‘Predictable,’ Josie teases.
‘No, it’s a classic!’
Josie laughs, opting for a lurid strawberry/bubblegum duo, which she devours with enthusiasm. ‘We’ve got to do our photo,’ she reminds him, ‘at our venue. The Marine Hotel, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh God, yes.’ In the headiness of the day, Shane had forgotten. But now he remembers exactly where it is, and leads them straight to it, a little way back from the seafront. Or rather, to where it was. Because it turns out that the old-style seaside hotel, where the kindly owner had brought them platters of sandwiches as they ran through their soundcheck, has now gone. A retail complex sprawls over the area where the ornate whitewashed building once stood. Shane shrugs off his mild disappointment as they take their Polaroid in front of a featureless furniture store.
‘I guess it’ll do.’ Josie slips the picture into her pocket.
‘It’ll have to.’ Shane catches her gaze and smiles. ‘That was a fun day anyway, wasn’t it?’
‘It really was,’ she says as they make their way back to the campsite. ‘The kind of seaside day we had when we were kids.’
Shane murmurs in agreement – although he never had those kinds of days. ‘Oh.’ She stops, frowns and touches his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Shane. That was really insensitive of me.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ he says with a shrug. ‘I know what you mean. Remember that school trip we had to Morecambe?’
‘Oh, yeah!’ She grins, and he catches something flickering in her eyes. They’d sat together, Shane and Josie, on the back seat on the way home. There’d been some teasing from his mates, about how he always seemed to be near her. How there were plenty of other free seats on the coach. Naturally, he’d laughed it off.
They’ve reached the campsite now, where tempting aromas are already wafting from the communal barbecue set up next to the wooden reception hut. It’s a golden, long-shadowed evening, and a full-scale feast seems like an awful lot of effort for the smattering of campers who have gathered around the trestle table. But everything is delicious, and as beers flow and the sky darkens, the atmosphere is touchingly jolly. By the time Shane and Josie repeat their getting-ready-for-bed routines in the van and shower block, he is overcome by the kind of pleasant drowsiness that only ever happens after a day by the sea.
When Boris said you can’t beat the freedom of being on the road, Shane hadn’t believed him. Perhaps it was because his joints hurt sometimes from lugging heavy instruments about. Or the fact that, since he’s been a dad, he has always favoured Spanish holidays with the kids. Maybe he was also feeling a bit prickly about Rich Tony. Whatever it was, Shane suspected that ‘van life’, as Boris termed it, was overrated.
Now, though, as Josie sleeps soundly beside him, Shane replays the day in his head: the bitterly cold sea, gritty sand in his pants and a gull plunging down to steal his predictable vanilla.
It was perfect, he decides. So maybe Boris was right after all.
23
JOSIE
I’m feeling optimistic about Scarborough and we’re not even there yet. I’m thinking hot dogs and ice cream (choc-mint chip this time) and jangling amusement arcades. Plus, it’ll be another stage of the tour completed which means we’re over halfway through, with just two stops left – Pontefract and Huddersfield. Then home! Mission accomplished! Although that doesn’t feel quite as alluring as it had a couple of days ago.
Perhaps it’s being by the sea, which I’ve always loved. When Cora was a baby, and things were rocky with Dale, she and I would escape for a day at the coast. Could I build a life without him, just for the two of us? Those breezy Brighton days made me believe that it might be possible.
Or maybe it’s Shane, and being together isn’t as torturous as I’d expected? Fun even, at times. So I have a feeling of quiet optimism about the day ahead.
However, by the time we reach the town’s fringes, along with its sweeping coastal views, Scarborough has something unexpected to offer us. Torrential rain. It’s gushing down, as if from a gigantic overhead shower, like the kind Cora and Zack had installed. She turned it on once to show me how powerful it was.
We pull into a lay-by where Shane goes to buy our now customary bacon rolls from a roadside kiosk. While he waits, I check my phone and see that Lloyd has messaged me.
Lloyd
Hope trip going well! Wanna see what I’ve built for you?
Josie
Of course!
I am picturing expertly constructed shelves, fitting snugly into my kitchen alcove. Lloyd might be annoying, in the way he fazes off sometimes when I’m chatting to him and I realise I might as well have been talking to a potato in the vegetable rack. But he’s handy, and that’s no small factor. Dale could barely operate a pepper grinder.
I glance out to see Shane waiting in the small queue, sheltered by a candy-striped awning from which rain is pouring, bouncing in puddles on the sodden ground. My phone pings: Lloyd has sent me a picture. It’s not shelves, after all, but a kind of shallow rectangular wooden trough, filled with what looks like soil.
Josie
What’s this?
Lloyd
