by Daisy Tate
Caller: Yeah. Are you in trouble for telling me to eat cheese on toast?
Call Handler: No, not as such. A little, maybe. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Caller: No. Thanks for listening.
Call Handler: My pleasure. Please be sure to ring back if the symptoms worsen or change. Thanks for calling 111. Now, Rachel—
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘Fired?’ Raven looked shocked.
Not as shocked as Flo was, but it was good to know she wasn’t the only one who’d been blindsided by the ‘little one to one’ with that prissy manageress, Rachel Woolly.
‘That’s right, duck,’ Flo nodded, trying to keep the swarm of conflicting emotions in check, eyes glued to the watery beams her headlights were throwing on the back of Sue’s little red Ka a few metres in front of her. ‘Although Rachel called it a “voluntary redundancy” so that my record’ll be clean for whoever’s lucky enough to employ me next.’
Raven’s eyes widened.
‘Not to worry. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found something new tomorrow.’
With any luck.
Flo was doing her level best to remain cheery, but the truth was, she was absolutely fuming. Fired for offering that poor girl a bit of advice? She obviously hadn’t been quite right in the head and needed some guidance. Some proper perspective. It was half the problem with the world these days. Children coddled and assured and cotton wooled to such an extent no one had any survival skills anymore! How on earth were they going to tackle all of the world’s insurmountable problems? War. Famine. The extinction of polar bears. It wouldn’t happen by calling a time out or putting Putin on the naughty step!
She had half a mind to turn the car round and offer that Rachel Woolly a piece of her mind.
Voluntary redundancy.
As if anyone in Flo’s immediate circle would believe for a split second she’d left a job voluntarily. She’d been all but pushed out of the airplane when, at sixty-five, BA had deemed her too expensive to keep around. Oh, they’d said it was something to do with the vision test, but she knew a spade when she saw one. They’d called that voluntary redundancy as well.
Bloody pack of liars. She would’ve happily flown round the globe with them until she was dead. Wasn’t that what glasses were for? The thought pulled her up short. Short-sightedness, she supposed, was her problem. Everyone, apart from her, could see the pearly gates looming. But honestly. Being let go from 111? Was she really unable to ‘embrace a modern approach to health care’ as Rachel had suggested?
Bollocks to that. What that girl had needed was a bit of sound advice—
‘Oh, crumbs. Would you look at that?’ Sue had gone through a traffic light just as it had turned amber. Flo had considered flooring it, then, remembering she already had six points on her license, lurched to a stop. Sue probably wanted a bit of me time before Raven moved in anyhow. Perhaps a stop off at the off license for a bit of fizz would be a good idea. And some nibbles. Maybe a balloon or two might be in order. Fresh start and all that. For Raven. Obviously. And Sue.
How on earth was she going to go home and tell Stuart?
She couldn’t. Not yet. She barely had the capacity to admit the unexpected ‘window of freedom’ terrified the daylights out of her. Yet another chance for Stu and Jennifer to harangue her about finally hanging up her hat, sinking into the other, as yet unused recliner, for a life of sedentary observation. No. No. She simply could not sit back and watch the rest of her life pass her by. It was bad enough bearing witness to Stu slowly being absorbed by the beige surrounds of retirement.
She was going to have do something. Something big. Something that made an impact, like that Kath off the telly. Maybe she’d join her. She was asking for people to sign up every day. Said the donations were rolling in, but not so much the riders. Perhaps this ‘window of freedom’ was, in fact, a window of opportunity.
Yes. Yes.
The idea was settling in in the way a lovely pool of gravy did round a Sunday lunch. Warming.
‘I’ll not be a minute, love.’ She gave Raven’s knee a pat. ‘Thought I’d get us some bubbles to celebrate your big move.’
Flo let the idea blossom and grow as she shopped.
How long had it been since she’d gone out exploring? In Britain, no less. And for a worthy cause. Even Stu couldn’t balk at that, raising money for a mental health charity that actually did let callers listen and call handlers give advice on something the caller actually wanted advice on.
She sniffed a bit indignantly. Imagine. A thirty-something snip of a girl telling her how the world worked. She’d definitely have to put the plan in place before she told Stu about her change of working circumstances. If he had even a whiff of a window, he’d be booking another trip to Portugal. The wi-fi there was awful so job hunting would be difficult, and the exercise classes at the ‘village centre’ were too bloody boring to blow off any steam. Chair Zumba! Silver Swimmers! Not on your life.
After she’d zipped back to the car with a bottle of something fizzy and pink, Flo suddenly remembered seeing Raven in Rachel’s office as well. Double crumbs. She hadn’t been nattering on about being fired when the same thing had happened to Raven, had she?
‘What was your chat with Rachel, about, love? Anything nice?’
‘Oh, it was …’ Raven’s fingers worked overtime weaving themselves together in different patterns as Flo pulled the car out into surprisingly busy rush-hour traffic. ‘She just wanted to tell me about the counselling they had after … umm … difficult calls.’
‘Oh, did you get a bad one? I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘It probably should’ve been 999,’ Raven wouldn’t meet her eye.
Just like the call she’d had from Sue, then. Interesting, Flo thought. No one had pulled her into an office and offered her a sweet cup of tea after her call. Why hadn’t they offered Flo counselling instead of slapping her with a red card? Sure. She may have had two warnings already, but no one had ever suggested ways to offer these poor, emotionally challenged people who rang in, hearts on their sleeves, loneliness pouring out of them like water, some actual useful advice. A listening ear was all they wanted. Someone to care.
Targets. Deadlines. Scripts.
Life didn’t ruddy work to a pull-down menu, did it? After forty-odd years of flying round the world in a sardine can, the stories she could tell. Saw people at their best and their worst, she had. Dealt with them all in her own inimitable way whilst adhering to health and safety. Going off script didn’t mean she was an idiot. It meant she solved problems.
‘Thanks for driving me, anyway,’ Raven said, suddenly lunging forward, both hands on the dash as Flo took a turn a bit later than anticipated. ‘Sue looked a bit stressed.’
‘The poor lass is going through a lot right now.’ Flo said distractedly, then, ‘It’s a pleasure to lend a hand.’ It was also a rather convenient way to buy herself some time to come up with a good cover story as to why she wouldn’t be on the shifts she’d told Stu about.
Flo shot Raven a quick glance, saw her eyebrows were drawn close together and gave her knee a pat. ‘You alright, duck? If it’s moving to Sue’s you’re worried about, don’t be. Any experience, good or bad, just adds zest to your experience as a woman of the world.’
Raven’s forehead creased. ‘Yeah, no, I just … I’m sorry about …’ she flicked her hand towards Flo, then hesitated.
‘Oh, love. Don’t feel bad about me. I’m resilient. I’ll get another job. I’m just cross because the call they cited as “strike three” wasn’t exactly a matter of life and death. It were more a case of a pants boyfriend needing the axe, but …’ She exhaled heavily. ‘I guess it wasn’t my business.’
Raven stared at her hands, then out into the traffic.
Flo slammed her hand on the steering wheel. ‘Of course it’s my business!’
Raven jumped.
‘Sorry, duck. I’m a bit more worked up than I thought.’
‘We
ll,’ Raven drew the word out as she stroked a streak of blue-black hair as one might a teddy bear when they were nervous. ‘It’s not like we’re robots, right?’
Flo slapped the steering wheel again. ‘Exactly, right. We’re not robots and the people who ring in aren’t either. We’re flesh and blood and need to be able to respond to the odd curveball life throws our way. Even if it does make us feel uncomfortable. That’s what life is. A big, jumbly, uncomfortable mess that we have to treat like it’s a big, gorgeous, trifle. We should all want to dive right into the centre of that gooey, fruity, fluffy mess. Not cling to the hundreds and thousands as if they’re life rafts. Isn’t that right, duck?’ She caught Raven considering the question even though it was obviously rhetorical. Poor girl. She looked a bit lost. Not too unlike Sue, who had been ever so flustered when they’d all climbed into their cars and had set off from the call centre. Flo quickly pulled the car into a little shopping centre. She’d pick up a couple of housewarming style items to give Sue a slightly longer window to regroup before they arrived. Bless. Raven and Sue. Her two new unexpected friends. Little ducklings, more like. The pair of them needed a mother hen to tuck them under her wing and … an idea struck.
‘Raven, love. How do you feel about cycling?’
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘You think you might like that? Raising some money for charity?’
Flo looked so hopeful as she pulled up to the curb on Harworth Lane it would have actually been painful to say no. Raven shrugged and made what she hoped was a noncommittal mmm that went up and down an octave before fading away.
‘Luhhhvely!’ Flo clapped her hands, clearly taking the shrug as a yes, then pitty-patted the steering wheel as she sing-songed, ‘Get on yer bike, Rachel Woolly! We’ve got something better in mind!’
Raven winced. Flo did know Raven wasn’t going to quit her job to go bike riding with Flo, right? It was, like, winter out. That. And she didn’t have a bike. Even so, this was the happiest Flo had been on their entire journey which had compromised of not one, but three stops at the shops to ‘pick up party supplies.’
Kicking herself out of her family home and moving into the house of a woman who needed a flatmate because her husband had just killed himself in it didn’t seem much cause for celebration to Raven. Maybe Flo had been buying ‘Just got fired’ party poppers. Who knew? Flo was a trip. Not like any seventy-year-old she knew anyway. If she was vaguely interested in riding her bike across the country, which she wasn’t, she would want to do it with Flo.
In fact, riding a bicycle at all fell pretty firmly in the ‘not gonna happen’ category, but so did moving out of her parents to avoid working for Uncle Ravi during a gap year that was rapidly drawing to an end. Perhaps there was room for a bit of elasticity in what she did and didn’t go for now that she was, in Flo’s words, a ‘woman of the world.’ Flo, who’d given her a lightning-speed autobiography in between running in and out of the shops, hadn’t had parents who felt morally obliged to micromanage their daughter’s entire future. In fact, they’d celebrated when she’d got a job and moved out. In my day, university was one of those things for posh folk and nerdy types. They were right chuffed when I cleared off and started fending for myself. Best day of my life, come to think of it. The freedom!
Flo, still lost in her daydreams about the cycle ride, laughed and gave a happy sigh. ‘I can guarantee you it’ll be an adventure. I can’t say I’ll be very speedy. I’ve not ridden a bike in … oh … when was it?? Rio? Maybe Santa Monica. Adelaide? Somewhere on the beach and quite a while back. Years, must be.’
‘You’ve been to all of those places?’
‘And more, duck. Courtesy of a spiffy uniform and British Airways. All over the globe.’ The happy sigh turned wistful. ‘I was a trolley dolly for almost forty years. Started well before you were born. Back when we were allowed to be trolley dollies anyway.’ She flashed Raven a wicked grin that gave Raven a glimpse of what Flo must’ve looked like back then: glamorous, fun-loving, the life of any party.
Raven had no idea what it was like to be any of those things, let alone feel a splash of the glee Flo glowed with. She’d had hits of enthusiasm when she thought of being at Newcastle, and once when she’d got her eye make-up just right she’d felt the tiniest bit pretty, and, obviously there was the weird, ghoulish satisfaction of watching her blood pour into a bag whenever she donated, but … no, she’d never felt anything close to what Flo was radiating. Pure, all-consuming, happiness.
Still putting the pieces of the Flo jigsaw together, she asked, ‘And yet you live in Bicester, the epicentre of all that was trendy and stylish in the world? Last season.’ Raven clapped a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to be rude, but … c’mon. Bicester, home of discount designer wear and an ever-increasing amount of pop-up, new build ‘communities’ was hardly the centre of the universe. For some reason Raven had pictured worldly people as big city dwellers. The type of urban Oz big enough to have their own Time Out. Paris, Rome, New York. That sort of thing. The Bicester Weekly was hardly a font of cultural and consumable wonders.
‘My husband picked it because it was close to both Heathrow and Luton. He was a pilot.’
‘Oh! Does he still fly?’
‘No, love,’ Flo’s voice turned strangely tight. ‘They make them retire at sixty.’
The way she said it made Raven squirmy. As if retirement were akin to a death sentence. Her parents’ entire life could be easily described as a battle plan for retirement. It had always sounded like a safe place, retirement. Where there was enough money because you’d saved and enough energy because you’d eaten your five a day and enough time because you’d just sold your pharmacy/newly invented surgical tool/hedge fund/law firm partnership and carved out enough room in your life to start looking after your grandchildren who would follow in the same well worn path …
Now that she thought of it, retirement didn’t seem like the kind of place Flo would like at all. She had more energy in her pinky than Raven had ever had, apart from that one time her sister had actually behaved like a sister and taken her to London to see the Harry Potter plays. Apart from that … Raven was more your low-energy variety of teenager. It was safer that way. To fly below the radar. Flo struck her as the type who’d willingly throw herself into the line of fire. A woman who’d fling herself out of an airplane and let photos of her face all stretched out by the wind be plastered all over the shop if it earned a few bob for charity. And also because it would be exhilarating.
‘Why don’t we put it to Sue as well?’ Flo asked. ‘The bike ride. We’ll ask her over a glass of this fizz once we’ve got your bags moved in. If there’s anyone out there who needs something fun to work towards, it’s that poor girl.’
Raven nodded. ‘Sounds good.’ Dreams of life at Newcastle Uni definitely kept her tiny torch alight. On top of which, if Sue agreed to go along, maybe Raven could quietly duck out.
Riding a bicycle from the Lake District, along Hadrian’s Wall and on to Tynemouth with ‘our Kath’ from Kath and Kev was decidedly not Raven’s cup of tea. Although … arriving in Newcastle for a ‘well-earned supper’ did hold some appeal. As much as she ached to go to uni there, she’d never actually been. An untested nirvana. What if it was a complete nightmare? What if it was everything she’d ever dreamt of?
She considered it more seriously. Imagined herself powering up and then down a hill into Newcastle city centre on a bicycle. Red, preferably. Or aubergine.
Hmmm …
Something about arriving via a less beaten trail in a blaze of self-discovery and physically demanding glory seemed strangely fitting.
Most of the characters in the fantasy series she’d been favouring lately were always setting off on epic (usually surprise) journeys. There’d be, like, maximum ten pages of set-up and then kaboom! Time to hit the road. Then, about eight hundred or so pages later? The journey was over, lessons had been learnt, the protagonist was a changed person (usually for the better but mostly becaus
e they’d been through the worst) and there’d be about ten more pages of wrapping everything up or … kaboom! Another journey would present itself and the protagonist, a little older and a lot wiser would pick up their shoulder bag … and off they went on another epic adventure.
She wanted to be that person when she arrived at uni. Wiser to the ways of the world. Unfrightened by other teenagers and their nasty attacks on social media. Not that she’d been a target herself, but … why hadn’t she reached out to Aisha? Visited her in hospital? At her house once she’d been checked out? Told her no one really believed her parents were going to send her to India to marry an old man to be his slave because she was too dim and too ugly to be married off to anyone else and choose a husband herself like her sisters had. Racist bullshit is what it had been. And yet … she’d said nothing. Done nothing, apart from delete all of her own accounts when what she should have done was stand up to the girls who’d started spreading the rumours and told them where to put it.
Insecurity, she supposed.
Fear.
Would it go away if she moved to Newcastle? All those niggly concerns about being too fat, too tall, too weak, too impressionable, too pathetic to stand up to a bunch of bullies she knew were doing the wrong thing. It was awful having all of those frailties roiling round inside of her, vying for supremacy, when what she really wanted to feel was strong. Inside and out. Undaunted. Like Flo seemed to be.
Maybe this trip was exactly what she needed.
It wasn’t as if getting off a National Express in front of the student union building had as much of an emotional pow factor as arriving in the wake of one’s own spent energy. And maybe she’d even lose a few pounds before she started whatever degree it was she finally decided upon. Yes. Maybe she would go. Maybe it would be her first step into being a woman of the world.
