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  Chapter 7

  LOTTIE COULDN’T BELIEVE TINA WAS hungry again. Maybe it was her energy that gave her such a large appetite. It was only when Tina collapsed into one of her sudden sleeps, head down like a switched-off toy, that she stopped moving. The rest of the time she was either talking or gesticulating or asking to stop and walk somewhere. Lottie was still angry at what she perceived as her sister’s flippancy about Mia, although her irritation had been somewhat assuaged by the purchase of a large wooden horse sculpture from a shack they had stumbled upon in the woods. The man who had made it had been so ingrained with dust he looked a little like one of his own creations. It was beautiful, with its flared nostrils and wild mane, and she hadn’t been able to resist. Especially because she knew that it would irritate Tina.

  ‘Bloody fantastic! Now we’ve got a flipping great lump of wood and an urn of ashes,’ Tina had said, in a disgusted tone of voice.

  The horse was now sitting on the back seat strapped in by a seat belt.

  They rejoined Route 1. After the mottled shade of the trees, the light was almost Mediterranean, as if they had passed through an invisible boundary. Already the earlier soft mists had moved into memory and the sea had changed to a jaunty turquoise.

  They stopped by a working pier with sinks and taps for rinsing fish and pelicans on posts. In a salty, brisk seafood outlet they ate bowls of clam chowder and white fish fried in olive oil, fragrant and new from the ocean. They toasted their trip with bottles of Amstel Light. There was happiness, somehow, in the air, even though they had been mired in a kind of discontent such a short time ago. It was like that with sisters, Lottie reflected: you moved from love to annoyance and back again in seconds. Beneath their feet the glass floor revealed the lazy perambulations of seals and fish in silver clouds, moving as one.

  *

  The road smoothed out and lost its showy curves, the cliffs giving way to barren, rounded hills and plains of cattle. The Beach Boys sang ‘California Saga’, and in the sky a plane had left the smudged words ‘Open For Business’ across the blue. In Morro Bay Tina bought them matching cowboy hats.

  ‘We’ve got to get into costume,’ she said. ‘Do this thing properly. Mia would have wanted us to be cowboys.’

  Lottie could tell she was making an effort. She offered a feeble protest, saying that it would make them look like tourists, but capitulated when Tina placed the hat on her head and fastened it firmly under her chin. They wandered down a street of shops selling shells and trinket boxes and slabs of fudge. There was a huge extinct volcano peak, over five hundred feet high, planted out in the bay. According to the leaflet, it was twenty million years old and one of nine. The other eight were now submerged under the water. Lottie thought of the landscape below their eyeline, mountains and valleys and plants moved by the water as if blown by the wind. Dean would like this town. There was something orderly about it that she knew would appeal to him. He was a man who stored the screwdrivers in strict size order in his immaculate toolbox. Sometimes she would deliberately put things in the wrong place just to rile him.

  ‘Do you think I’m boring?’ he’d asked her once, after she had teasingly paired his socks into mismatched days of the week, Monday toes tangled up with the Friday ones.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she had answered. ‘You’re just a little predictable.’

  He had smiled and nudged her out into the garden and they had made love in the hidden spot on the lawn between the shed and the row of bamboo. His face had been full of her even though he was already late for work. Afterwards, he put on a pair of the mismatched socks and left the house whistling. The memory of his triumphant gaiety made her smile now.

  She was distracted from her thoughts by the sight of a giant conch shell, glinting at her through a shop window.

  ‘No. Just no,’ Tina said threateningly, seeing the direction of her gaze. ‘We’ll have to hire a trailer if you carry on like this.’

  Lottie regretfully tore herself away. They walked on in silence, enjoying the sun on their arms and the sense of not having to be anywhere in particular. It struck Lottie that she was getting accustomed to Tina’s relaxed approach to travel. There were certain compensations for not knowing where you were going.

  ‘What do we have in common?’ Tina suddenly asked.

  ‘Umm, well . . . we both like cheese. We like making stuff.’

  This latter thing was certainly true. All three of them had always had restless fingers. They kept themselves occupied with glue and wool and beads, a hundred projects started and never quite completed.

  ‘And freckles. We all have freckles. Do you remember we once joined all of Mia’s freckles up with a magic marker when she was asleep? We made constellations on her face – I can’t believe she didn’t get mad.’ Lottie smiled. ‘We have freckles, and we know the names of the stars,’ she said firmly, as if she was trying to convince herself of something.

  Up ahead of them, a man was bending over the open bonnet of his car. As they approached, he shut it with an angry bang and turned round.

  ‘Fucking hell, it’s Spike!’ Tina said. ‘What’s he doing here?’

  Almost at the same time, he saw them too, and his face broke into a broad grin. There was a slight tensing of his body before he relaxed into his greeting.

  ‘Well, howdy!’ he said, indicating their hats.

  ‘Are you following us?’ Tina asked.

  ‘No, I’m not, although I admit it kinda looks that way,’ Spike said, rubbing his hands, which were dark with engine oil, against his jeans.

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘I’m due in Mexico in a couple of weeks but I have some vacation to take. So I decided on the scenic route.’

  ‘And you just happen to be in the exact same place as we are on the exact same day?’

  ‘It looks like I’m some kind of stalker, doesn’t it?’

  Lottie thought the man did rueful extremely well. He smeared a trail of grease across his forehead.

  ‘I’d lay money on it,’ Tina said grimly.

  Lottie smiled. ‘We are, of course, delighted to see you.’

  ‘Well, I’m not bloody delighted,’ Tina said.

  ‘I know how it seems, but seriously, I wouldn’t even be here now if my car hadn’t broken down. I was aiming for an overnight stop just beyond Guadalupe. I’ve got a friend with a house near the beach. Thought the two of us could hang out and do a little fishing.’

  ‘Well, good luck with that,’ Tina said. ‘We’ve got to be on our way.’

  ‘Will you at least stop and have a coffee with me? I’ve rung the local garage and they’re coming to look at my pile-of-shit car.’

  ‘I’d like a coffee,’ Lottie said. It was not very often that she had the upper hand, and she wanted to play it to the full. She was curious to know exactly what had happened between Tina and Spike that meant that, every time her normally laid-back sister saw him, she acted like a cat on a hot tin roof.

  Tina looked furiously at her.

  ‘What was it you were saying about taking things as they come?’ Lottie said. ‘This is a perfect example. We bumped into Spike, which is something we were not expecting.’ Tina made a kind of humphing sound, not so dissimilar to the noise the seals had made in Monterey. ‘And so now, according to your own philosophy, we should go with it, right?’

  ‘OK,’ Tina said ungraciously, ‘but we’ll only stay for a short while.’

  They went into the nearest place, an eco-bakery of the kind that Americans called ‘cozy’, its walls advertising poetry slams and jam sessions, the slamming and the jamming all presumably taking place among the woodblock tables and hanging bunches of chilli. Lottie was amused to see the way that her sister insisted on ordering a cup of coffee to take away, as if she couldn’t bear the thought of actually sitting down at a table with Spike. In the end it was clear that she felt a little foolish standing at the counter with her cup in her hand, and so she joined them with the same look on her face that she had worn as a c
hild when she was thwarted in any way. She had always been a terrible loser. She would cheat and lie her way to victory, doing whatever she needed to do to get around the board, or to the winning post first. She would trip you up if it meant she would win the race.

  ‘You’re so competitive it’s scary. You actually have the characteristics of a psychopath,’ Lottie had said once, when it was discovered that Tina had Blu-Tacked winning cards to the underneath of the table during a game of rummy. Lottie had developed a fondness for books about serial killers.

  ‘It’s better to read something than nothing at all,’ their mother had said when she discovered a book about a man who specialised in melting faces by Lottie’s bed.

  ‘You’re just as competitive as me,’ Tina had answered. ‘It’s just that you are passive-competitive. You pretend you are not competitive, but you actually are.’

  ‘For your information there is no such thing as passive-competitive. There’s only passive-aggressive.’

  ‘Well, you’re that too,’ Tina had said.

  ‘So where were you two heading next?’ Spike asked. He really was incredibly handsome, Lottie thought. The kind of handsome that she often found intimidating, but somehow, on him, wasn’t. He wore his beauty with a kind of nonchalance, and his clothes looked as if he had pulled them from the back of the car and put them on. She supposed there was no call for looking smart when you spent your time on dusty, wide-open spaces looking for black rocks.

  ‘We’re going where the spirit moves us,’ Lottie said, giving Tina the side-eye and making Spike laugh.

  ‘I’ve heard that somewhere before,’ he said.

  ‘All the best road trips are spontaneous,’ Tina said stiffly, her hauteur somewhat diminished by a moustache of coffee foam.

  ‘Well, I hope you guys aren’t going to spontaneously drive off a cliff or anything.’

  ‘We’re going to sprinkle our sister’s ashes,’ Lottie said. ‘She was really into westerns, so we are taking her to Monument Valley.’

  Tina looked at her as if to tell her to shut up.

  ‘Oh,’ Spike said, ‘I’m sorry. I knew there was a third sister, but I didn’t know she had died.’

  ‘She died three years ago,’ Lottie said, ignoring her sister’s repressive look.

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘Thirty-nine.’

  ‘What happened? If you don’t mind me asking.’

  ‘She died suddenly,’ Tina said, in her I’m-shutting-down-this-conversation voice.

  ‘That’s so sad. Well, I hope you find her a good resting place.’

  Just then his phone went.

  ‘Ah, the mechanic is with my car, I’ll be back in a moment.’ He hurried out of the café.

  ‘He’s nice,’ Lottie said.

  ‘If you say so,’ Tina said.

  ‘What happened with him? Did you have a relationship that went wrong?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Tina answered.

  *

  Tina could still clearly remember the first time she had seen him. She had been out with a group of friends, fellow Brits that she had hooked up with in San Francisco. One of them, a scientist, had previously met Spike through his work and stopped to say hello. It wasn’t his looks that had first caught her attention; it was the life that sparked off him. He didn’t stay talking long, only enough time to exchange some pleasantries, but after he had walked on, she remembered feeling brightly and uncomfortably alive, as if something coarse had grazed her skin. She didn’t think he had even noticed her.

  It seemed, however, that he had. A week or so later she had been at The Fillmore, seeing a band she had never even heard of. She’d only gone because there had been a spare free ticket. Someone had tapped her on the shoulder as she was waiting to be served at the bar and she had turned round to see him standing there. She had felt the same impact as before, but this time she noted the shape of his face – an almost cartoonishly perfect jawline, a sensual mouth and dark eyes that were not quite symmetrical, the slight dissonance making him even more striking.

  *

  ‘He’s actually very arrogant,’ Tina said now, although she knew her description wasn’t quite fair. He certainly wasn’t without vanity. Like many handsome men, his looks sometimes made him lazy. His emphatic beauty often acted as a substitute for the effort less well-proportioned men put in. He was used to being looked at, being favoured, but she knew his handsomeness was a lucky sideline in him rather than a defining characteristic. It wasn’t quite that he was arrogant – more that he was unbending. You were either in or out. There was little room for manoeuvring. He reminded her of Lottie, actually, in the way he made up his mind and stuck to it.

  ‘He doesn’t seem that way to me,’ Lottie said.

  ‘You’re quite smitten.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Not smitten, of course not. He’s just quite impressive. That self-contained way he has about him. The fact he doesn’t seem to notice how breathtakingly gorgeous he is.’

  ‘Oh, he notices all right,’ Tina said.

  In the far corner of the room, a poetic battle had commenced. A man and a woman – she dressed in kimono and hair ribbons, he already sweating and pinkish in a cloak – were spinning Shakespearean riffs.

  ‘I think it’s probably time to go,’ Tina said.

  Just as they were getting up, Spike came back in.

  ‘The car is a no-hoper. It’s going to cost more to fix it than it’s worth. I’ve told the man to take it away to be scrapped.’

  ‘Oh, that’s such a shame,’ Lottie said.

  ‘I guess I’ll have to hire a car. I might have to scratch my idea of taking the leisurely route to Mexico and go back to San Francisco.’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be,’ Tina said.

  She swept out of the café. Lottie trailed behind her, casting apologetic glances over her shoulder.

  Back at the car, Tina put on her dark glasses and revved the engine impatiently as Lottie got in.

  ‘I feel sorry for him,’ Lottie said.

  ‘I wouldn’t waste your energy,’ Tina said. ‘He’ll be fine.’

  ‘Couldn’t we just take him part of the way with us?’ Lottie said.

  Tina scowled. ‘No, we absolutely could not.’

  ‘It might add another dimension to our trip,’ Lottie said, as Tina pulled off with a showy screech of tyres, one hand holding her hat on.

  ‘I wonder what darling Dean would say to see you so taken by another man,’ Tina said, and Lottie subsided into silence.

  A mile or so down the road, Tina drew into a lay-by.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘it might be a good idea if we take him along.’

  Lottie was astonished.

  ‘What’s brought about the change of heart?’ she asked.

  ‘I think that Spike Linden could be just the thing we need on this trip,’ Tina said.

  She made a risky three-point turn and headed back the way they had come. Now that her sister had capitulated, Lottie wasn’t feeling quite so sure about the decision. Ten minutes ago she had been all for it, partly because Tina was so resistant to the idea. Her sudden reversal was a little puzzling. Tina might be a free spirit, but she could also be extremely calculating, and Lottie wasn’t at all sure that her present calculations were benevolent.

  ‘Maybe this isn’t such a good plan after all,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t change your mind now,’ Tina said. ‘Challenge Number Five is you have to agree to take Spike with us.’

  Back in Morro Bay, they found him unloading his rucksack from the back of his car. The mechanic from the garage was reversing his truck into position so that he could tow it away. Tina drew up alongside him.

  ‘I’ve been prevailed upon by my better half to take pity on you,’ Tina said, tilting her hat to the back of her head. ‘Do you fancy hitching a ride with us?’

  Chapter 8

  SPIKE HAD BEEN SURPRISED TO see them again in Morro Bay. The screech of their departing tyres had sounded pr
etty final to him.

  ‘No, I couldn’t impose. This trip is a sister thing, isn’t it?’ he had said, trying to read Tina’s inscrutable face behind her sunglasses. ‘I’ve decided to take the train back to San Francisco and get a ride to Mexico in a week or so with one of my colleagues.’

  ‘What about your fishing excursion?’ Lottie asked.

  ‘The fish aren’t going anywhere,’ he had said, pulling his rucksack onto his back. It weighed a ton.

  ‘Get in,’ Tina had said, revving the engine. ‘You’ve got exactly five seconds to make up your mind.’

  His immediate impulse had been to walk away. He disliked being faced with ultimatums of this sort. Tina’s brand of spontaneity had always contained an element of coercion. She had fixed ideas on what constituted living life to the full, and often derided as dull the people who didn’t fit in with her vision.

  ‘All that saving and scrimping,’ she had once said with disdain after visiting some friends who had been proudly showing off their new apartment. ‘All those years of monstrous doing without, just to live in three rooms with a view of a supermarket.’

  He hated the fact he remembered so much of what she had said all those years ago. It felt like a weakness in him. She hadn’t changed at all. She still had that maddeningly superior way about her, the same disregard for other people’s feelings. Her sister seemed to be a less fixed and softer character. He detected a humour in Lottie’s face, a kind of wry self-deprecation that was singularly absent in Tina, who had always taken herself far too seriously. This was ironic, considering she claimed to make things up as she went along.

  ‘We’ll feel bad abandoning you here,’ Lottie said.

  It was the kindness in her voice that finally made him decide to heave his bag onto the back seat and get in.

  ‘Mind my horse,’ Lottie had said, and he wriggled in alongside the thing, his feet resting between its wooden fetlocks.

  *

  On the freeway just past Pismo Beach the coast was suddenly expansive. The palm trees and luxurious villas looked more like the South of France than America. Here the waves rolled in orderly ranks beyond smooth pavements on which people in expensive jackets were pulled along by silky dogs. Further along, towards Guadalupe, a vast, agricultural valley stretched around them, striped with rows of crops. Endless fruit stalls – strawberries and yet more strawberries – lined the road, their hot, candy sweetness combining with the woody odour of cut celery. Long lines of sprinklers misted the horizon. The road ran through a small town – a library, a grill, a garage with towers of tyres, Kmart, a bridal shop – and then continued on, stopping eventually at a car park. Beyond that lay the ocean and a moonscape of dunes.