Bea bought a paper map in the shop and spread it out on the table, trundling a peanut along their route. The A26 to Dijon, and her brother Alex’s hotel, then south to Lyons, and west, and pray the Peugeot survived the Alps, and on to Milan. Milan, Parma, Bologna – the peanut wobbled towards Rome.
‘I’ll get you a toy car,’ said Dan. ‘They had them in the shop.’
‘Can’t be worse than the car we’ve got.’
‘True.’
‘If it dies, we can get buses and trains.’
‘Buses?’
‘Think of all the people we’d meet.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I am.’
They finished their coffee and set off again. The road was too loud for conversation. Bea spread out the map in front of her, comparing it to the satnav, dreaming. Lorries swayed above them and Dan gripped the wheel in the slipstream. A sideways wind spattered rain and dirt across the road. Then the country and the weather changed.
They stopped again, and Bea drove, swinging back into the line of traffic. It was hot in the car now so they opened the windows an inch. Bea didn’t want to use air conditioning because it made her feel guilty.
‘Yes, babe, every time someone uses air con a polar bear dies,’ said Dan, sweating.
She was not a person who ever dropped litter. He lovingly endured the bags and boxes of packaging that waited around the flat, and mocked her long scrutiny of the council website for collection days and recycling facilities. Christ, he would say, it’s only going to get melted down in China and sent back. I know, she would answer, but it’s all we’ve got. We have to try.
The wind rushed and whistled and hot sun baked the black plastic on the dash.
‘It’s only two more hours,’ said Bea.
‘God loves an optimist, my mum always says.’
Bea met Dan’s mother long before he met her parents. Jean had tidied and cleaned for her visit and put new antimacassars on the backs of the chairs and sofa, and there was freshly baked banana bread, warm, and spread with butter. Dan had met Bea’s parents only once, in a cafe on Marylebone High Street soon after they were engaged.
‘I suppose you have to, if we’re getting married, but it has to be neutral ground,’ Bea said. ‘I’m not going to Holford Road.’
Dan thought the meeting went all right, but was glad he didn’t have to see more of them. Her skinny little mother had said almost nothing, and looked bored, and it was obvious her father wasn’t ecstatic his daughter was going to marry a mixed-race unsuccessful estate agent. He didn’t think Griff was racist in the way he might have anticipated, but he guessed he had the pragmatic prejudice Dan considered particularly British; if you were rich colour was an accessory, if you were poor it lowered your stock. In the eyes of his future father-in-law Dan’s stock couldn’t have been lower. They had all drunk their tea, then Griff and Liv Adamson had picked up their designer sunglasses and headed home. They hadn’t seen them since that day. They invited only friends to the wedding – and Dan’s mother and aunts and cousins – none of Bea’s family, except her brother Alex, who didn’t come. Dan didn’t much like the sound of Alex, a waster who returned Bea’s endless effort and generosity with apparent indifference. She had cried after seeing him once. Anyone who made Bea cry was an arsehole as far as Dan was concerned, it took a lot to rock her equilibrium. But Bea insisted she loved her brother. And she couldn’t go to France without stopping by.