Claire wondered if those people would say the same now. She had a job writing about travel, there was that at least. And a failed marriage on the horizon, just like him too. Claire swallowed, turning to look out of the window at the forest-fringed road to distract herself.
‘No wonder your car’s playing up if you’re treating it like a trolley,’ Milo said. ‘There are such things as glove compartments, you know. Speaking of which,’ he said, leaning across her and opening the glove compartment as she tried to control her heartbeat, ‘I can’t promise any Bob Dylan but I have some U2 tapes somewhere.’
He pulled a tape out and stuck it on as Claire forced herself to relax. Over the next three hours, Milo drove them around beautiful fishing villages where he seemed to know half the people, waving at them out of his window. When they stopped at a couple of places, Milo led Claire on a wild goose chase to find a ‘little tea room with outdoor seating I’m sure’s just around the corner’ or an ‘old open-air book market I swear is just here’. He only seemed comfortable outdoors, hovering outside with Archie and Blue when Claire wanted to pop into a shop or museum.
They drove even further along the coast, stopping to take a twisting coastal walk up a hill thick with grass, sheep grazing in the distance, the growl of waves nearby, the mouth-watering smell of fish and chips from one of the restaurants dancing up the hill towards them. They talked a lot, Milo telling Claire about his childhood on the farm, she telling him about her job and the people she’d met along the way – about everyone but Ben, the person who pulsed between them wherever they went. When lunchtime drew closer and closer, Claire found herself not wanting to leave. As though sensing her thoughts, Milo looked down towards the restaurant where the delicious smells were coming from. ‘Hungry?’ he asked with a smile.
She thought of Henry who’d be looking at his watch while tapping his fingers on the table. Maybe he’d even called her from the restaurant phone? She didn’t dare check. She didn’t want to check. She wanted to stay here, her troubles a distant memory, just the sea, Exmoor’s sloping hills, two dogs and Milo for company.
She matched his smile. ‘Very.’
Half an hour later, they were eating fish and chips in a café overlooking sandy, windy beaches.
‘You eat very slowly,’ Milo said, watching as Claire chewed on a chip.
‘It’s become a habit, I guess. My dad once said travel writing’s about all five senses, so I savour every mouthful to write about it later.’ She laughed as she watched Milo wolf down a chunk of cod. ‘Maybe you should try the savouring thing too?’
‘Have you seen the way my brother devours food and drink? I’ve had to learn to eat quick around him so he doesn’t get a chance to steal my stuff.’ He took a quick sip of cider. ‘So your dad taught you everything you know about writing, right?’
‘Yep. Jay was right: he was a really special writer. I have this one article of his I like to read over and over. Funnily enough, it’s about a country that’s really close to us, Belgium. He visited Ypres with my mum and sister while Mum was pregnant with me and he wrote about how the air was so heavy with loss and torment, he was scared it would infect me as I grew in Mum’s belly. But then he saw a solitary poppy, and it reminded him that birth and death are part and parcel of life, with blood spilled both times. It is what it is.’
‘I’d like to read that.’
‘I’ll dig it out and send it to you. It won an award, the Flora Matthews Foundation Prize for Travel Writing. It’s pretty prestigious.’
‘Sounds it.’
Claire looked down at what remained of her food. ‘That’s the night Dad left us actually.’
Milo frowned. ‘Left you?’
‘We woke to find him gone the morning after the ceremony, just a note scribbled on the back of the awards menu I’d kept. Time to march off the map, my darlings. All my love, Daddy Bo.’
‘I’m sorry. How old were you?’
‘Sixteen. Looking back, it shouldn’t have been a huge surprise. He’d started taking all that marching off the edge of the map stuff too literally, banging on about needing to leave behind societal pressures – which, in the end, meant his family too.’
‘Where did he go?’
Claire shrugged. ‘No idea. We didn’t hear anything from him over the next few months, not even on my seventeenth birthday or at Christmas. It felt like he’d thrown us away like a piece of rubbish. Mum said we needed to accept we might never see him again. My sister Sofia grew bitter. She’d never been as close to Dad as I was, but that really changed things for her. She pretended like he was dead.’ Claire looked down at the tiny globe hanging from her bag. ‘But I refused to give up on him. Six months after he left, I used the money he’d left in my savings to go find him.’
‘Brave,’ Milo said softly.
‘I was brave back then.’
‘Not now?’
Claire shrugged again.
‘So did you find him?’ Milo asked.
‘Not then. I carried on travelling for a year or so, making money from articles. My mum met a new guy, moved to Hong Kong with him – she’s still there now. Sofia started training to be a solicitor, the very job my dad despised. It was only me who followed his path, travelling, writing. Then my uncle passed away. Mum couldn’t track Dad down to tell him, so I did some investigating and …’
She paused, hearing the smash of rain against glass from the day she’d found him. She quickly swallowed down more cider.
‘You okay?’ Milo asked.
She nodded. ‘I – I found him dying in a flat in New York. Turned out he’d been living there the past year, dying of liver cancer, refusing to bend to societal pressures and get medical help. He died in my arms a few days later.’
‘Jesus, I’m so sorry, Claire.’
They were quiet for a few moments as Claire remembered how it had felt to see her dad lying there. She remembered thinking, Is this what marching off the map does – drives people apart, leaves people dying in pain all alone?
She’d cared for him over the next few days, reading his favourite books to him, sharing memories from her childhood. The third night, he’d gestured towards one of the drawers in his room. Inside, Claire found a sky lantern, just like the ones they used to send skywards each New Year’s Eve, all the troubles and negativity of the year before written down on notes attached to them and sent away forever. He scribbled a note with trembling hands: his name, Bo. She hadn’t understood at first. But when he drew his last breath and her world felt like it was ending, it dawned on her: he wanted her to let him and all the negativity associated with him go.
So that very night, she did what they’d done every New Year before: she sent the lantern skywards, her father’s name attached to it.
‘I went back to the UK after,’ she said, sighing. ‘Talked myself into a university course—’
‘Talked yourself?’
‘I’d been home-schooled, remember? Dad said education was just society’s way of brainwashing children so I had no qualifications. So I wrote this long rambling letter to a bunch of admissions directors at various universities and one recognised something, got me in for an interview and that was that. I worked my arse off, came away with a first-class degree in English, got the job at the magazine, got a mortgage, life insurance, the works, everything Dad once despised.’ She forced a smile onto her face as she took a sip of cider. ‘And now here I am.’
‘Why did you do everything your dad despised?’
‘Seeing