The Vintage Ice Cream Van Road Trip

‘Will Wilf be at the wedding?’ Annie asked, not really taking her eyes off Holly.

Emily nodded, ‘Definitely, he’s just invested in a bar with my mum’s new husband.’

Annie looked pointedly at Holly, ‘You should do it, Hols. You should go with Emily.’

Holly ignored her.

‘I’ll pay you. What are you thinking, cost wise? You name it, I’ll double whatever you’re thinking if I can make this happen.’ Emily looked at Holly, her face serious, as if she’d suddenly snapped into business mode.

Holly watched Annie lean down at the window and wait to listen to what Holly would say. She knew Holly needed money. She had no steady job, she’d taken the last seven months off and had very little savings left. Now she was about to have a baby to support and only the minimum government maternity allowance to do it with.

‘I don’t know,’ Holly said in the end. Behind her she could hear Matt shout again as the kids started to chuck water at each other again, ‘If you lot spray me again, I’ll put the hose on you. Julian! I’m warning you.’

‘I really think you should, Hol,’ Annie said, eyebrows raised.

‘Why are you using that tone of voice, Annie?’ Emily asked. ‘Is this to do with Wilf? Holly, did something happen with you and Wilf, because you know I thought something did and I asked him and he said that nothing happened, which is unusual for him, but I was sure something happened. Did something happen?’

‘No.’ Holly shook her head. ‘Nothing happened.’

But as she said it, she was caught in the midst of the full-blown water-fight that had broken out between the juniors and Matt, who had just turned the hose on full force.

‘Oh my god!’ Holly held her hands up against the water.

A second later, they were all dripping. Emily’s bare legs and the hem of her denim dress were soaked. Annie’s choppy blonde fringe was flattened to her head. But Holly had got the brunt of it and was wet from head to toe. Auburn hair darkened to black, skin glowing with water, eyelashes all clumped together, black leggings wet through and baggy white T-shirt now see-through and sticking to her body.

Anyone who was looking would notice, before she turned away to grab her sweatshirt, that she was probably about three months’ pregnant. And, of course, Emily was looking.

‘Oh Jesus,’ Emily said as Holly stood there, trying to get her jumper on as fast as possible. ‘Are you preggers? You’re not…? You are!’ She held her hand to her lips for a second, then asked, ‘Is it Wilf’s?’

‘Can we just not talk about it?’ Holly said, waving her hands to try and make Emily be quiet.

‘Holly, this is all the more reason to come to France. You could sound Wilf out.’

When Holly didn’t reply, just looked around to see who might be within earshot, Emily added, ‘the worst thing you could do is not tell him, Hol. He doesn’t trust people very easily at the best of times.’

‘And how do I tell him?’ Holly whispered, not looking at Annie, who seemed to exhale with relief that she’d finally admitted who the father was. ‘I can’t just text him and say, by the way, I’m having your baby.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh please.’

‘I could tell him for you.’ Emily shrugged and got her phone out of her pocket.

‘Don’t you dare!’

Emily laughed as Holly tried to snatch it from her. ‘So come to France, then! Please. It’ll make my mum love me and she’s been in a filthy mood since that whole Rolling Stones nightclub paparazzi incident. And you can tell Wilf all softly, softly in lovely warm South of France-esque surroundings. Pleeeease.’ Emily held her hands together and stared at Holly with her big blue eyes. ‘If nothing else, do it for the money.’

‘The money would be useful, Holly,’ Annie added.

Holly looked up at the van, at the blue and white striped awning and the inside patterned with tiny blue forget-me-nots. She wondered what Enid would have told her to do. Enid was always about straight-up honesty. Except Annie had found a government letter in the café clean-up addressed to Enid about a guy injured in the war. A guy who wasn’t Enid’s husband. So maybe she wasn’t so honest after all.

She thought back to when she was an angry fourteen year old. Holly remembered sitting on the fridges in the van, eating a 99 with chocolate sauce. It was just after her mum had left. Ran off with one of the men she cleaned for. They’d apparently been having an affair for two years. Two years Holly and her dad’s life with her had been a lie.

Two years.

She remembered a conversation she’d had with Enid, who had subtly stepped into the void left by her mother. She was there keeping watch, always just checking…

‘Coach Billy says you haven’t been training for two weeks,’ Enid had said while serving a little boy a lemonade lolly.

‘Why is he telling you?’

‘Well, if he tells your dad he knows he’ll probably take it a bit too seriously. And if he tells you, he knows he’ll get some smart-arse response. So, seeing as I have to put up with you every afternoon, not really working—’ She’d turned to look at her. ‘Am I paying you to sit on the fridge? Or to clean the fridge?’

‘Clean the fridge,’ Holly had said, crunching on the cone of her 99.

‘Well clean the bloody fridge. Jesus Christ, girl. Your mother has a lot to answer for.’ Enid pulled a couple of 99 cones for a group of school kids and then wiped her hands and took a swig of her Coke. ‘You make your own future, Holly. Don’t let your mother’s mistakes mess up yours. You’re a good little rower and you could go far. I want to be cheering for you at the Olympics, not watching you getting stoned round the back of the playground like the kids I’ve seen you messing about with. Go and find Annie, be nice to Emily ‒ she’s not all bad ‒ and get back in a boat. OK? You have potential. Yes?’

Holly slid off the fridge top and went and got the Mr Muscle.

‘Yes?’ she said again.

Holly stared down at Enid’s orange flip flops. ‘Maybe.’

‘For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve never been afraid of anything. Don’t start now.’

Back in the present, Holly looked from Emily to Annie and back again. Emily was watching her, all big eyes and nodding. Annie’s eyes were narrowed, clearly unsure which way it might go.

‘OK. OK.’ Holly nodded, and Emily clapped her hands together. ‘It’s not a bad idea. I know I have to tell him, and yes, this could be a good way of doing it.’

‘Awesome,’ Emily said, standing back to admire the van. ‘The ferry leaves tomorrow evening.’

Chapter Three

From: [e-mail]

To: [e-mail]

We need to talk. Emily says you’re pregnant and it’s my baby.

I’m playing polo tomorrow. Come by the club on the way to your ferry.

Were you ever going to tell me?

W

Chapter Four

‘Jesus, you told him?’ Holly was waiting by the ice cream van, hopping from one leg to the other, waiting for Emily to turn up. As soon as she could see her at the end of the road, she shouted the question at her.

‘It slipped out,’ Emily called back. She was walking slowly in high wedge mules and skin-tight black Capri pants.

‘It slipped out?’ Holly held her arms out either side of her. ‘You only had to keep it in for an evening! How did it slip out?’

Emily got to the van slightly out of breath, ‘Oh I don’t know, I was excited. I didn’t think you’d ever tell him.’

‘Oh man, Emily, now he hates me. He thinks I was never going to tell him.’

‘No, he doesn’t hate you.’ She bit down on her slick red bottom lip, ‘He just maybe isn’t quite sure, you know? Needs maybe calming down a bit.’

Holly raised her eyebrows, aghast.

Emily looked sheepish, ‘It didn’t go quite how I thought it would. But I think it’ll be OK. You've got all of France to talk about it.’

‘Shit!’ Holly hit the side of the van.

‘You look really tired.’ Emily pulled her sunglasses off and stared at her.

‘That’s because I didn’t really sleep last night! Oh god, Emily. Why do you do this to me?’

‘It’s fine.’ She waved her hand. ‘Oh look, there’s Annie. Hey, Annie, do you want to come to France with us? I’m worried that Holly might kill me. I need a chaperone.’

Annie was holding in a smile as she appeared with a big shopping bag that she handed to Holly, ‘I made you both some travelling sustenance. Thought it might help.’ She made a face at Holly, half sympathetic, half encouraging.

‘Is there pie?’ Emily asked, tottering over to peer in the Sainsbury’s bag. ‘Ooh there is, and what’s this, a Thermos. Well done, Annie. It’s like a proper road trip.’ She glanced at Holly. ‘Oh come on, smile, talk to me. You can’t ignore me the whole way. We’ve got a twelve-hour drive ahead of us. So I messed up. I think it’ll be a good thing in the end. Look, we swing by the polo, we sort it out, we meet up in France in a couple of days when he’s calmed down.’ Emily glanced at Annie who nodded enthusiastically at Holly.

Holly rolled her eyes. ‘Fine,’ she said, trying not to look across the river at the boat club and the white froth of cherry trees behind it, trying not to feel that she was driving away from everything she knew and everywhere she felt safe. ‘Let’s go, let’s get this over with. Thanks for the food, Annie,’ she said, pulling herself up into the driver’s seat and picking her sunglasses up off the dash. ‘Wish me luck.’

‘Good luck, Hols. It’ll be OK. Just think that you’re doing it for the baby.’ Annie crossed her arms in front of her and smiled.

Holly blew out a breath and nodded, covering her eyes with her aviators.

Emily went sheepishly round to the passenger side. ‘Bye, Annie,’ she whispered. ‘Wish me luck.’

Annie scrunched up her face in sympathy, ‘Good luck, Em. Email me…’ she called as Holly started the engine. ‘Keep me updated. I want to know everything.’

They drove pretty much in silence. Emily, who clearly had a hangover from all the champagne at the regatta and didn’t want any more tellings off, wrapped her scarf round her head, put her bare feet up on the dashboard and went to sleep against the passenger side window.

Holly had been practising a technique from a stress-management talk given to the GB team at one of their international training camps. At the start of a race they’d been taught to think of a time they felt strongest and a time they felt calmest. The aim being to channel those feelings instead of the sick-making, hand-shaking pre-race nerves. Which were similar to how she felt now. Morning sickness was nothing compared to her current nausea. A couple of Rich Tea biscuits would not make this go away. Instead she thought of her strong time. She used to use a memory of winning her first-ever race, crossing the finish line and seeing her dad cheering and waving his arms triumphant. Now she needed something else, something less physical strength and more emotional.

She thought of kneeling down next to her dad’s chair in the living room when she was back from university and saying, ‘You have to tell Mum she can’t come back. Dad, she’s using you. She’s using us. She comes back and then she leaves, can’t you see that? You have to tell her that she can’t come back this time. You have to.’ All the while thinking, let her beg to stay, please let her beg to stay and say that she’s changed. Please let her surprise us. Please let it be different.

She thought of her dad taking a deep breath, shaking his head and leaving the room. Her thinking that it would be the same. That once again her mum would come back for six months or so and then break their hearts again. That all the courage it had taken for her to tell her dad to make this change was for nothing.

Until she looked out the window the next morning and her mum was getting into a black cab. And her dad was watching from the porch. And Holly felt this shuddering sense of relief that it was over.

She had waited on the stairs for her dad to shut the front door and when he’d seen her he’d come to sit down next to her, the paisley carpet under their feet, put his arm around her shoulders, kissed her hair and said, ‘Thank you.’

That was her feeling of strength.

That was the courage that flooded through her veins.

And the calm? The calm was the mornings on the river. Always the same. In winter the sheets of ice would crack and float like sculptures, in spring the cherries would flower and the river would flood and burst its banks, in summer the cygnets would grow into big, fat swans and in autumn the leaves would paint the sky red like a bonfire. Every morning she would take her boat out, she would row up to the weir and back, past the willow dipping its leaves tentatively in the chilly water, past the pub, closed and shuttered up, under the bridge where she’d lie back and look up and see the moss growing on the wooden slats. The river would always smell the same, a sharp tang that infused her skin, her clothes, her life. And as her boat floated in the stream, she would watch the water as it eddied and flowed and the waves danced in the rising sunlight.

That was calm.

Two minutes later, Emily woke up, all groggy and complaining of a crick in her neck. And as she yawned and stretched her arms and the van rounded a bend, ahead of them a huge white and maroon sign for the polo club, she peered forward and said, ‘We’re here. That’s Wilf’s car.’

And all Holly’s inner calm and strength went straight out the window.

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