

  ‘Yes . . . No!’ said Lissa emphatically. ‘It’s because when you’re dancing you can’t really do anything else. Not when you’re trying to remember the steps and how it goes.’

  Jake kindly did not mention that not one single time had Lissa managed to remember the steps and how it went.

  ‘You just have to get on with it. And then you manage it, and it’s fun and it’s just different to everything, and everything else falls away, and all you’re doing is dancing.’

  She attempted a pirouette in the middle of the road. Jake steadied her again.

  ‘Oh! Sorry!’ she said, realising she was blundering.

  ‘But,’ she went on, ‘it’s been so hard . . .’

  ‘Cormac said,’ said Jake and Lissa blinked, suddenly realising she wanted to tell Cormac; wanted to tell him she wasn’t feeling so cranky any more or so annoyed with everything. She picked up her phone but when she had to shut one eye to read anything off it, she put it away.

  ‘So,’ she said as they reached the doorway of the little cottage, the roses starting to bud in the beds alongside it. ‘Thank you. That’s what I wanted to say. Thank you.’

  She looked up at him, but Jake could see her mind was elsewhere. And she was definitely rather on the squiffy side. It absolutely wasn’t, he thought, the moment to try and kiss her. Even though her eyes were sparkling, her smile wide. She’d regret it tomorrow, he thought. And he wanted to see her tomorrow, and after that if he could.

  ‘Drink some water,’ he told her, taking back the blanket. He could drop it in in the morning. ‘Lots of water. Take some aspirin.’

  It was true – just in that moment, there had been, Lissa had felt, a tiny bit of magic in the air; a definite sense that she might say, Screw it. Give me a little bit. Give me a little bit back of being young.

  Give me back my fearless side that violence has stolen away. Give me some carelessness, where I am not worried and scared and trying to please people.

  Give me tonight, with a handsome man in a kilt by my side, and a heavy warmth and a short night and a pair of fiddles and a glass of sweet elderflower wine, and let me dance.

  Jake saw it in her eyes. But he knew – or suspected at least – that anyone would do; that her wild mood was dangerous.

  And, he had to admit it to himself, he liked her. He really liked her. He didn’t want her to wake up, head pounding, full of regret, too embarrassed to see him again after a night’s wild fancy.

  ‘Go to bed,’ he said. ‘Let’s have coffee in the week.’

  She smiled flirtatiously at him, and he turned away quickly before he changed his mind and followed her into the house – Cormac’s house, he reminded himself.

  Ah well, thought Lissa, trying to brush her teeth and making a bit of a meal of it. If she’d lost her ability to pull, that was one thing. But still . . . She drank a pint of water; the freezing freshness of Scottish water never failed to make her gasp and splutter. Still. It had been good. It was a small country dance in a barn in a tiny village clinging to the edge of a loch. To Lissa, it had been everything.

  Five hundred miles south, Cormac finished tidying up the common room, its plain walls looking duller than ever as the ribbon and candles came down. Countless people besieged him to tell him what a great night they’d had, invited him for a drink, or to go on up to their rooms in the case of a particularly jovial bunch of Spanish nurses, all of them raving beauties out of their scrubs, or Yazzie who’d been constantly trying to catch his eye.

  He smiled blankly at them all, then went upstairs and fell asleep with the sound of the drums beating in his ears and the faint outline of the photograph – he tried drawing it, but could make no fist of it – in his head.

  There was a shy knock on the door. He blearily opened it to Yazzie and he felt suddenly lost and empty and sad and homesick and confused, and he let her in.

  Chapter Eight

  Cormac couldn’t believe how hot it was. It was ridiculous; worse than Spain apparently. Practically as bad as . . . Well, he wasn’t going to think about his old job. But he disliked the heat; didn’t trust it. And London felt oddly feral when it got hot. The bins stank; the people were out in the streets more; you felt how crowded the city was, how constantly everyone managed to bubble along but that sometimes it felt precariously close to boiling over. Cars with windows open blasted out incredibly loud music with rumbling bass lines you could hear coming a mile away. Groups of young people sat and drank pints on the pavements outside the bars, looking for a space even when there wasn’t anywhere to sit and getting sometimes aggressive, yelling at the passing cars, who circled, shouting out at the girls.

  It was oppressive. Cormac had never known a summer like it. There was no air conditioning in the nurses’ halls so he slept with the windows open, which meant all night he could hear police sirens screaming and helicopters going and voices and music, and smell drifting barbecues. How, he wondered, could people live like this all the time, piled on top of one another, without going mad? He was naturally calm but this was making him enervated yet wound up. His patients were fretful, full of complaints about the hospital and their injuries and illnesses. For the housebound, it was unpleasant being in stuffy rooms in stuffy houses, dreaming of fresh air that was nowhere to be found. He tried to be particularly kind; not to get upset when the tar was practically melting on the roads or when drivers were screaming at each other, confronting each other in jams and accidents, the frustration never far away.

  For the first time, Cormac felt homesick and less interested in shaking up all the new experiences London had to offer him even though he felt completely nonchalant now, strolling down the South Bank and crossing Tower Bridge.

  He didn’t see Robbie, although he looked for him every day, for another week, and then he recognised his old trainers, sitting in one of the underpasses.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘Hey, yersel’,’ said Robbie.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  Cormac couldn’t help thinking of Robbie leaving his wallet. Of how difficult it must be for someone with nothing not to have taken it. But even to imply that would have been so awful.
r />   Robbie shrugged.

  ‘Listen,’ said Cormac. He’d been wondering about something but needed to ask Lennox. It might be worth a shot. It wasn’t like Lennox wasn’t used to all sorts coming along to help with the harvest. ‘If I knew of a job, would you be interested?’

  Robbie shrugged.

  ‘I’ve got a record,’ he said. Then he glanced up at Cormac, his eyes wild and haunted. ‘No’ for anything bad! Just a bit o’ street drinking and that . . .’ He tailed off. ‘Nothing bad; you can check.’

  Cormac believed him.

  ‘It’s hard work. Just harvest. But there’s a bed, and three meals a day.’

  ‘I’d like to work hard again,’ mumbled Robbie.

  ‘Let me have a word,’ said Cormac.

  Back at the nurses’ home, It didn’t help that Yazzie, while absolutely delightful, was proving slightly difficult to avoid seeing as they lived in the same building, and much as he was generally pleased to see her it did seem to be mounting into something he didn’t quite have the full inclination for so he was relieved when she went on nights.

  Jake, uncharacteristically, was furious when he heard about this.

  ‘What?’ said Cormac. ‘I thought you’d be thrilled I’d kind of started seeing someone.’

  ‘No,’ said Jake. ‘You do this all the time! You’re out do-gooding.’ (Cormac had told him about Robbie.) ‘And you use that as an excuse so you don’t make any effort and some girl moves on you and you just go for it because you are lazy as shit and then they get upset. You should see Emer mumping about the village.’

  ‘Um,’ said Cormac, surprised he was getting a telling-off from Jake of all people.

  ‘Well, I’m not thrilled,’ said Jake. ‘There are lovely women out there in the world . . . lots of them nurses . . .’ His voice took on a slightly dreamy turn. ‘. . . and all they want to do is good in the world and help others but it doesn’t mean they block out other people . . . and they deserve someone who is absolutely crazy about them.’

  Cormac paused.

  ‘Who are we talking about here exactly?’ he asked. It wasn’t like Jake to be quite so romantic.

  ‘No one,’ said Jake sullenly. ‘I’m just saying. If you want her, you should treat her right and if you don’t, you should let her go politely. It’s not fair.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Cormac. ‘Also, can you tell me how much ransom money you want for holding Jake?’

  ‘I’m just saying!’ said Jake.

  ‘Jake, if I want disapproval, I can call my mother.’

  ‘And you need to call your mother. I saw her the other day.’

  ‘I do call her! All the time! She says she’s too busy and then makes sarcastic remarks!’

  ‘She’s an old lady with her hand in a sling,’ said Jake.

  Cormac sighed. Outside, the sun was beating through the windows and his little room was uncomfortably hot.

  ‘Do you think I should come back? It’s the Fordell Fair this weekend.’

  ‘No!’ said Jake quickly. ‘No, it’s fine.’

  ‘Jake,’ said Cormac, unable to keep the smile out of his voice. ‘Is there someone doing my job and living in my house who is in fact herself a nurse that you might be rather fond of in a very un-Jake-like fashion and you really don’t want me around?’

  ‘You could not,’ said Jake stiffly, ‘be further from the truth.’

  But Cormac was still chuckling by the time they rang off, and rather cheered. Though Jake, irritatingly, was right about Yazzie, and Cormac vowed to do better.

  Lennox had a certain amount of tolerance for wounded birds, and though he was worried about the drinking, he’d agreed to give Robbie a trial. Cormac walked him to Victoria bus station, having bought him new clothes from Primark, a toothbrush and a wash cloth, then could do nothing but wish him his best.

  ‘Nemo me impune lacessit,’ he said as Robbie turned to go.

  ‘Black laddies,’ said Robbie in return. Then, falteringly: ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘They’re good people,’ said Cormac. ‘Go well.’

  Chapter Nine

  Nina called Lissa, and they went together.

  ‘If you could just check him over,’ Nina said. ‘He’s going to live out in the barn . . .’

  ‘If he’s an alcoholic, he shouldn’t be coming off drink right away,’ said Lissa. ‘That could be worse. I’ll check him over, sure.’

  She tried to make her voice sound neutral.

  ‘So, this is a friend of Cormac’s?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The coach steamed up to the little stand at Inverness bus station, and a few road-crumpled people got off. The girls were both a little nervous; Nina had left John behind at the farm. She smiled.

  ‘The last time I was here, I was picking up Zoe and Hari.’

  ‘Really? What was she like?’

  ‘Very, very dirty,’ said Nina, grinning. ‘Gosh, I thought it was going to be a disaster. She was just so miserable.’

  Privately, Lissa thought Zoe was one of the happiest-looking people she’d ever met. But even she had turned up battered and bruised by life.

  ‘Maybe Kirrinfief is magic,’ said Lissa, which was precisely the wrong thing to say to a dreamy bookworm like Nina, who immediately got a distant expression and started talking about Brigadoon.

  Robbie was the last passenger to get off, everyone else swallowed up in a mass of happy families welcoming home students or grannies who’d been on a trip to the Big Smoke. Robbie emerged, barely looking up, as if he never expected to be greeted anywhere; his few belongings were in an Army-issue canvas bag.

  ‘Uh, hello,’ said Nina. Lissa was looking at him curiously. Was this what Cormac was like? Shaggy round the edges, covered in home-made tattoos; an old soldier by any measure.

  Robbie didn’t look frightening, though, or violent. His eyes were haunted, and he looked very, very tired.

  ‘Did you sleep on the coach?’ asked Nina gently, and he shook his head. They led him to the book bus out the front. He looked at it enquiringly, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Things been tough?’ said Lissa, and he nodded sadly and she looked at him and suddenly, piercingly felt simultaneously ashamed at her own trauma and more determined to push through it. Because when you couldn’t, it could consume you. She was lucky; she had a loving family, friends and a job that had given her an amazing opportunity to start over. Robbie had been unlucky. But maybe Scotland gave everyone a second chance.

  ‘Let’s get you back and checked over.’

  Robbie was quiet as a lamb as Lissa examined him in the room next to the barn after he’d washed up. He had scabies, but that would clear up with Permethrin. He’d shaved his own head, which would probably help with the lice, and his skin wasn’t as yellow as she’d feared; hopefully he wouldn’t present with liver complaints, but it was too early to tell. Then they discussed withdrawal and alcohol management.

  She had done this many, many times working in A&E. Sometimes, though, she felt that it might work. Robbie might be one of the lucky ones. She directed him to the nearest group, gave him every leaflet Joan had and added him to be checked up on by her, twice a week.

  ‘And now,’ she said with a slight smile, ‘I think they probably have work for you to do.’

  Lennox had already arrived at the doorway, little John in his papoose on his back as usual, carrying two trowels in his pockets and two cups of tea in his hands.

  ‘Three sugars,’ he grunted. ‘We’ve got a few poison berries on the upper field to get rid of. The buggers eat ’em, then we’re really in trouble. You up for it?’

  Robbie’s face, however, had completely changed when he saw the baby.

  ‘Aye, look at yon bairn,’ he said, a half-smile indicating his rotten teeth, and Lissa made a mental note to get him on a dentist’s list. Little John beamed and waved in response.

  ‘Oh, he is bonny,’ said Robbie, moving closer. He put out a yellowing finger, and John grabbed it tightly, grinning at the game.


  Then Robbie nodded.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, and followed Lennox out into the sunny farmyard, scattering chickens as they went. Lissa watched them both go, and crossed her fingers.

  Still very thoughtful, Lissa went back to the cottage. She had an hour before her next appointment. Looking for something to listen to while she made lunch, she pulled out Cormac’s CDs and, smiling when she remembered how cross he’d been, slid in the Proclaimers.

  She had been expecting the bouncy song she half-remembered. Instead, a slow old piano was starting a waltz. A soft, lamenting voice started to sing, joined by another.

  My heart was broken . . . my heart was broken . . .’

  Then it simply repeated:

  ‘Sorrow. Sorrow. Sorrow. Sorrow.’

  Lissa turned round, frozen. It sounded . . . It sounded exactly like someone voicing what she’d been feeling for so long.

  ‘My tears are drying . . . my tears are drying . . .’

  By the time she got to the bursting, heartfelt, hopeful chorus, she was an absolute wreck. It felt as if, in some odd way, the song was a tiny key, unlocking something very important.

  Lunch forgotten, she listened to it over and over again. Then she texted Cormac.

  I might have been wrong about that band you like.

  The response came back, quick as a wink:

  Aye. You were.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘You won’t believe this!’ Kim-Ange was gasping down the phone to Lissa, who was simultaneously warming herself in front of the smouldering peat fire, having woken up to a cool foggy morning. She couldn’t believe Kim-Ange was actually boiling hot when they inhabited the same land mass. They were busy being jealous of each other’s weather. Kim-Ange did not take to the heat well; it played havoc with her make-up regime, which was prolonged and highly technical.

  ‘You’d know if you were still on Instagram and Facebook.’

  ‘I explained,’ said Lissa patiently. She had felt more at peace since she’d closed her social media, and was amazed at how pleasurable a novel and hot bath could be. Plus she could always rely on Kim-Ange to let her know what was really happening. Like now in fact.