Chapter 17
‘Just hold on a minute, Bear, I know I put them in here somewhere,’ Alice said, one hand holding Bear’s lead, the other deep in between the stack of bags, dog paraphernalia and snacks that filled the boot of her car.
Bear was straining to get at a discarded crisp on the ground inside the Eurotunnel terminal, his paws sliding on the lacquered flooring. Finally she pulled out a handful of poop bags. ‘Just in case,’ she said to him, and shut and locked the car, taking Bear for a bit of exercise before they made the crossing and left England behind them.
‘Look, a St Bernard,’ someone cried not far away.
They’d only been driving for two hours so far, Islington to Folkestone being relatively easy, but Alice was relieved at how chilled Bear had been in the car. Much more so than she, who had needed to pull in twice for drive-thru Starbucks to calm her nerves and stop herself from turning around and going straight back to her parents’ house.
After a vigorous run about a lovely big dog exercise area, Alice went to the pet reception, where Bear couldn’t have been made to feel more welcome. Then it was back in the car, drive the car into the Shuttle, and thirty-five minutes later they’d be in France. How easy it was to run away. She could almost feel the Channel breeze calling her off this little island.
‘So this is the plan,’ she told Bear an hour later, who seemed no more interested in urban Calais than he had been in urban Folkestone. He raised his orange eyebrows at her from the back seat, where he lay hunkered down in his travel hammock. She smoothed the map out on the passenger seat, just in case she needed to see the bigger picture. ‘I’ve put into the satnav the whole route from here to Vanessa’s house, which is nearly ten hours of driving time. We can’t do that all in one day, so we’ll spread it over two, depending on how you get on. Let’s get going and see how far we get before you become restless, okay?’
Bear yawned and closed his eyes, looking as comfy as if he were back in her now empty flat, squished between the sofa and coffee table.
‘When we start to get bored of driving, I’ll find a nice place for us to spend the night.’ She was talking to herself now (was she always?) as she pulled the car away from the Eurotunnel terminal and began winding her way through Calais, thinking carefully over the rules of French roads and reminding herself to drive on the right.
As city turned to suburbs which turned to countryside, Alice relaxed into the seat, a freeness tingling through the back of her neck and down her spine. It felt good to be making a change. She hadn’t felt brave for a while, and now finally she was doing something to survive, and to live.
‘You know,’ she said to Bear, peeping at him in the rear-view mirror. He opened an eye and looked towards her. ‘Your mum, your first mum, always wanted to take you on a road trip to Switzerland. She talked about it before you even lived with her. I was going to go with her. So this was always written in your stars.’
He stretched comfortably and closed his eyes again.
For the next couple of hours, Alice let her mind drift as she followed long French motorways. For the first time in what felt like a long while she found she was thinking ahead instead of back. Picturing what was to come instead of what had been. She imagined Bear’s little (big) paws dipping into snow for the first time. She thought about how clean the mountain air would seem compared to London. She pictured all the cheese in Switzerland oozing deliciously into her belly.
Bear was getting shuffly in the back and let out a whine, so she pulled off at the next exit to let him out for a wee. But he didn’t seem to need to go, and instead hung close to her and refused any water.
‘Did you just need to stretch your legs a little? Shall we get back in and carry on now?’
They climbed back in the car, but Alice had only been back on the road for ten minutes when Bear whined again, and then promptly threw up all over his bed on the back seat.
‘Oh no, oh Bear, you poor thing, please don’t lie down in it, please please please.’
Alice pulled off again and using a mixture of poop bags, wet wipes and dog towels, cleaned the sick up as best she could, only for the same thing to happen again shortly after they resumed their journey.
‘Well, one thing I didn’t factor in was you getting car sick.’
She stopped the car again, cleaned up, and this time lay a big towel over the whole bed. She got out her phone.
‘We haven’t covered as much ground as I’d hoped today, but we’ve got all day tomorrow. Shall we call that it and then set off early in the morning? I’ll be more prepared for puppukage tomorrow, just in case.’
Alice looked on the Airbnb app for nearby pet-friendly accommodation. ‘Where even are we?’ she asked aloud.
GPS told her she was not far from a little village in the Champagne region. ‘I’m not adverse to that,’ she told Bear, and clicked onto a listing that seemed reasonably priced. ‘What do you think of this – a private room with asalle de baininside a chateau! Fancy staying in a castle tonight, Bear? Will that suit you and your dodgy stomach?’ The advantage of a castle, along with it being quite interesting and hopefully laced with free champagne, was that it would hopefully be cold, which would suit Bear to a tee if he was currently a bit hot and uncomfortable.
It was decided. The chateau, divided into apartments, with bricks the colour of champagne itself, shuttered windows and two spiky turrets, had an instant book feature, which was perfect for a girl and her dog wanting to check in within the next twenty minutes. She booked it without another thought, and then drove slowly down the lanes towards the address, hoping not to disturb Bear’s stomach any further.
‘Look at this, Bear,’ she said as they pulled up.
In the low afternoon sunlight it was even more beautiful than the photos had suggested, surrounded by tall trees and the quiet you can only seem to find on grand estates in the countryside.
Bear hopped out of the car and as Alice was just thinking how quiet it was and how the air was fragranced with distant wood burning, Bear ran straight to the middle of the lawn for a poop. Alice chased after him, bag in hand, peeping up at the chateau windows for disapproving guests.
‘Thanks for that,’ she said to him, leading him to the front of the house. The door creaked pleasingly and she was surprised to see a reception on the inside, where she checked in as if it were a hotel. The host, an attractive man with extremely tight trousers and a touchy-feely attitude with her dog, showed them to their room.
‘Here you go,’ he said with a rich accent. ‘This is for you.’ He produced a small welcome basket out of nowhere for Alice, containing macarons and madeleines, and a tiny bottle of champagne. ‘And this is for you.’ He crouched down and gave Bear a thousand kisses, plus his own welcome basket of star-shaped dog biscuits.
‘Thank you so much,’ said Alice, and bid the man abon nuit. She realised there was no restaurant on site, nor for a few miles, and she didn’t want to get back in the car, so that evening she and Bear forced themselves to relax for the night. She gave Bear his pre-packed meal while she munched away on biscuits and champagne, and they whiled away the hours watching French TV together without knowing what was going on. Then they slept, with Bear below the large single-paned window and Alice with several layers on. It was good training for the mountain, she thought, as the champagne bubbles floated about in her until she drifted to dreamland.
