500 Miles from You

by Jenny Colgan

  Yazzie walked past.

  “Hey!” said Cormac.

  She sniffed loudly at him, which he found slightly puzzling, as he had absolutely no idea she was annoyed with him.

  “Have you seen Kim-Ange?”

  “She’s got a boyfriend,” said Yazzie pointedly.

  Cormac blinked. “Aye, I know that . . . I just wondered if you’d seen her.”

  “You look filthy and awful,” pointed out Yazzie.

  “Thanks,” said Cormac.

  “Just call her,” said Yazzie.

  “Could you? I’m almost out of charge,” said Cormac. “Please? Please! Tell her if she’s with Lissa I can explain . . . please? Tell her I’ll call.”

  “Sure,” said Yazzie, walking off and pretending to put her phone to her ear.

  He glanced at his watch. Shit! It was after eight o’clock already. Lissa’s train left at nine. Euston station was half an hour away.

  Chapter 75

  “Did you call your mum?” said Kim-Ange, pouring Lissa into a taxi. “Don’t call her now, I mean. Just . . . call her.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone I was coming today,” said Lissa. “Because I didn’t know if I could manage it . . . and because I wanted . . . I wanted to spend it with . . .”

  Lissa’s lip was wobbling. Kim-Ange leaned into the cab and gave her a big full-body hug.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You did the right thing. Go back to Scotland, pack up, and I’ll see you back here in a couple of weeks. Don’t worry about that loser. I will make his life absolute hell also.”

  “Don’t put prawns in the curtains, because when I come back they will still be my curtains,” said Lissa.

  “Okay.”

  Lissa checked her phone again.

  “Put your phone down! You know you will hear from him. Tomorrow, with some bullshit excuse,” said Kim-Ange fussily. “Then it’ll all pick up again, the flirting and the little jokes and everything, until it comes time to meet again and then the same thing will happen. Trust me. I know men.”

  “I know,” said Lissa.

  “Is she going to spew in my cab, love?” said the taxi driver.

  “No!” they both said together.

  “Give me the phone,” said Kim-Ange. “Come on, hand it over. You’re pissed and in possession of a phone, it’s a deadly weapon.”

  Lissa sighed. Kim-Ange grabbed it and hit a few buttons. She’d done this before.

  “I’ve blocked his number. Stopped any recriminatory texts.”

  “I’ve got his number at home.”

  “Yes, but that will be in the morning and then you can think about what you’re doing. In between sending me a thank-you bouquet.”

  The meter ticked on.

  “Don’t . . . don’t lose the messages,” mumbled Lissa.

  “Messages are saved, but you can’t send any more and neither can he,” said Kim-Ange. “Not till you sober up.”

  “Thanks,” said Lissa, flinging her arms around her again. “You’re a great friend.”

  “I am,” said Kim-Ange grimly. “Now I am going back to set fire to his bed.”

  “It’s my bed!”

  “Oh yes. I’ll think of something.”

  It felt suddenly unbearably unfair to Lissa that Kim-Ange was going back to Cormac and she wasn’t.

  “Maybe he is dead,” she said, “from saving a bunch of children from a burning orphanage. Even then I still hate him.”

  “In you go,” said Kim-Ange, slamming the door behind her as the cab shot off into the night.

  Chapter 76

  There are several ways of getting from South Bank to Euston in half an hour: Thameslink, the Northern line, the number 63 bus, a black cab, which will do puzzling things around Bedford Square—but if you are in a tearing hurry and, frankly, a bit of a panic, you could always try running it. I wouldn’t, personally. But then it very much depends on whether you are thinking straight.

  Cormac wasn’t thinking straight at all.

  But as he flew down the stairs, out into the humid night, and hit the great river and charged along, he felt better running—feeling free, rather than jiggering about in a cab stuck in the sticky traffic or the tube inching forward. He couldn’t have borne it.

  To his surprise, he realized he knew where he was going. Across the bridge at Embankment, through Trafalgar Square and into Covent Garden, passing hordes of Lycra-clad tourists looking confused and buskers looking tired, then cutting toward Bloomsbury with its pretty red mansions and well-trimmed squares. He felt the ground under his feet and felt, at last, the pull of the city—that it could be your city, that it was expensive, yes, and grubby, and strange, but you could belong too; skirt the crowds, find your corner; experience the whole world on your doorstep.

  And even as he ran, Cormac couldn’t help but feel a little comforted, as he crashed across Tottenham Court Road, skirted the sofa shops, grabbed little alleyways he thought would get him through, passed the big hospital, and emerged, panting, utterly exhausted yet somehow exhilarated too, in Lissa’s great city, as she got closer with every step. Up now the great throbbing gristly artery of Euston Road, filthy black with traffic, Euston station squat and grim across the road. Not all of London was beautiful. He glanced at his watch. Ten to nine. At home it would have been bright daylight still; here the streetlights were coming on.

  He couldn’t cross the road. Six thundering lanes of traffic were roaring without a break. He hopped from foot to foot at the traffic lights. Stop. Stoppp!!

  Chapter 77

  There was something almost motherly in the way the attendant on the sleeper train greeted Lissa and, worn out as she was, she almost started to cry.

  “Have you had a nice day, hen?” said the woman, and it was a familiar accent to Lissa, and she bit her lip.

  “Mm-hmm,” she said, as her name was ticked off on a list and she found her way to her own tiny bedroom on the train.

  She sighed happily as she opened the door. A bed was made up with a fresh white duvet and white sheets, two pillows and a tartan blanket. There was a sink at one end and a shelf for her clothes and a bottle of water, and it felt at that moment like the ultimate in luxury. A place to shut herself in, lock the world out, and lick her wounds.

  The window showed the dank black interior of Euston station. She didn’t want to see it. She turned away and opened her bag to finally—finally—get into her pajamas and forget about today altogether.

  “I’M AFRAID YOU need a ticket, son,” said the woman on the reception desk at the train, now looking not quite as nicely at the large, rather sweaty figure in front of her.

  “Where can I get one?!”

  “From the booking office . . . if it’s still open.”

  Cormac looked back in dismay. The booking office was miles away. They both glanced at the clock. It was four minutes to nine.

  “Am I going to make it?” he said.

  The woman looked sad. “You can get the eleven fifty to Edinburgh,” she said brightly. “That’ll be fine.”

  “If I was going to Edinburgh that would be fine!” said Cormac in anguish. If he didn’t get on that train, that would be it, it would be over. She’d never trust him again.

  “It’s nice,” said the woman.

  He gave her a level glance. The train started to make noises, the engines huffing up.

  He screwed up his eyes. “Is there . . . Someone I really need to see is on this train. Can you call her for me?”

  The woman protectively hid her clipboard with her hand. “What if you’re a murderer?”

  “Okay,” said Cormac desperately.

  Doors were slamming up and down the train now, and a guard was raising a whistle to his lips.

  “Can I . . . can I just run up and down the train to see if I can see her?”

  “Am I going to let you, a murderer, run up and down the train and peer in everybody’s windows?”

  “Pleeeease! This is someone . . . this is someone really important
to me. Please. Please.”

  The woman looked at him sadly. “I cannae,” said the woman. “Health and Safety. We’ve had a lot of training.”

  “Me too,” said Cormac ruefully.

  Peeep! blew the whistle.

  LISSA STOOD UP and leaned her head against the window of the little cabin, peering out into the world of the sooty, fluorescent station beyond, smelling of fast food and filled with the shouts of cheery or drunken commuters. When had London started to feel so strange?

  Funny, it was almost as if it were calling her name. But as she strained her ears to hear, there was another sharp blow on the whistle, and the train began, smoothly, to chug its way out of the great black dirty station.

  Chapter 78

  “That,” said the woman on the reception desk, covering her ears, “is quite the shout you’ve got there.”

  And she lightly stepped onto the platform as Cormac, throat ragged, cried out, “LISSSAAA!!!!” one last time, to no avail. As the train took off, he tried to run alongside it, even as security hailed him, and he stopped, put his hands on his knees, utterly out of breath, utterly defeated.

  EMPTY, EXHAUSTED, FEELING foolish, simply ridiculous, for having pinned so many hopes and dreams . . . Lissa sank down on the bed, feeling the soothing motion of the train beneath her. She glanced at her phone . . . no, no, no. Of course.

  She had been so stupid. Well. This was modern life, she supposed. She sank back against the pillows. No way was she going to sleep. She was going to have to lie awake in a frenzy of embarrassment and recrimination all night, then have to get straight back to work the next day, which was the only reason she’d been bought a sleeper ticket in the first place.

  She turned her face into the pillows. Well. Tomorrow was another day, she supposed. But somehow—and having her phone off definitely helped—the slightly jolting motion of the train, the fresh white linen, the sheer exhaustion, and, let us be honest, the several gins somehow worked their magic, and within moments, Lissa was utterly and completely asleep.

  OUTSIDE IN THE streets of London it was dark, and the corner pubs were starting to take on a more aggressive turn; there was distant shouting and omnipresent sirens and a helicopter somewhere overhead, the faint, tense feeling that there were too many people, hot and drunk and angry, in too small a space. King’s Cross was absolutely heaving, its restaurants and piazzas overspilling with people.

  It crossed his mind; it absolutely crossed his mind. That Larissa might still be in her fancy restaurant with her fancy mates. That he could at least sit and lick his wounds surrounded by sympathetic company.

  But it was strange. Those girls didn’t appeal to him. Not at all. Not Larissa, not Yazzie. Nobody did. Nobody except the person who thought he’d dropped her. After all, who these days didn’t have their phone? Who would ever believe it? Only a very stupid person, and he knew she wasn’t that.

  Cormac turned blindly south again. Retracing the steps he had run with so much hope in his heart was bitter and exhausting. A group of cabaret performers shouted at him as he accidentally trod on the tail of someone’s feather boa, and he recoiled and apologized. A drunk heckled him from the street, and instead of stopping, he passed on by, head down. Stop trying to care for everyone and just care for one person, he thought bitterly. Well, look how brilliantly that had turned out.

  It seemed so far now, through endless paved roads, past endless taxis at endless junctions, their yellow lights glinting into the distance. He considered taking one, but there was no benefit to arriving home any earlier, was there? His phone battery was almost dead. By the time it charged she’d be over the border, cursing him forever. And “I was in prison” wasn’t exactly the excuse he’d been hoping to give.

  He sighed, passing, finally, the police station for what he hoped would be the last time ever. The lads were still, to his utter amazement, at the pub next door and increasingly merry, and, he was astounded to see, the coppers were now drinking as well. A mass cheer greeted him as he stumbled past.

  “Did you find her? The fuckbeast?” shouted Nobbo.

  One glance from Cormac convinced him otherwise.

  “Aww,” said the group in chorus.

  “What’s this?” said the sarcastic copper, and to Cormac’s horrified amazement, they immediately started telling him the entire story, while someone fetched Cormac a pint, which he declined in favor of a very large glass of water. The absolute last thing he needed was to get maudlin.

  As the story unrolled the copper screwed up his face. “He’s never even seen her?”

  “Naw, mate!”

  “That’s nuts!” He pulled out his phone. “What’s her name? She’s got to be on Instagram.”

  But he found nothing.

  “Look for her on the police database,” said his colleague.

  “Do not do that!” said Cormac.

  “Well, you tried, you failed,” said Tim. “Might as well just hang out with the rest of us . . .”

  “No!” said the sarcastic policeman. “If you want her, go get her! That’s what I had to do with Gus!”

  “Where did Gus go?” said his colleague.

  “Um . . . West London,” said the policeman, and everyone gave a sharp intake of breath.

  “Well, I tried that,” said Cormac. “Didn’t quite work.”

  “Hang on!” said Tim, possibly somewhat overrefreshed. “Where is Scotland anyway? If you drove would you get there faster?”

  “Where is Scotland?”

  “Focus on the question, mate, not your national pride.”

  Cormac glanced at his watch. “Well, maybe. But I haven’t got a car at the moment.”

  “We’ve got a car!”

  The policemen immediately looked up.

  “You have?”

  “It’s insured!” said Tim instantly. The others nodded.

  “I won’t be on your insurance,” said Cormac. “And youse are all too pished up to drive.”

  “Yeah, we are,” said Tim thoughtfully. “But the insurance covers everyone.”

  “Otherwise we can’t afford it,” piped up Nobbo. “We had to pool it between everyone.”

  “You have a shared communal car?” said Cormac.

  “Rotas are a nightmare,” said Tim.

  “I’m going to run the plates,” said the police officer.

  “Leave ’em,” said the other copper. “You’re off duty, Nish. Just leave it. For once.”

  “Okay,” said Nish.

  “You’re a great copper. You just need to know when to relax. Switch off. Do a bit of self-care.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Just . . . do your job. Don’t let it consume you.”

  “Thanks, Harry.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Harry, looking sadly at Nish’s wedding ring.

  The lads were getting up.

  “Okay, let’s go,” said Tim.

  “You’re not coming,” said Cormac.

  “Course we are! It’s our car!”

  “Also we’re not doing anything else,” said Nobbo a little sadly.

  “Road trip! Road trip!”

  Cormac looked at them for a second, about to say don’t be ridiculous, everyone had to go home to bed and work to go to. Except they didn’t, did they?

  “Road trip! Road trip!”

  Then he thought about Lissa. And then, unexpectedly, he had another thought.

  He took out his dying phone. He knew Lennox went to bed early, all farmers did. But it would be there waiting for him when he woke up.

  I can’t promise, he typed. But I MIGHT have solved your harvest crisis.

  Chapter 79

  Unsurprisingly, the boys bantered and chugged beer and yelled and tried to honk the horn for at least all the way to Birmingham. He’d explained there might be jobs up there for them, and they’d agreed instantly. Whether they’d feel the same in the morning was another story, of course.

  Then, like the lads they all still were, they fell asleep, snoring loudly o
n the back seat, Tim up front.

  Cormac had managed to plug his phone into the charger in the car—at last—and watched anxiously as the battery charged.

  There were messages up till about four o’clock, jolly at first, then increasingly curt (from, in fact, Lissa and Larissa too), but they stopped fast (this was when Kim-Ange had gotten hold of the phone). Nothing recriminatory, nothing drunken or angry.

  This was the worst thing of all. If there had been upset texts, he could have convinced himself there was still a chance that she cared for him, that this had meant something to her too, not just some stupid fantasy he’d concocted in his head.

  He couldn’t help it. He pulled over onto the hard shoulder and texted her. Just a simple hey.

  It pinged back immediately. Number blocked. His stomach plummeted.

  HE WAS, HE realized, halfway between London and Scotland, 250 miles to go. Before he could fall down at her door. Or not.

  He could turn around, work out his exchange, never see her again, only talk briefly about the cases. They never had to meet at all. He could go back, professional relations would be resumed; she’d succeeded in what she had to do and given her evidence. Everything would go back to normal, as if it had never happened.

  LISSA WOKE SUDDENLY on the train, not sure why. At first she was completely disoriented, couldn’t remember where she was. Then she went to the window. They were flying through moonlit valleys and dales, not yet in Scotland, somewhere in the heart of the UK, between two worlds. London and Scotland. She sighed. That was what it felt like, to be in different places at once. Her heart was in Scotland but her life . . . well, her life was in London. She knew that now. She could thank that Cormac, she supposed. Whoever the hell he had turned out to be in the end.

  CORMAC’S PHONE PINGED. He leaped on it, his heart beating.

  Up for baby. Good news, desperate need.

  His heart sank. It was Lennox, expecting him to be turning up with lads who would work for a bit. Maybe he could drop them off and turn around. Have a quick nap and head back.

  Nobbo snorted and turned over. Cormac thought of them all, young lads, nothing to do, hanging about on street corners, starting fights. How much they might change; how much they were capable of. He already knew how well Robbie had settled in, and he had been in a much darker place.