Page 68 of To Hell With It
I won’t. They can sleep in your old room, and I’ll tuck them in every night.
Fuck off.
Have a safe trip! X
* * *
When the bus pulled up, I could see it was full before it had even reached me. I watched as more people squeezed on, and at the same time my airways felt like they were being restricted, much like the inside of the bus. I heard the sound of a cough on repeat and the unmistakeable splatter of a sneeze. Sometimes, if I don’t actually see a sneeze happen, I will re-enact what I heard in my head in the hope I might have got it wrong, that it might have been an exaggerated cough that sounded like a sneeze (because a cough was better than a sneeze).
But it was a sneeze in all its glory because I saw the woman rubbing her nose with a tissue afterwards. Even if she had covered her mouth, it would still have been in the air, tiny sneeze particles floating about ready to latch onto me. There would be no getting away from it.
I was contemplating waiting for the next bus, when Eve pulled up beside me in her van. It wasn’t a camper van like I had imagined. It was a white transit-type van with windows on the sides and maroon-star hubcaps. Eve unwound her window.
‘Want a lift?’ She was chewing gum. I hate gum.
‘I’m heading to Te Puke, it’ll take you ages,’ I said, but I knew I’d rather travel with one stranger than fifty.
‘I’m heading that way too, I’ve got work out there.’
I’d looked up Eve’s name as soon as I’d got back to the hostel the night before. It meantliving,which suited Eve because she came across as someone who grabbed life with both hands.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked, but it was me who wasn’t sure. I hadn’t even seen inside her van, it could have been a dump, and she had a cat, how the hell was I going to travel with a cat in the back? Where did it go to the toilet?
I glanced back at the cramped bus, thought of the woman’s sneeze, the cough, the tissue, the particles that would surely be all over me.
‘Hop in.’ Eve grinned.
And so I did.
Eve’s van wasn’t a dump. There weren’t clothes strewn around or piles of dirty washing flung onto the floor. Everything was in its place, neatly put away, just as it would have been if it were mine. There was a small square table in the middle with bench seats either side and two cupboards above with two more underneath.
‘It folds out into a bed,’ Eve said proudly. ‘My ex made it. Pretty cool, aye?’
It was pretty cool. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. I’d seen pictures of camper vans online but never for real.
‘What about the toilet?’ I asked.
‘What about one?’ Eve said.
‘Where do you go if you need to?’
‘Where did we go before we had toilets?’ she quipped back.
‘How do you wash?’
‘In the river or the sea, usually, but if I’m washing my clothes at a campsite I’ll treat myself to a shower. But it’s better for you to have a cold one. It’s good for the soul. Have you ever tried one?’
‘A cold shower?’
She nodded.
‘No.’
‘You should try them. They’re great,’ she said as she pulled away and I squeezed a splodge of sanitiser into my hands out of sight. I left just enough to ensure I could run my fingers along the seatbelt as I clipped it in.
‘Where’s your cat?’ I asked.
‘She’s in there,’ Eve said with a nod of her head.
