Welcome To Wherever You Are (25 page)

‘Your hooves are disgusting,’ began Eric, but Nicole kept her bare feet on the dashboard of the truck regardless.

Her red toenail varnish was chipped, and walking around in bare feet had left her soles dry and in desperate need of a pedicure.

‘And while you’re at it, maybe you could remind your legs what a razor looks like. You’re not German, and you’re not a lesbian.’

‘Okay, I’ll shave my legs when you remove that stick from your arse,’ Nicole replied, quietly proud of her comeback. ‘My feet are sweating down there so I’m letting them air.’

‘I love you, but you are a vile beast,’ Eric replied. Nicole took his smile as an apology for his earlier hissy fit, and decided she’d overreacted by fearing his mood swing. Nicole’s ponytail flicked from left to right as the warm wind blew through the open windows, but Eric’s face took the brunt of the sun.

‘Sweet Mary, mother of Jesus, this heat is turning my skin to leather,’ he moaned and pointed to the air vents. ‘And they are making it worse, because it’s like being blasted by a hairdryer.’

‘There’s a garage up ahead,’ said Nicole, ‘so I’ll fill the truck up with petrol and you stock up on more bottles of water.’

Eric pulled the truck onto the dusty forecourt, grabbed his wallet from the dashboard and headed into the store. Meanwhile Nicole grasped the nozzle of the petrol pump and began to fill the tank. Her eyes took in the station that could have come straight from a book of 1940s American photography. The pumps were decrepit but worked, and tiles were missing from the wooden pitched roof of the store.

She looked around the miles and miles of arid land ahead of them and wondered if she should call time on their adventure.
This
had been Mrs Baker’s final gift to her, she reckoned; the financial means and a kick up the backside she’d needed to climb out of her comfort zone and spend six weeks on the road travelling with her best friend. There was no pot of gold to find at the end of the rainbow because it hadn’t existed in the first place. Her actual reward was being free to do what she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it. And when all was said and done, she couldn’t put a price on that.

As the bell on the petrol pump told her she’d reached $40, the sun caught something in the car that dazzled her eye. She replaced the nozzle and opened the door to inspect the glimmer further, and squinted at the air vent Eric had kicked and cracked. The closer she got, the more it twinkled.

She poked her fingers inside, but the broken diagonal plastic strips were in her way. So, using both hands, she yanked at the air vent until it came away. Again Nicole wiggled her fingers inside, and this time, she pulled out a small, partially open velvet pouch with a drawstring. Puzzled, she undid the knot and poured the contents into her open palm.

It took a moment for her to understand it wasn’t a pouch full of broken glass, but of diamonds.

‘
Only when you allow the warmth of new experiences to fill your heart, will you truly realise how precious a gem your life is
,’ she whispered to herself, recalling the words written in Mrs Baker’s note. Then she recalled how Mrs Baker had spoken of the night she and her husband had spent by a lake while the stars above them ‘shone like diamonds.’ She turned her head and saw Eric at the cash register, paying for fuel and water.

‘Eric!’ Nicole shouted, and waved frantically to get his attention.

She poured the diamonds back into the pouch so Eric could experience the same surprise she felt, when she saw a small piece of torn paper crammed in the vent. The beaming smile spread across her face was rapidly replaced with confusion, then alarm, when she read the words.

‘Don’t let her son find these – they’re not for Eric.’

TWELVE WEEKS EARLIER – HOLLY COTTAGE, GREAT HOUGHTON, NORTHAMPTON

They had never met in person, but Mrs Baker’s housekeeper Maria recognised Eric from old family photographs now locked in a chest in her deceased employer’s attic.

Maria had expected someone to arrive at the cottage after Mrs Baker passed away but she hadn’t expected it to be Mrs Baker’s son.

‘Hello, my name is Nicole Grainger and this is my friend—’ the girl began.

She was as pretty as Mrs Baker had described her when Maria visited her in hospital. But she clamped her mouth shut and tried to hide her uneasiness at the sight of Eric. He had not been part of the plan.

‘I know why you’re here,’ Maria interrupted, and went back into the house leaving the front door open. She guessed Nicole and Eric were probably looking at each other, unsure of what to say when they followed her into Mrs Baker’s lounge.

‘Wait here,’ she ordered and left the room.

Maria closed the kitchen door behind her and uncharacteristically began to panic. She’d last seen Mrs Baker a few days before her death, when she’d told Maria of her plan to change a young nurse’s life. With Maria well provided for and bequeathed the cottage, Mrs Baker desperately wanted Nicole to experience the world. So she dictated a letter which Maria wrote. The diamonds were already in the truck’s air vent as instructed, and on the passenger seat was a box with enough money to get the truck up and running and exported to America. Nicole was then to pick it up at a dock in Chicago, the city that was the starting point of Route 66.

In the event that Nicole failed to discover the diamonds, Mrs Baker told Maria that at least her protégé would have had the trip of a lifetime if she followed a vague map, her cryptic note and could recall their conversations together. But Maria knew the last thing Mrs Baker would have expected, or wanted, was for the boy she once described as ‘a wolf in wolf’s clothing’ to have benefited from them.

So Maria needed a Plan B. She darted around the kitchen, silently opening and closing drawers until she found a notepaper and pen. She hurriedly scribbled the words ‘
Don’t let her son find these – they’re not for Eric
’, and poked it into the air vent before regaining her poise and showing her visitors the pick-up truck.

Then she clasped her hands, entwined her fingers and hoped for the best.

TODAY

The note tore Nicole apart like a bird hitting a propeller.

She was familiar with the expression ‘blood running cold’ but had never experienced it until that moment. It didn’t make sense, she thought – how on earth could her best friend of two years be the son of Mrs Baker? Why wouldn’t he have mentioned such a crucial piece of information while his mother was dying in a room next to him or as he and Nicole planned their trip? Why had he never visited her? He’d had every opportunity to do so, so there could only be one probable reason for his silence – he was using his friendship with Nicole to find his inheritance.

Nicole’s mind continued to race, still trying to find alternative meanings in the scribbled note, but there were none. It was what it was, and gradually memories of the last couple of months began to fit together like pieces in a jigsaw – Eric’s recent criticism of a woman he never knew; his eagerness to take two-month, unpaid sabbatical from work and accompany Nicole, and then his fury when they reached Buffalo Springs Lake.

‘Eric, you can’t be . . .’ she said out loud.

‘I can’t be what?’ came a voice in her ear, making her yelp.

‘What’s with you?’ laughed Eric.

‘Nothing! Nothing,’ Nicole replied. The rapid speed of her pulse made her body judder. Her fist clenched the velvet pouch, and its contents dug sharply into her hand.

‘What happened to the vent?’ he asked, noticing the plastic casing lying in the footwell.

‘Erm, I was picking at it,’ Nicole stumbled, and slowly slid the pouch from her hand and into her pocket. Then she picked up the casing and jammed it back in place. ‘Can we go?’

Eric returned to the driver’s seat, put his seat belt on and pulled away, ready to return to Venice Beach. As Nicole tried to regulate her breathing, she was unaware the breeze coming through the windows had blown Maria’s note under her seat.

Some 3,000 regulars made their way to downtown Santa Monica’s farmers’ market each and every Sunday.

Unlike other markets throughout the city, Santa Monica’s appealed to more than single shoppers or restaurant staff picking up the freshest local produce for their eateries. It targeted young and old with food stalls, arts and crafts stands, face painting and pony rides.

‘This looks just ripe enough,’ said Jane, picking up a grapefruit and squeezing it. ‘It should have a good week left in it.’

‘How do you know this stuff?’ asked Savannah, who back in Alabama, never had call to set foot inside a supermarket let alone a street crammed with colourful edibles.

‘When you’re a mum they give you a manual for this kind of thing.’

When a confused Savannah frowned, Jane added, ‘I’m kidding, darling.’

‘How many kids do you have?’

‘Oh, I have two,’ she replied casually. ‘Well, I had two, but they passed away. It still never sounds like it’s me when I’m saying that.’

‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ gasped Savannah.

‘That’s okay. And speaking of children, when are you due?’

There were almost 130 people from 28 different nationalities sleeping under the roof of the Venice Beach International Hostel.

But Tommy still instantly recognised the figure walking along the corridor ahead of him, even with the back of his head obscured. The olive green frayed backpack was a giveaway, decorated with dozens of airport security tags, flight labels, Greyhound and Amtrak tickets and stickers hung from straps and zips; a tapestry of wanderlust that could only belong to Jake.

Tommy felt a sudden sense of dismay when he realised Jake had packed up to leave. He’d already lost one ally in Nicole that week, but that friendship was only ever going to be temporary, and Tommy felt that he and Jake still had some way to go.

Meanwhile, as Jake made his way towards the hostel’s front door, he was still embarrassed and angry with himself for letting his guard down and befriending Tommy. Even though he hadn’t revealed anything about his past life as Stuart Reynolds, pop star, he’d allowed Tommy to get closer than most. Jake hadn’t planned to kiss him and he knew Tommy was straight, but he’d let his emotions get the better of him and acted on impulse, not forethought.

Jake was attracted to Tommy, he could admit that to himself now, and like any gay man who’d ever had a crush on a straight guy, he knew nothing would come of it. So, to stop himself making more of a fool of himself than he already had, he reasoned it was better to just disappear.

‘I thought you only left when people weren’t looking?’ yelled Tommy.

‘Oh hi, yeah,’ Jake replied, turning around and clearly flustered.

‘So?’

‘So . . . what?’

‘So you can’t leave because I’m looking.’

‘I made a bit of a tit of myself so I thought it best I just . . . go.’

‘Ah, you mean after you tried to snog my face off?’ Tommy teased.

‘I was a bit emotional. I was thinking about home and, well, I dealt with it the wrong way. I’m sorry.’

‘You said being homesick was the sacrifice you make for a fresh start.’

‘Using my own words against me, eh? Maybe I’m not as sorted as you think I am.’

‘Maybe you’re just more human than you realise.’

‘Possibly,’ thought Jake, ‘or maybe I’ve just made more fucking stupid decisions than you’ll ever know.’

TWO YEARS EARLIER – LONDON

The tinted windows of the limousine couldn’t completely hide the camera flashes as Stuart and soap actress Katie Begley pulled away from the red-carpet film premiere and drove towards London’s Embankment.

Even though the clock was approaching midnight, the roads were overcrowded and they moved slowly as the audience dispersed towards their vehicles and public transport.

A familiar, frosty silence between Katie and Stuart filled the limo as it often did when they were left alone. Theirs was a relationship of convenience, dreamed up by managers and PR experts eager to promote both their brands. In front of the cameras, they were love’s young dream, but away from the flashing lights of the paparazzi, they had little in common and even less of a desire to discover common ground in their manufactured worlds.

Katie tucked her strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear, put her fingers down her blouse and pulled out four finger-sized paper wraps from her bra. She expertly tapped out a powdery substance from one of them onto her clutch bag, placed the wraps on it and carefully shaped four lines with her VIP lanyard.

‘Haven’t you done enough of that already?’ Stuart asked. ‘You took enough toilet breaks during the film to snort half of Columbia.’

Katie ignored him, then removed a straw from her purse, placed it at the base of her nostril and snorted two lines in quick succession, finishing with a long, hard blink as the cocaine numbed the back of her throat.

‘Do you want some?’ she asked Stuart, pointing to the remaining lines.