Fran has a tried-and-tested solution for dealing with her problems: run away.
And despite what the self-help books say, it's worked pretty well up until now. "Now" referring to her hiding in the seaside town of Seacombe until the end of summer, and...
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Should be arriving at Seacombe in 15 minutes. Can you give me a lift from the station?
The open fields of the countryside, dappled with the deep evergreen of the occasional row of pines, tore past as the train ripped through it. Fran leaned back in her seat again, watching the scenery flick past her, blurring into a smudge of colour, and then pressed 'send'.
Now that she was nearing her destination, all the feelings she'd managed to wrestle down when she bought the ticket a couple of hours ago were bubbling back up again. Fran bit the nail off her thumb, trying to pin it down. Mostly a kind of restless anxiety, although she wasn't sure what about. Spending the summer in a new place, perhaps. Or seeing her uncle after so long. Or perhaps it wasn't anxiety but frustration, and she knew exactly where that was coming from.
"This train will shortly be arriving at...Seacombe," the friendly voice from the intercom piped up. "Please ensure you have all your belongings with you..."
Awkwardly, she amassed her stuff, slinging her duffel bag over her shoulder and then, more carefully, pulling her guitar case strap over her back. Feeling huge and cumbersome, she struggled off the train, bouncing off the doorframes and eventually tripping out onto the platform.
"Goddamn," Fran cursed, regaining her balance. She cast a guilty look back at the train, lest anyone had witnessed her ungainly dismount, but the other passengers seemed more preoccupied with their phones, or tablets, or friends, and the train soon pulled away from the station, whipping her feathery blonde hair into a flurry in the backdraft.
So, this was Seacombe. She had to confess, she was underwhelmed. The train station was just two sleepy platforms, connected by a footbridge, with a small café inside the ticket office. There was barely anyone around, giving her as much time as she needed to gain her composure, negotiate the ticket barriers, fumbling through her duffel for her purse, and then emerge onto the pavement outside the station.
Her uncle spotted her immediately. Stocky and approaching forty, he seemed a lot more relaxed since the last time she'd seen him, being screamed at by her aunt Frieda on a very windy night two years ago. He'd cut his unruly brown hair and trimmed his beard back to a crop of stubble, which made him look less 80's rocker and more open and mature. Fran was wondering whether she preferred him with the beard or without and missed the first part of his greeting.
"You made it," he was saying – a little unnecessarily, she thought – after she'd zoned back in. "How was the journey?"
"Fine," Fran said, putting her duffel in the back seat. "Very scenic. I keep forgetting we have countryside in England."
Darren laughed. "You'll soon get bored of it."
He was a better driver than her mum, Fran noted, watching him wait for a couple of cyclists to go by before rolling carefully out of the bay and hitting the road at a leisurely 30mph. She seemed to operate on a 'speed-limit-plus-twenty' rule, hurtling down narrow residential roads at 40 plus and climbing to over 100 on motorways.
