Just Between Us by Adele Parks

Author:Adele Parks [Parks, Adele]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2023-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

26

Stacie

It is starting to get dark, as the journey home takes far longer than it should. Traffic curls around every winding road. The lanes are soon clogged. On three occasions, a stream of vehicles are forced to reverse on a single-track road to give way to oncoming traffic. Some drivers appear flustered or incompetent; there’s a lot of posturing. My dad manages all the manoeuvres steadily and skilfully, but the atmosphere is still charged. Tension rolls through the car like a sea mist. It smells of us, bodies that wash in the sea more often than in the shower, dusty plastic dashboard, feet. I press the button to open a window; nothing happens. ‘It’s broken,’ Dad mutters.

These are the first words he’s said since I got in the car. I glance his way and catch his gaze. Cold. Cross. He’s furious with me for slipping out of the house and going to a crowded town where I might become infected. When he found me in Lyme Regis, he was purple in the face, incandescent. He repeatedly spat out the words ‘All these people, Stacie. So many people.’ I am equally furious with him because he forced me to abandon my research trip. I feel like a naughty teen who has ignored her curfew and whose parent has crashed the party, turned off the music, switched on all the lights and exposed the teenagers who are smoking dope and copping off. It’s mortifying.

Because of the traffic jams, we’re driving incredibly slowly; in fact we’re often completely static. I could get out of the car at any point and walk back to the town that was gifting me some memories. I’m not trapped. I’m not being restrained. Yet somehow it feels like I am, because considering Dad’s worry for my health, acting independently leaves me feeling selfish.

Eventually the traffic loosens and falls away, and in the last stretch homeward Dad puts his foot down and travels at speed. Too much speed, in fact. He takes the bends aggressively, no doubt as a way of venting his frustration at me. I wish he’d slow down. If the cancer doesn’t get me, a head-on collision with a tree most certainly will. At one point my head almost touches the car’s roof as he takes a bump at speed; the car is old and the suspension does little to cushion the impact. The headlights bounce on the road ahead and startled animals scamper out of danger, their eyes glinting with terror. I hope to hell no child of a holidaymaker strays out in front of us like the rabbits, foxes and mice have. A child wouldn’t be as quick or knowing about getting out the way.

‘Slow down, Dad.’ I grip my library books and my knuckles turn white.

‘Oh, now you want to be sensible,’ he bites back with uncharacteristic sarcasm.

I turn my head away from him and study the farmhouses in the distance. These homes are filled with people living ordered lives; lives they understand and control.

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