Page 54 of The Trip of a Lifetime

‘Do you know, Martha, I think I’d have been bloody good at it,’ he said and I laughed. ‘I bet you were good at it.’

And there we were, inching closer to Clare and even though I usually loved any excuse to talk about my daughter, I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to Harrison about her so I just nodded.

‘Yes, I think maybe I was.’

24

ERIN

Sam drove them south while Erin tried not to think about how much her head hurt. She’d taken a proper crack on her forehead and even though it had stopped bleeding, when she lowered the sun visor and found a mirror, she could see she had one hell of a bruise developing.

‘Am I missing something here?’ Sam asked her. ‘Should I be driving you to the hospital? You’d say if it were bad, wouldn’t you?’

‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I just have a headache, that’s all. I’ll get some of those tablets from Martha when we catch up with them.’

She was quiet for a while, just watching the long road ahead come up to meet the bonnet of Chuck’s truck. It was nearly six in the morning and the bus would be arriving in Winnipeg in an hour.

‘Our race is done,’ she said, suddenly resigned to the fact. Really, right now, she’d be happy for just her and Sam to keep driving all the way to St John’s. If she could just tune out the ache in her head she would be very comfortable here next to him. And then she wondered if maybe she had a concussion.

‘Yeah, I know,’ he said. ‘The others will be long gone as soon as they get off the bus. Liz is very fast.’

‘Do you care much?’ Erin said looking at him. He seemed to contemplate her question for a moment.

‘Do I care about missing out on the chance to win fifty thousand pounds? Yeah, of course I do. But do I care about winning the race? Funnily enough, not so much now,’ he said and caught her eye for a moment.

Erin felt sleepy and rested her head back, warm in the knowledge that Sam seemed happier to be with her than win the race. Or that was certainly what she got from his last look.

‘I don’t think you should sleep yet,’ he said.

‘You want me to navigate?’

‘No, I’m concerned you might have a concussion. Talk to me.’

‘About what?’

‘Anything. Tell me about your last boyfriend.’

‘Hamish?’

‘Was he a dog? My granny had a dog called Hamish,’ Sam said and Erin spluttered out a laugh.

‘He was sort of a dog but mostly a bit of a dick. He was Scottish. But that wasn’t the problem. He played rugby all the time; it was his life. He thought I was unadventurous and then broke up with me for a woman he works with.’

‘What an idiot.’

‘Quite.’

‘Hang on, is that why you asked me if I played rugby when we first met?’ he said.

‘Maybe,’ Erin said slowly, desperately trying to remember what else she had said that first night.

‘So, I did pass the test,’ he said and smiled to himself. ‘I row. I’m not that interested in games with balls.’

Erin spluttered again.

‘I wonder if I am actually concussed,’ she said. ‘So, you row, like in a boat?’

‘Like in a coxless four,’ he said. ‘And you don’t have to be childish about it.’