Chapter 1 Kier

1

Kier

Devon, July 2018

I read the other day that people who like to travel have a certain gene. An actual, bona fide, wanderlust gene.

It's called DRD4 7R and it apparently influences your dopamine levels, your tolerance for risk-taking – basically, the behaviours common in people who love to travel.

Now I'm checking out everyone, no matter what tribe – the luxe travellers, the culture vultures, the vanlife crowd – imagining us all sharing the same piece of rogue DNA.

I told Zeph about it yesterday and he laughed. Said the only thing we all have in common is that we're escaping something. Or someone. It's a Zeph thing to say, to veer into melodrama. It's the chef in him, his friend said. They're creatives , thrive on emotion, drama.

His friend's right, I think: Zeph's cooking our breakfast now, all big, bold gestures that leave no room for doubt. Loudly cracking the eggs against the pan, he drops them into the tomato stew to poach.

Huevos rancheros. Our favourite. The best thing to cook in a van. Eggshells tossed in the trash, Zeph rubs his head, palm rasping against his buzz cut. His features soften, he's done the hard work, making the stew itself – frying the onions to translucency, adding peppers, chillies, and garlic, then bay leaves, tomatoes, seasoning. It's now thick, reduced.

Lifting a spoon to his lips, he tastes, smiles. I can't help but smile too. I love watching him cook; it's the only time he isn't fighting a part of himself.

‘Nearly there.' Sensing me watching, Zeph reaches for a buckwheat pancake, lightly frying it in the pan on the other hob, already sizzling with fat. ‘Hungry?'

‘Starving.' I look out to sea. The breeze is tearing navy slashes through the turquoise, ragged lines pulling from left to right.

We designed the van so that the kitchen faces out, to take in views like this. And this view is something special. Although I've travelled all over, this stretch of Devon coastline will always be my favourite – tiny coves of sand and pebble, rust-red cliffs, and trees that creep right down to the water.

I learnt to swim in this water; kissed in this water; washed bloody, rock-grazed knees in it. I feel the rhythm of it inside me even when I'm miles away.

Zeph hums under his breath as he switches off the hob. Eggs done, he takes the pan to the table, balancing the pancakes and a bowl of grated cheddar on his arm.

I follow with the stew, place it on the table, pushing aside the map I'm working on.

Heaping cheese on the pancake, I spoon egg and stew on top, then greedily push it into my mouth. Texture first, the bite of the pancake, soft egg, before flavours hit, little fireworks of taste. ‘Amazing.' I wipe my mouth, take another bite.

Zeph smiles, blue eyes creasing at the corners. This is what he does; takes something that could be ordinary and makes it explode in your mouth. He was a chef until a few years ago, ran a successful restaurant in New York. His thing was doing meat and vegan food together way before vegan became fashionable.

Soon, his vegan stuff was all people talked about. For a while, he was everything. He was named Best New Chef in Food just the right kind of sweaty, one of those ironic nineties bandanna things in a lurid print that popped against his whites.

A stark contrast from when we met, during what he always describes as his ‘downwards spiral'. I was in Italy, Liguria, travelling. He was on a break. Burn out , he told me, but I later found out he'd been fired.

On the back of three years of rumbling complaints, a sous-chef sued him. After nearly severing his finger with a knife, the sous-chef tried to leave to go to hospital, but Zeph asked him to superglue it together instead. The final straw apparently, after months of warnings from his backers. Bad press. People want a bad boy, but not too much. The superglue story went viral, and the tide turned against him. He became a pariah.

Not to me. The night we met he charmed me. Cooked up fat shrimp on the grill and told me stories that not only made me laugh but stole my heart piece by tiny piece.

‘So, I want your thoughts on the map.' I take out the canvas, lay it on the table. I've painted it for my brother, a surprise wedding present for his fiancée.

‘Beautiful.' He forks egg into his mouth. ‘She definitely doesn't know about it?'

I shake my head. ‘She thinks I'm just working on the stationery for the wedding. '

It will be Penn's surprise, but it's no surprise to me that this will be his gift to her. These maps … they're our thing, me and my brother.

My love of cartography started with my mum's map collection. Her family were nomads, and she told us she hated leaving the places she loved. Places that held memories and places that were memories in themselves. Her way of carrying them with her was to take maps to remember them by.

I spent hours studying them as a kid, rolling the place-names over my tongue, working out their geography in my head, but after a while, I realised that while they told me about the place, they revealed nothing about her , what she'd done there, where she ate, danced, who she loved. What set her heart on fire.

So, for Mum's birthday, I decided to paint our map of our town: places where we'd left little pieces of our soul.

The landmarks weren't hospitals or garages, but the bakery I went to with Mum while Penn was playing cricket. My grandparents' house, where Christmas came alive in games and laughter. The beach where I learnt to swim, where I'd come to have the last normal conversation with our mother, a place that even now, when I think about it, the words float above my head like stars.

My favourite thing to do with friends is to get them to draw their own map. It reveals so much about who they are, what they value. I've discovered that while most people move somewhere for practical reasons – budget, commuting distance – what ends up on their maps are the places that creep into their souls, places that make them feel alive. Free.

Work rarely features, even with people who say they live for their jobs. Instead, they draw their parents' home, the gym that became their only contact with the outside world after their partner died, or the park where they chew the fat with friends every Friday.

Zeph's still examining the map. ‘You're nearly done?'

‘Just about, only the last few points. I'm going to show Penn at the weekend, see if there's anything he wants me to add.'

A pause. He pushes his plate aside. ‘So now you've finished, are you going to start the artwork for the book?' An edge layers his voice. Zeph's talking about the cookbook. Luxe van food, street food. The kind of thing you can cook on a two-burner. A collaboration: his recipes, my illustration.

‘Course.' I tear at the last pancake, dip it in the stew. ‘Have you done something different? More garlic, maybe, in the stew?' Dipping my fork in, I make a fuss of tasting it.

It's the knife that forewarns me – the clatter of it against the plate.

I stiffen.

‘Different?' He mimics me. ‘Have you done something different?' Standing up, he grabs his plate. ‘Let me guess, it's not quite right, is it?'

Time slows. I'm suddenly acutely aware of everything; the hot pulse of the blood in my temple, the acute angle of his plate – tipped towards the floor, the watery, rusty rivulets of stew slowly dripping down the china.

I'm conscious of any tiny little movement of my face, as if somehow the right expression might have an impact on what's to come next.

‘If you don't like it, you know what you can do—' He gestures tossing it out of the van, a wonky smile sitting alongside those words, his lips drawn tightly across his teeth, his eyes darting between me and the sea beyond.

I continue to fork and then chew. Don't make eye contact. Not right now. If you don't say anything, do anything, then nothing can be misinterpreted.

As he shakes his head, walks away, I remind myself: This is what you like; people with fire in their belly .

It's what this is, a result of his passion. Passion that, for now, has nowhere to go.

This idea he has for the book, it's a good one. It will fly. That's the phrase he uses.

We're going to fly, Kier. Our relationship, the book, it's all going to fly.