The Road Ahead

by Amanda Radley

  Rebecca flashed her eyes in excitement. “Mallomars. They’re a biscuit and marshmallow covered in chocolate. Only the best thing mankind ever invented. Want one?”

  Arabella wrinkled her nose. “No, thank you.”

  She shrugged and pulled another two out of the bag. “Suit yourself.” She then started the engine and pulled on her seatbelt. She checked her mirrors and started moving, eager to join the motorway again and get some of the long journey done.

  A phone rang. Rebecca glanced to her side and watched as Arabella examined the screen and then cancelled the call. She didn’t say anything, and the air was starting to thicken again. Rebecca knew it was up to her to try to lighten the mood.

  “So, how did you get into the estate agency business?” Rebecca asked, fishing for any topic of conversation that would stop them from sitting in silence.

  “My father set up the company,” Arabella replied curtly.

  “And you wanted to join?”

  Arabella shrugged. “It was never really mentioned. It was obvious that I’d go into the family business.”

  “Do you enjoy it?”

  “I enjoy working.”

  Wow, she’s hard work, Rebecca thought.

  Arabella’s phone rang again. She hurriedly cancelled the call.

  “You can take that if you want,” Rebecca offered.

  “I know, you’re not the reason I’m not answering.”

  Rebecca rolled her eyes at the tone. “Fine, I was just offering.”

  “It’s my fiancé,” Arabella admitted.

  “Oh, he’s probably worried about you.” Rebecca wondered why she was cancelling the call. She seemed cold, but avoiding her fiancé seemed odd, even for her.

  Arabella snorted a laugh. “Maybe. More likely that he is looking forward to gloating.”

  “Gloating? Why?”

  “He didn’t want me to come to Portugal, he wanted me to send someone else.”

  “Why?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Well, I don’t have much else to do. We’re going to be stuck together for a while, so we might as well talk about something.”

  Arabella remained silent for a few moments. “We’re getting married, and he wants me to stop working. He wants me to wind down my work duties in preparation for that.”

  Rebecca blinked. “Wow, I have a billion questions.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand; it’s obvious that we live different lives.”

  Rebecca clenched her jaw. “I can still relate to other people. Just because I live my life doesn’t mean I can’t understand someone else’s.”

  The phone rang again. Arabella let out a deep sigh. Rebecca thought for a moment that she was weighing up the best avenue available to her, continuing a conversation with her or speaking with her fiancé.

  Finally, she opted for her fiancé.

  “Hello, Alastair,” Arabella answered neutrally.

  Rebecca could hear the muffled sound of a male voice on the other end of the phone, but not clearly enough to make out any words.

  “Yes, it’s been… yes, well… I was…”

  Rebecca tried to pretend she wasn’t listening, but it was impossible. Arabella didn’t seem to be able to get a word in. Normally she would have found it funny, someone putting Arabella in her place, but she almost felt sorry for the woman. She was supposed to be marrying this man. A man who she clearly didn’t want to talk to. A man who now seemed to refuse to listen to her.

  “I’m in a car, driving back. I’ll be back in plenty of time,” Arabella claimed. She paused. “Well, I don’t know exactly where we are now. Close, I’m sure.”

  Rebecca looked at the screen on the dashboard and realised she could busy herself with setting the on-board satnav system. At least that way she wouldn’t be fully focused on the awkward conversation happening beside her.

  “We don’t need to talk about that now,” Arabella said in a softer tone. “There’s someone here.”

  Rebecca tried to ignore the conversation, tried to focus just on programming the satnav and driving the car, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “I’m… car sharing. She’s driving.” Arabella leaned towards the passenger door. “Of course, yes. Just some girl. We’ll be home soon.”

  Rebecca muted the volume on the satnav. The last thing she needed was a booming voice announcing that they would arrive at their destination in twenty-two hours’ time.

  “I know,” Arabella whispered. She cleared her throat. “Yes, I will.”

  Rebecca almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

  “I know. Well, there’s not a lot I can do about it now.”

  Alastair’s voice got louder, still indistinct, but he clearly wasn’t happy.

  “What’s done is done.” Arabella tried to lean further away from her. “It will be fine. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Rebecca glanced at the screen as it calculated the journey to London. The map zoomed out and out. Eventually it showed the whole of France, Spain, and the bottom of England. If she hadn’t been aware what she had taken on before, she was now.

  “Now that isn’t fair, you know that—Alastair? Alastair?” Arabella looked at the screen. She sat upright in her seat again and coughed delicately. “We… were disconnected.”

  “He was mad?” Rebecca asked, not wanting to acknowledge Arabella’s obvious lie.

  “A little,” she confessed.

  “Sounded like more than a little.”

  “He’s very stressed with work at the moment,” Arabella defended.

  Rebecca laughed. “Wow, that old one, eh?”

  Arabella glared at her. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that he was shouting at you and made you feel bad and you just defended him by saying he’s having a hard time at work. That’s no excuse. Did he even ask if you’re okay?”

  Arabella opened her mouth to reply but closed it again. She looked down at her phone.

  Rebecca chuckled. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “I already know that he’s worried about me, he just doesn’t show it in that way.”

  “In what way?”

  “Verbally.”

  “Wow. He can’t even ask if you’re okay. And you’re marrying him?”

  Arabella turned to her. “Yes, I am. And I’m lucky to have him, you don’t know anything about him. Anything about us. Who are you to judge?”

  “Me? I’m a nobody.” Rebecca shrugged her shoulders. “I just think that the person you choose to spend the rest of your life with should treat you well. You shouldn’t be avoiding their calls. You should want to talk to them, lean on them, know that they have your back.”

  Arabella didn’t reply. Rebecca knew she had her ear, so she carried on. “Your partner should listen to you, not talk over you. You should be a team. With mutual respect.”

  Arabella laughed bitterly. “Nice dream world you live in.”

  “It’s not a dream world,” Rebecca defended.

  “So, you’re like that with your boyfriend? I didn’t hear you having a beautiful, mutually respectful conversation with him.”

  “That’s because I’m single and a lesbian. But,” Rebecca added quickly before Arabella could say anything, “I have been in relationships like that. In fact, all of my relationships have been like that.”

  “Oh, you’re—”

  “Gay, yes,” Rebecca said. She didn’t mind coming out to people. And what was Arabella going to do if she didn’t like it? Throw herself out of the car?

  “Alastair isn’t that bad,” Arabella said, apparently ignoring Rebecca’s admission.

  “Do you love him?”

  “Of course. Why would I be marrying him otherwise?” Arabella laughed.

  “Lots of people agree to get married without being in love.” Rebecca shifted in her seat. “I just think he should have been nicer to you, that’s all.”

  Arabella turned to look out of the window. Rebecca glanced at her a couple of times
before returning her attention to the road.

  Clearly the conversation was over.

  Chapter Seven

  Arabella put her hand down the side of her seat and felt around for the controls. The throbbing in her leg was getting worse, and she needed to adjust her position. Ideally, she needed to walk around and stretch her leg out, but she wasn’t about to admit that to Rebecca.

  Especially as they had been sitting in silence for nearly three hours.

  Arabella wanted to say something to explain and defend Alastair. But the more she thought about it, the more she realised that she couldn’t. As much as she hated to admit it, Rebecca was right. Alastair didn’t respect her. Deep down, she’d always known that, and it hadn’t bothered her.

  She’d always prided herself on knowing the value of her own self-worth. She was well-educated, from a good background, and great at her job. If she did say so herself.

  Alastair was handsome, rich, and the right fit. Her father adored him. Everything seemed right. Of course, it wasn’t a fairy-tale romance, she didn’t think those kinds of relationships existed. They were just for Disney movies. Encouraging children to want to grow up and not scare them with the reality of what life was really like.

  But Rebecca seemed to believe in them. She’d spoken of respect and being a team. Arabella knew that she didn’t have either of those things in her relationship with Alastair.

  She’d replayed the conversation with him over and over in her head. She’d deliberately put forward a strong and well-composed image in Rebecca’s presence. An image that had crumbled the moment she spoke to Alastair.

  She had felt embarrassed. She’d stumbled over words, struggled to say what she wanted to say. Then she had been unable to finish a sentence. The whole conversation had been a disaster.

  Her fingers grazed over a set of buttons on the side of the chair. She pressed one and sighed in relief as the chair slid backwards. She then pressed a different button and the chair started to recline. The blood flowed to her leg, and she wiggled her toes.

  “Are you okay?” Rebecca asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Are you sure, we could—”

  “I said I’m fine,” Arabella snapped.

  Rebecca slowly nodded. She gripped the wheel tighter and sat a little straighter.

  That was when Arabella felt something she wasn’t all that accustomed to.

  Guilt.

  The girl was just being kind after all.

  From her reclined position, she took the opportunity to properly examine Rebecca. The odds of her being a murderer or a thief had dropped substantially. Arabella knew not to trust anyone fully, but the girl did seem to be genuine. She’d shown more care and concern for Arabella in the last four hours than Alastair had in the last four months.

  She knew that Alastair didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve like Rebecca seemed to. They were just fundamentally different people. It wasn’t like one was right and one was wrong.

  But different people they were, and speaking to Rebecca as she would speak to Alastair wasn’t appropriate.

  “I’m sorry,” Arabella said. “My leg twinges a little and it makes me snappish. I apologise.”

  “How did you break it?”

  Arabella bristled at the memory. “I fell down some stairs.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yes, marble stairs.”

  “Wow, sounds like you’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

  Her mind flashed back to the evening in question. She’d been at a party at a hotel, losing track of time. Suddenly it was closing in on midnight and she realised she had to hurry to get home. A misstep had her falling down a flight of fifteen hard and unforgiving steps. The doctors at the A&E had said much the same thing her travelling companion did.

  “Yes, I suppose I was lucky,” she admitted.

  “My ex broke her ankle,” Rebecca said. “She was playing tennis, and she slipped and fell badly. Freak accident kind of thing.”

  “Sounds painful.”

  “Yeah, I had to look after her for two weeks. The doctor said she wasn’t allowed to put her weight on it. So, I had to help her get dressed, get to the bathroom and stuff. Getting her drinks and snacks.”

  “Also sounds painful,” Arabella commented with a wince. The idea of having to care for someone else in that way made her skin crawl.

  “No, it was fun,” Rebecca assured.

  “Fun? How on earth could it be fun?” Arabella genuinely wanted to know what kind of PR spin Rebecca was going to put on caring for an invalid.

  Rebecca smiled. “We spent lots of time together, we watched movies, cuddled. I couldn’t fix her, but I could take away some of the discomfort. You know when you’re sick and someone brings you a drink or something to eat? When you have a cold and someone brings you some tomato soup just at the moment you need it?”

  Arabella thought for a moment. She’d never had that. Then again, she’d never offered it to anyone else either.

  “No, not really,” she admitted.

  “Even when you were a child?” Rebecca asked. She seemed surprised.

  Arabella laughed. “Oh, especially not when I was a child. We were just left to get on with things.”

  “Wow, well… take it from someone who knows, it’s nice to care for the people you love. It’s nice to be that person, to make someone feel better. Even if you can’t necessarily fix them. Not so they can reciprocate. Just for the sake of doing the right thing and being kind to others.”

  Arabella looked up at the girl in surprise. The bartending, possibly whoring murderer with an apparent heart of gold.

  “Are you rolling your eyes at me?” Rebecca asked with a chuckle.

  “Absolutely,” Arabella joked. “Non-stop since you started talking. I’m concerned I’ll get a migraine.”

  “Ha, ha.” Rebecca shook her head, but a smile still graced her lips.

  “You’re a unique specimen, Rebecca Edwards,” Arabella said.

  “Thanks, I think.” Rebecca laughed. “Seriously, though, if your leg is hurting then you should probably get out and walk a bit when we next stop. It’s just going to get worse otherwise.”

  “Fine, next time we stop for fuel I’ll do a couple of laps of the car.”

  Rebecca nodded her agreement.

  Arabella sighed and moved her head from side to side. No matter how luxurious the surroundings, she didn’t like long journeys. Now she was stuck in a car, not even halfway through Spain and already she was exhausted. There were miles to go. Over a thousand of them according to the satnav screen.

  She glanced at Rebecca again.

  For the first time, she wondered if Rebecca would have the stamina to drive them home without stopping. Of course, Arabella had told her that she must, and Rebecca had agreed. But could she actually do it? A whole day’s worth of solid driving was a big ask. But the girl seemed determined.

  Now she thought about it, she seemed very determined. Of course, the time of year brought that out in people.

  “I assume you are driving home to spend Christmas with your family?” Arabella asked.

  “My mum,” Rebecca said.

  “I see. And she lives in… Croydon, did you say?”

  “Yeah. I promised I’d be home in time for Christmas. We spend every Christmas together no matter what.”

  Good, that means she’s invested in getting home as quickly as I am.

  “I’m sure she’ll be very happy to see you,” Arabella said.

  “What about you? What are you doing for Christmas?”

  “Well, there’s a big party every Christmas Eve at my father’s house. And then on the day itself it will be my father, sister, Alastair, and I. Some family members and business associates will come and visit us throughout the day.”

  “Of course. Peace and goodwill to all men and business associates,” Rebecca said.

  Arabella chuckled. “I know it’s unusual to talk about business at Christmas, but we do. It’s not all presents under the tre
e and homemade pies at my house.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  Arabella laughed. “You really speak your mind, don’t you?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, I’m just saying that, in my mind, Christmas is for family. You exchange gifts, eat treats, watch television. You just be together.”

  “Sounds awful,” Arabella joked.

  “You say that now, but you haven’t tasted my homemade Christmas pies,” Rebecca said.

  Chapter Eight

  The sun was orange and hazy, low in the sky. They’d been driving for seven hours, and Rebecca was feeling a numbness creeping up her backside. Arabella had been adjusting her seat on and off for the past four hours, clearly trying to get comfortable. Now she was partially reclined. Sat so low that she was unable to look out of the window.

  Rebecca had been watching the icon of their car on the satnav screen throughout the journey. It seemed to slowly crawl its way across Spain. Even now they seemed to only be two-thirds of the way across the country. She’d never really taken into consideration just how big Spain was before.

  Apparently, it was easy to say that you were driving across two countries, but a different matter entirely to be doing it.

  She knew that she needed a break. Even though she desperately didn’t want to waste any time. She needed the bathroom, to walk around a little, and to stretch her back and legs out.

  “I’m going to need to stop for a few minutes,” Rebecca said.

  She waited for Arabella’s acerbic response.

  “Good idea.”

  She glanced at Arabella in surprise. The older woman pressed the button on the side of her chair. The motor started to whir. She slowly rose.

  “You look like a terrible Bond villain,” Rebecca commented.

  After another thirty seconds, Arabella finally arrived at an upright position. “Where’s the next services?”

  “We seem to be in the middle of nowhere. I’ve not seen any services as such, the odd petrol station that looks rundown but nothing else.”

  “Well, that can’t be as bad as the place we stopped before.”