Page 74 of The Trip of a Lifetime

Martha lifted the whole thing up and it looked like an alien. ‘You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,’ she said, but Erin could see Noah lift an eyebrow.

‘I’ll do it,’ she said and stepped back to the counter.

‘Right,’ Phillip said and began to talk them through the process. The first step involved decapitating it right above the eyes, which seemed to stare at Erin as she moved the knife. ‘Then make another cut below the eyes, pull out the hard beak from the middle of the tentacles and then we turn the head inside out and pull out anything we don’t want. A good wash and then we slow cook. Delicious.’

Erin had completely lost her appetite and when they were finished and Phillip offered them some lunch, she made some noises about becoming a vegetarian. But she was also hungry and didn’t complain when two steaming bowls of seafood pasta and garlic bread arrived.

And after that, they were paid and off to the bus station.

‘I always feel nervous on the last leg of each journey,’ Erin said as they waited for the bus to arrive. ‘It’s almost worse when there are no other contestants with us. They could all be anywhere.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Martha said. ‘I feel twitchy too.’

It was at that very moment that the doors to the bus station opened and in walked both Femi and Liz. Martha laughed.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ she said good-naturedly. ‘I thought we had really pushed ourselves and must be out in front. Wrong again.’

‘We must have pushed ourselves harder,’ Femi said. He sat down heavily in the seat beside Erin and let his bag fall to the floor. ‘No matter how hard we move ourselves, there always seems to be someone just in front,’ he said. ‘But we expected it of you two this time as you had an hour’s head start.’

‘It just seems to prove that when there are several different options for travel, we will still all end up on the same boat, or bus, or train,’ Erin said.

‘But really, it’s not that surprising when they run these boats, buses and trains only a few times a week,’ said Liz.

There was also something a little comforting about meeting up with the others en route. It somehow reinforced the idea that they hadn’t made a poor choice. Erin had her eyes glued to the door in the hope that Sam and Harrison would walk through it but at three, when they were loaded onto the bus, there was no sign of them, or of Priya and Tara. Erin pushed down her disappointment. They would be in Charlottetown by just after five. And after that, they just had to wait and see.

The Confederation Bridge was an interesting way to get to Prince Edward Island. There was a point in the middle for a while where each slip of land was only just visible. It was much longer than any bridge Erin had travelled across before. She made some notes in her journal. Ticking off her list of things she’d never considered but had now done was giving her a new-found strength. She liked herself a little more every day of this trip. Maybe by the end she might even love herself a bit. Maybe. Being honest with Martha had been a huge step in that direction, that was for sure.

The bus rumbled to a stop and as soon as it did they heard both theirs and Femi and Liz’s trackers beginning to beep. Erin dragged it out of her bag while Martha scrambled to get off the bus. And there it was again; they were back in race mode. Having the other two with them made it all the more stressful.

Proceed to the Anne of Green Gables museum

‘Where the heck is that?’ Erin asked, but Martha was smiling.

‘It was one of your mother’s favourite books when she was a child,’ she said wistfully and then seemed to catch herself, which gave Erin a jolt of sadness.

‘That’s lovely,’ she said gently, touching her grandmother’s arm. ‘Where is it?’

‘I have no idea. Let’s ask someone,’ Martha said and pulled Erin away from the bus station and along the pavement as if she knew where she was going.

‘I don’t want Femi and Liz to know what we’re doing,’ Martha said.

‘And what are we doing?’ Erin asked her.

‘I don’t know that yet, either.’

They were on a main road with huge car dealerships lining one side. They’d come into town past pretty, pastel-painted boarded houses but this seemed to be the business end of things. There was a drive-through called Tim Hortons on the other side of the road and they crossed over and into its car park.

There was a mother with a young child coming out of the building and Erin walked over to her.

‘Hi, can I please ask you where we might find the Anne of Green Gables museum?’

‘Sure, it’s about a forty-five-minute drive.’

‘I think we should try and get a taxi,’ Martha said. ‘I don’t want to waste time waiting for a bus.’

‘We’re in a race,’ Erin explained to the woman.

‘In that case, a taxi is your best bet,’ the woman said. ‘You won’t get a bus all the way anyway, so you’ll need a taxi.’