by Lucy Dickens
We lapse into silence again and the agent returns. Before he speaks, I ask him, ‘Is there any way of transferring the places on the tour to a different time? Like, could one of us go now and the other in a couple of months?’
‘To be honest, you’d have to pay such a premium for a single supplement to go at another time it wouldn’t really make sense to stick with the, um, honeymoon tour. You’d be better off just paying again for a, um, solo traveller expedition. However,’ he brightens. ‘I just spoke to the company and they said that because some of the hotels are paid by the tour guide on arrival, as a gesture of goodwill they’re willing to refund you the cost of those if you decide not to go. So that’s something.’
‘If one of us went now, would we have to pay the single supplement?’ I ask the agent.
‘No, because you’ve already paid for two people. If only one of you goes you just get a nice double bed to yourself everywhere.’
The cogs are turning in my head. I have a month before I’m due to start the internship in London. I’d wanted to be able to impress them, and perhaps Japan could provide me with some inspiration to do just that. It might even reignite that thing inside me that still, somewhere, wants this. It’s all paid for. It’s all planned. All my life people have been telling me, you should do this, you should feel like this. I think it’s time I pull up my big-girl pants and listen to my own opinion, for a change. Make a decision by myself.
Do I have the balls to go on my honeymoon … alone?
Chapter 3
Those Tokyo lights
Keep me awake all night, am
I ready for this?
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
I’m in a coffee shop at Heathrow Terminal 5, perched on a stool that’s too high for my dangling legs. To my right are holidaymakers, tax-free bargain hunters and business travellers strolling through the concourse, and to my left ginormous glass windows overlook the planes gliding along on the runways.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap; I bounce the biro in my hand off my paper coffee cup. Amid the tangled anxieties about the upcoming flight, the new country, the different language, all of which I’m about to explore on my own, I wonder who I stole this biro from.
Draining the last of my coffee I pull my phone out, opening up the Duolingo app to cram a few last-minute words into my vocabulary, and use my napkin to try and scribe from memory the hiragana script for Hello – こんにちは. I whisper it out loud, with the careful precision of someone who really really wants to at least try. ‘Konnichiwa.’
A small boy wandering past with a Trunki looks up at me and replies, ‘Konnichiwa!’
I must have said it right! He understood me! I am flush with pride and confidence, so I say back to him again ‘Konnichiwa!’ with more gusto, and his mother looks over and I think I’d better shut up.
There’s one thing left to do, that I’ve been putting off all this time, but I think, I think, I’m ready to admit it. I can’t go ahead with this internship. I know that part of my reason for coming on this trip was so I’d fill up with material to be able to impress them with at the magazine, and maybe I could still use it in the future, and I’m sure I could at least persuade my local paper to let me write a travel guide to Japan or something. That would be exciting. And much more realistic than trying to get something published at an international magazine. The more I’ve been thinking about it over the past couple of weeks, the more uncertain about it I’ve become. I can’t go and live in London on my own to do a job that won’t even be paying me. I should stay put, where I can take my time and figure everything out.
Now I just need to tell them.
Adventure Awaits won’t care if I pull out. There were loads of candidates at the recruitment day I went to, I bet they could fill my place within a matter of hours. It’s ages – a whole month – away.
So … why don’t I send the email now?
Well, perhaps now isn’t the best time because I need to think about wording and tone and really I’d better vacate this seat because I’ve finished my coffee. I could compose something on the plane. One more day isn’t going to hurt.
To be honest, I’m not sure what to do with myself. Usually, when Matt and I took trips we’d get to the airport super early and loll about for a couple of hours until boarding time, safely through security without anyone planting a wheelie-suitcase full of drugs on us, and abuzz with pre-holiday excitement. I’d always find a reason to buy some essential extra mini-toiletries from Boots and a duty-free sarong from Accessorize, and Matt would linger around the confectionary stands trying to blag us some free Toblerone samples. We’d have a big meal and then window shop at Gucci and Tiffany’s and the Harrods store and eventually part with our final British change at WHSmith on a magazine or three bars of chocolate and one of those delicious Graze pots we’d probably end up having to chuck because we wouldn’t get around to eating it on the plane and I’d be worrying about taking nuts through customs.
But now … I miss him by my side. I know I shouldn’t and I can’t think too much about what he might be doing now, but that’s how it is. So I get up, chuck my coffee cup, leave my (not my) biro for the next fidgety-fingered soul and take a walk. Because I still have a good hour and thirty minutes before I need to head to the gate.
‘Good morning,’ says a smiling lady as I enter World of Duty Free. ‘Would you like to try some whisky?’
‘Well, it is ten in the morning after all,’ I say in way of reply, and she pours me a thimble of caramel-hued liquid that I knock back like I’m an extra in Westworld. ‘Very nice,’ I choke.
‘It’s on a special offer today for just seventy-nine pounds for the litre bottle. Would you like to buy some?’
‘Maybe later …’ I reply, thinking of my already fairly wiped-out bank account.
I’m going to Japan, I think as I try on a pair of Ray-Bans.
I’m going to Japan, I think as I dab a little Mac sample blusher on my cheeks before running away from the approaching sales assistant.
I’m going to Japan, on my own, I think as I stand in the queue clutching a heavily discounted Britney Spears perfume and a massive bottle of Smart Water.
I then walk over to Tiffany’s and just for a minute allow myself to be the girl in the romance movie who stares at the engagement rings while a slow song by Adele plays in my head and a single tear rolls down my cheek. It isn’t easy, knowing I should be married by now, remembering this was supposed to be my honeymoon. It sucks and, like I said, I miss him, I miss us. I miss the plans we’d made and the scenarios I’d played out in my head of how every minute of this trip would go.
But then I see the sales assistant behind the glass looking at me with a half-sorrowful, half-please-move-away-you’re-depressing-our-customers look on her face and I decide to move on. Literally, not figuratively; not yet.
I ate all my plane snacks. All of them. I’m still at the gate, but I think the nerves have started to creep in, just slowly, like a conga line that isn’t sure if it can pass through this way yet so is staying on the outskirts, picking up recruits.
Boarding should open in about twenty minutes, which isn’t really enough time to go and get more … is it …? I crane my neck around, just in case there’s a stray WHSmith loitering next to the loos.
It’s okay to be a little bit on edge, I guess. I am flying to the other side of the world, on my own, and at this point in the game it feels unlikely I’m going to be offered an unexpected upgrade to business class. It’s just such a long flight, to such a new place; if I was jetting to the Italian lakes for a week, I’m sure I’d be fine. And then it dawns on me how true that is, at least in this moment. I’m sure I’ll have a multitude of anxieties over travelling alone, missing Matt, being in a foreign land, but it’s the destination that’s got my knickers in a twist right now, not any of the other bumph.
It’s Japan. It’s because visiting the Land of the Rising Sun has been a goal of mine since, oh, before I’d even heard the name Matt
Bulverton. I’ve read about it, dreamt about it, because of that country I have indirectly and through a series of events plotted out the first decades of my life.
15 August 2011
Saturday afternoon, 1.50pm
The wooden chair was creaking under my constant fidgeting. I looked around me at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, maps and travel journals clustered in twirling racks, world globes with brass stands upon tables also piled with guidebooks and non-fiction titles with covers showing dirty walking boots, postcard-perfect scenery, written by people like Bill Bryson. It was a hot day in London, and the other members of the audience, including Matt, were fanning themselves with their handouts while they waited for the speaker. But I didn’t care about the heat; to me it just added to the tropical atmosphere and it felt like the perfect environment for what we were here to witness.
I saw this event advertised inside Adventure Awaits, of course, way back in the spring. ‘Meet Adventure Awaits’ own Ariel Cortez at Stanfords map and travel bookshop for a lively talk on How to be a Travel Writer, Saturday 15 August, 2pm. Tickets £15, includes a drink.’ A photo of Ariel Cortez was displayed alongside the advert, a larger version of the thumbnail portrait that had been running alongside her articles ever since I first started reading the magazine. It’s like she was speaking to me, telling me: come on, Charlotte, you say you want to be a travel writer like me, and you’re sixteen now which means you’ll need to start making some decisions soon. Come and hear me out.
I told my mum this is what it felt like Ariel was saying, and my mum smiled and said that if I could pay for my ticket, and if Matt would go with me, she’d cover my train fare to and from London for the day.
My watch said we’d be starting in just a few minutes. I pulled my five-year-old copy of Adventure Awaits from my bag, the first copy I ever bought, which I pored over, reading the articles again and again, and wishing I could jump on a plane or ship or train and travel to these faraway lands, away from a place where my home had broken in two and my dad had been the one to run away instead.
I flipped to Ariel’s article about Japan. Six pages long, with dazzling photos and light, funny, delicate wording, this had been my favourite piece in the whole magazine. I’d marvelled at Ariel’s writing style and how she could make me feel like I was journeying through Japan beside her, there on the trains, visiting temples, seeing monkeys bathing in the hot springs. She’d fast become my favourite columnist, the first stories I read in each edition I purchased.
‘Do you think she’ll mind signing this for me?’ I whispered to Matt for the zillionth time.
He flipped his hair to the side, which he’d grown out from Justin Bieber to a Harry Styles style, and pulled me in for a one-arm hug. ‘You’re such a fangirl. No, she won’t mind, she’ll probably love that you’ve been holding on to that battered old thing for so long.’ ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said a man in a pinstripe shirt rolled up at the sleeves, and a tie that he’d already loosened in the heat. ‘Thank you for coming to our event inside Stanfords this hot afternoon, and for anyone visiting London, welcome. I’m sure our special guest today has visited places far more sweltering than this during her career as a travel writer, and may I say, “adventurer,” so, without further ado, let’s give a hand for Adventure Awaits magazine’s Ariel Cortez!’
I clap my hands off and sit up super straight, wanting to show respect for my idol, uncaring whether I looked like a fangirl. I was a fangirl.
Ariel walked in and waved at the rows of chairs, taking a seat on a tall stool next to the announcer, who would be moderating the talk and asking her questions. She looked so great, effortless in a white T-shirt and loose jeans rolled up at the hem, studded gladiator sandals on her feet, black hair pulled into a casual top-knot, simple yet beautiful jewellery that made the whole look presentable and put-together despite its casual feel. Her smile was wide and her fingernails polished.
‘Wow, there’s a lot of you here,’ she smiled at the audience of twenty-, thirty-, forty-, and fifty-somethings. ‘Are you all going to steal my job?’
‘HA HA HA,’ I laughed loudly along with the others, and as Ariel’s eyes swept the room she caught my eye, the youngest there, and smiled wider.
As Ariel gave her talk, I soaked in everything she had to say. How she became a writer, what choices led her to travelling for a living, her top tips for those that want to do the same, and when it came time for audience questions I shot my hand straight up, even though I hadn’t fully formed what I was going to ask.
‘Yes, the girl in the beautiful blue blouse, what’s your question?’
I blushed and fumbled my words. ‘Um, hello, um, thank you. My question is … well, I have this copy of an article …’ I paused and took a breath. Calm down, Charlotte. ‘I first read your writing about five years ago when you did a big article about Japan, and I loved it. The way you described the hike up Mount Fuji and the food, and the night you spent inside a temple, it was so other-worldly that it made me feel like … it made me realise I wanted to do that, to travel to places, and write about them in a way that people like me, who can’t be there, feel like they can be. If that makes sense. So my question is, I guess, if you were giving advice to your sixteen-year-old self right now about how to be brave enough to follow this path, what would you say?’
‘What’s your name?’ Ariel asks in return.
‘Charlotte.’
‘Firstly, Charlotte, thank you so much for your kind words, and for bringing that copy of the magazine, and letting me relive that memory. If you ever go to Japan you’ll have to let me know what you think.’ I nod at Ariel. I will go to Japan one day, I know it. She continues, ‘My advice to you, Charlotte, would be to take any opportunity to have an adventure. Anything at all, even if you’re scared, or it’s new, or even if it’s something close to home, as long as it feels safe, then catch that adventure and live it. And then write about it, write down your thoughts on how it felt, and how it sounded and tasted and what it smelt like. Oh and make sure they’re your thoughts.’
The confusion must have shown in my face, because Ariel added, ‘Tell your story of how the adventure feels to you. Don’t just write a timeline of events, make it authentic, and tell your story.’
‘Okay,’ I say, thoughts tumbling around my mind faster than I can process. ‘Thank you.’
Ariel looked at me a moment longer, as if she was remembering all the journeys she’d taken. ‘You never know what can come of having an adventure. It might be something big. So catch every adventure you can.’
I took Ariel’s advice and wrote down everything about every adventure I, and usually Matt, took. I started that evening, on the train back home, using a map-covered journal I’d purchased in Stanfords that afternoon. I went on to take journalism at university. I lost myself in books by Michael Palin, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jack Kerouac, Cheryl Strayed and, of course, Bill Bryson. I had ‘me-time’ in my calendar for the first Sunday afternoon of every month, where I’d read my new issue of Adventure Awaits from cover to cover. Anything with a travel-theme, I devoured.
Now, here in the airport, where I’ll soon be boarding my flight to Japan, I pull that same tatty old copy of the magazine out of my bag, which I’d dug out of storage at Mum’s a couple of days before I left. I flip to Ariel’s article, where her face smiles out beside her signature that she signed for me that day in 2011.
So no, I’m not at this point nervous about getting on that plane solo or forgetting my etiquette when I get to the other side. I’m afraid because this journey is important to me, and it’s been a long time coming, and I don’t want anything else to risk it being taken away from me. I want, desperately, for the sake of the person I think I am, to love every second of it.
‘Hmm …’ I say out loud, scanning over the movie choices in the in-flight magazine. I have a nice seat by a window, with a middle-aged woman and her partner next to me, and a fully functioning entertainment system (yay!). I’m a nice distance from the nearest emerge
ncy exit where, in the event of a forced landing, I’d be unlikely to have to haul the door out of the gap myself but would almost certainly make it out of the plane.
‘Lots of good movie choices,’ I say to the woman, who looks up from the duty-free magazine and smiles.
I look at the other passengers still filtering on and finding their seats and grumbling at the ways other people have stored their belongings in the overhead lockers.
‘Never seems to be enough room in those things, does there?’ I say to the woman.
‘No …’ she replies, smiling again and then flipping her page.
‘Are you two just going to Japan for a holiday?’ I ask and then realise something I never knew about myself. I’ve always travelled in groups or as part of a couple. Now I’m travelling on my own – it turns out I’m the annoying person who wants to chat to strangers!
I decide to leave her in peace and move my attention to the food and drink section of the in-flight magazine and as soon as I can I order one of those little complimentary bottles of Jack Daniels and some Coke. If Matt and I were here we would have probably popped a couple of those mini prosecco bottles, but I guess that Charlotte-on-her-own is a whisky kind of person.
The plane starts to taxi and shudder lightly around in a huge arc to face the runway. This is it. I can do this.
What am I thinking? I can’t do this. It’s not just going to Japan that’s making me nervous, I’m going to be so far away, so many hours and miles and time zones away from my family and my friends, and yes, from Matt. I can’t do it. I’m scared.
I’m scared of being out of my depth and I’m scared of getting lost and not being able to speak the language. I’m scared of something happening to someone back home and me not being there. Or something happening to me or to this plane. Nobody on this plane cares about me. Without Matt here, if we go down, who will protect my teeth so the police know it’s me? I suppose Matt would have been protecting his own teeth and not mine, though, regardless. Thanks for nothing, Matt.
