The Vintage Ice Cream Van Road Trip

‘Ssh!’ Holly glanced back around, checking no one could hear.

‘Holly, they’ve got no bloody idea what folic acid is!’ Annie laughed, pushing cropped blonde hair away from her face. Her clothes were wet from where she’d pulled the boat out the water. ‘It’s quite refreshing actually, being covered in river water! It’s so hot,’ she added, ‘And I’ve got to get back in that ice cream van.’ For the duration of the regatta, the Dandelion Café had decamped into an old blue ice cream van that was parked on the left of the boathouse. Previously owned by the late island matriarch Enid, it had been pulled out of retirement for the day’s events.

Holly tried to land the motorboat, but it was too hard with the addition of the broken rowing eight and reversed so she could get a better angle.

‘We’ll get it, miss,’ shouted Julian.

‘No you stay there…’ she started but, ignoring her, all eight of them plopped into the water again and swam over to unhook the bit of boat.

‘Ah, you’re so good,’ Annie said as they swam-walked it back to the bank. ‘They’re lovely, your lot, and they clearly worship you.’

‘Annie…’ Holly glanced over her shoulder, ‘I know what you’re doing.’

‘I’m not doing anything, I’m just ‒ well ‒ I want you to know that I think you’ll be a lovely mum.’

Holly glared at her, worried that people on the bank might hear.

But Annie just leant forward and nudged her on the shoulder, saying excitedly, ‘You’re having a baby!’

Holly exhaled slowly and turned to look at the next race coming down the river.

‘Oooh, it’s Matt,’ Annie said and got up on her knees to start cheering from the boat.

Holly watched the race coming towards them. Cherry Pie Island Regatta was always her favourite day of the year. The sun was usually shining, the blossom was out, big, fluffy white balls of it, the petals getting in people’s hair and landing like confetti in the water.

Matt’s crew was winning by no more than a foot. The crowd on the bank were shouting and cheering. The two boats stormed past them like great, thundering racehorses, kicking out a wash that rocked their little launch. Annie wobbled and had to sit back down again.

This world Holly understood. But the world that was coming her way, she had no idea about. People often asked her what it was like at the Olympics. How she’d managed to cope with all the pressure. But it was like her old coach said to her, ‘There’s no such thing as a bad race, Holly, just bad equipment and bad preparation.’ She couldn’t have been more prepared when she’d sat on the start line of the Olympic final. Mentally, physically, she was in top shape. This, however, this now, this little lemon-sized baby, this was bad planning and bad preparation. And she was absolutely terrified.

Matt’s crew won. The crowd let out a roar. She watched her dad punch the air from where he’d just skidded his bike to a halt. Corks popped from the hospitality tent. Someone inside the ice cream van flicked the switch and the nursery rhyme tune blared out. Matt and all his crew saluted, dressed in their matching Cherry Pie pink racing kit.

In the motorboat, Holly drew them up level with the landing stage and cut the engine as Annie hopped out and tied it to the mooring.

Then, grabbing a megaphone that was on the bank, Annie shouted, ‘Free cherry pie all round.’ Then she grinned, held out her hand to help Holly out the boat, and when they were side by side, nudged her again and said, ‘It’s so exciting, Hol. You’re having a baby!’ Then, checking no one was coming over, went on to say, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to tell me who the father is?’

Chapter Two (#u8f1ceb95-f703-5eb5-9cc1-efb50bbbd010)

The kids all went wild for free cherry pie and ran to queue at the ice cream van where Martha and Ludo from the Dandelion Café were serving from the little hatch.

As Matt’s crew pulled up to the landing stage, triumphant, he called Annie over as she was heading back to the ice cream van to serve. As she got close, he pulled her into a great sweaty kiss that made all the kids cheer and then the rest of his crew prised them apart and chucked Matt into the water.

Holly was dragged by the hand over to the line of rowers waiting for cherry pie slices and the story of the crash was recounted to her in great, excited detail. Then she saw Julian get distracted by something behind her, put two fingers in his mouth and do an ear-splitting wolf-whistle.

‘What’s that for?’ Holly asked and glanced over her shoulder to see Emily Hunter-Brown, the woman from the hospitality tent, sashaying towards them. She moved like a Praying mantis, long legs and arms almost feeling the way in front of her, stepping over a fallen tree trunk as elegantly as she could in six-inch peep-toe ankle boots, a denim mini-dress and a huge leopard-print scarf that hung off one shoulder like she’d just dragged it on as she stepped out of bed. She was holding her turquoise hat in one hand and had taken down her ponytail so Holly could now see that half her white-blonde hair had been dip-dyed blue. Over her eyes were sunglasses the size of melons.

It felt like the whole boat club turned to look, the guys carrying their single sculls from the water paused with their boats on their shoulders, the umpires stopped mid-manoeuvre in their motorboats, even Matt paused as he towelled himself dry after his soaking.

‘Darlings…’ Emily called when she was within earshot. ‘Holly!’ She waved. ‘Annie!’ She looked beyond Holly to where Annie had got back into the van and was helping to serve the cherry pie and tea. ‘I haven’t seen you for ages, Annie. And, Holly, we hardly got to catch up the other month. You did an amazing job on the vocals. I was so impressed.’

Holly smiled almost shyly. Since she’d given up rowing she’d done some ad hoc sessions for Alan Neil who owned the Lighthouse Recording Studio and had been working for him the week The Rolling Stones had come in to record. Emily had been there as part of their exclusive entourage.

Decades ago Alan had noticed Holly’s vocal talent when she sang in the school choir, but it was around the age that she’d chosen rowing over singing. It wasn’t a choice she regretted ‒ rowing had taken her across the world, introduced her to amazing new people, pushed her to limits she had never thought possible, all the while offering her a focus away from her crumbling home life. But she was never a hundred percent certain whether she’d chosen the rowing path to spite her mother who was so keen on the singing one, or whether she’d just acted on an instinct that happened to clash with her mother’s preference. She hoped it was the latter ‒ but she remembered her fourteen-year-old self as being very stubborn.

Now, the work at the recording studio offered the option of a different path and was like a second chance, a breath of new air. The week Emily had been there had been the best week Holly could remember and she’d loved it ‒ the smell of the studio, the intensity of the work, the camaraderie and then the ensuing buzz and the wind-down that had led to lock-ins at the The Dog and Cherry, champagne in the cherry orchard and, as rumour had it, some naked midnight swimming in the river. It had been such a contrast to her life up to that point that she’d felt freer than she thought possible.

But then she’d made one classic mistake and now she was pregnant. And her mind was still clinging desperately to that sense of freedom, willing it back, willing it to stay.

‘Emily Hunter-Brown. Well, look at you!’ Annie jogged over and gave her a kiss on both cheeks.

‘Annie!’ Ludo called from where he was working furiously inside the van, ‘She comes, she goes, she does no work! Nothing!’

‘Sorry, Ludo,’ Annie laughed, then made a guilty face to Emily and Holly and sloped back to the van. ‘I’ve spent all week stuck inside the café with the builders. If I’m not there they do nothing. How hard can it be to fix a café roof?’ she added as she pulled the van door open and hauled herself inside.

‘I heard you’ve taken over the café?’ Emily said to Annie, wandering over and resting her elbows on the shelf of the ice cream van.

‘Off!’ ordered Ludo, bashing her arms away with his spatula, ‘There’s too much work for chatting.’

‘Aye, aye, tiger,’ Emily said with a giggle. ‘He’s a feisty one, isn’t he?’ Then she took a step back and ran her hand along the side of the ice cream van, ‘I loved this van. It’s so sweet… Do you remember it was every afternoon after school in the summer it’d be by the park gates? God and you used to work in it, didn’t you, Hol? I forgot about that. And Enid would always get cross cos you gave us free Mini Milks. Ha, have you got any Mini Milks, Annie?’

‘’Fraid not, just cherry pie, Victoria Sponge, tea and coffee. It’s Holly’s van now, did you know that? Enid left it to her.’

‘Is it?’ Emily turned Holly’s way. ‘I’m so jealous. I just love it.’

Julian sauntered over in just his tracksuit bottoms, his bare thirteen-year-old chest puffed out and said, ‘We cleaned it yesterday.’

‘Did you now?’ Emily said with a smirk, humouring his seriousness.

‘Oh yes. I can give you a tour if you like. Show you all the work we did?’

‘I think I’m OK, actually,’ Emily smiled. ‘But thanks for the offer.’

‘Well, anytime,’ Julian said, chucking his T-shirt over his shoulder and loping away, trying to look like a real dude. Emily scrunched up her nose at Holly to show how sweet she thought he was.

Holly laughed.

‘So what are you going to do with it? The van? Do you rent it out?’

Holly walked over to join her next to the window and the little shelf that had flower pots of cutlery and blossom twigs in jam jars on it. ‘I don’t know really, as Julian said, I’ve only just got it out from beside the boathouse. It took the whole day to scrub it down. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it.’

‘I’ll hire it.’

‘What for?’ Holly frowned.

‘You know my mum’s getting married. Again. In the South of France. She'd go nuts for this van. Like totally nuts. She loves ice cream.’ Emily walked round to the front and traced her hands over the little round vintage headlights, ‘Weirdly, her favourite flavour is vanilla. Who has vanilla as their favourite flavour?’

‘I like Ben & Jerry’s Karamel Sutra,’ shouted Julian from where he was packing up his bag.

‘Oh god!’ Emily giggled and shook her head. ‘I’m old enough to be your mother, so stop flirting.’