by Daisy Tate
All that said, for the first time in, like, ever, the alone time she’d sought was morphing into deeply reflective time and she didn’t like the direction it was going.
She missed her mum and dad. The ding-a-ling of the bell as customers entered their shop. The racket her mother made clanking pans around the kitchen as she pressed the phone to one ear instructing one relative or another on how to live their life as she whipped up a “light” supper (usually, like, five different dishes, all of which were totally yum).
She missed her bossy sister.
And her goofy brother.
Their kids, their pets, their habits, their smell. She missed it all. And something about missing them made their lives appear like a pop-up book in her mind, but a pop-up book written by someone who could only see the good in them. Her parents’ shop filled with people grateful to have a chemist who remembered their name, their prescriptions, their GP. Her sister’s lightning-fast way with numbers that had made ploughing through algebra and calculus about a gazillion times easier. Her brother’s gentle way of handling conflict or an upset toddler which made it really really easy to see why he’d become a paediatrician. They’d all followed their actual paths, not The Dictated Path. All of which culminated in the dawning realisation that maybe her parents thought she would genuinely be a good lawyer and were merely encouraging her to do what suited her best? Or, perhaps, just like her, they weren’t really sure what she’d be good at so went with what was familiar?
That, or she was now officially hallucinating from the undignified trauma of her derriere being rubbed raw. Or, even more simply, perhaps absence really did make the heart grow fonder.
Down the M1 and left a bit had never felt so very far away.
She dispiritedly wiped the rain off of her odometer and gave it a squint. Ten miles down. Thirty-seven more to go.
Sweet mother of fuck. If ever there was any time to be prone to dramatics, now fit the bill. It wasn’t like there were any witnesses or anything. If you didn’t count sheep.
She jabbed at her phone and began talking, not entirely certain whether or not she was actually recording. She blithered on about how riding in the rain yesterday had been fun. Well. Tolerable. She wasn’t so into this exercise gig that the words ‘fun’ ‘cycling’ and ‘rain’ necessarily went hand in hand. That said, yesterday the rain hadn’t physically hurt when it landed on her. Yesterday she hadn’t had a bum that needed a new layer of epidermis. ‘Let’s be honest, friends,’ she said (she’d taken to calling her viewers friends as it seemed, well, friendlier), ‘one of the biggest challenges I’m facing today is finding a place to wee. Wot? You might ask. But you’re in the great out of doors! The wilderness! Surely there’s somewhere out there in the wilds of Britain for a discreet wee. Well, let me tell you – Britain’s country lanes are not quite as rich in secret spots as one might think. Someone’s always going past. If it isn’t another cyclist, it’s a Land Rover. If it isn’t a tractor, it’s a herd of cows, a tour bus, a community bus, a bus I would rather be riding on to find a toilet somewhere that’s warm and dry because peeling off all of this exercise malarkey in the pouring rain, only to have a nettle present itself to my backside is all I need to inform you, dear friend, that camping will never be my jam. And then there’s pulling it all back on again—Ah! There’s a spot. Finally!’
‘Hey there!’ A thirty-something woman Raven hadn’t spoken to yet rode up alongside her. She glanced at her phone. See? See? Proof I am wise and all knowing. There is nowhere in Britain to privately have a wee.
‘Nice day for it, eh?’ said the woman, who looked very much as though she made her own granola.
Raven gave her camera the side eye, then pocketed it in the one place that was vaguely waterproof, her sports bra.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Raven.’
‘Yeah, I know. Molly,’ she said. ‘I’ve been following your Insta feed.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. You’ve got some fun perspective on the human condition.’
Raven glanced at Molly, too startled by the comment to act cool. ‘Really? What do you mean?’
‘Oh, you know,’ Molly began, which was a ridiculous way to begin because Raven had literally just said she didn’t understand. ‘I believe a lot of kids your age don’t think about other people and their perspective and how they are absorbing the world. You know – a minute in another man’s shoes theory? Anyway, all of this me me me malarkey has made Western civilisation – at the very least – the epic shithole that we see today.’
‘So … I take it you’re from the Optimists’ Society?’
Molly laughed. ‘No. No. I’m a shrink. Well. School shrink slash guidance counsellor. Gummy bear?’ She held out a soggy packet.
Wet, glommy and misshapen, it was just about the best gummy bear Raven had ever had.
Right there and then, Raven decided that if she ever were to see a shrink, she would see one like Molly, granola-aura withstanding. She finished chewing, took a swig of the energy drink Sue had mixed up for her this morning then asked, ‘Do you generally counsel people that the world is an epic shithole destined for ultimate destruction?’
‘Ah!’ Molly brightened. ‘I didn’t say anything about ultimate destruction. Interesting path you took, there.’
‘I didn’t—’ Raven stopped. ‘So … does the fact I think the world being an epic shithole destined for destruction mean I also think there is no opportunity for salvation?’
Molly grinned. ‘Ah, well … now that’s the big question, isn’t it?’
Raven slowed and pointed up ahead. ‘Cattle grid.’
‘You don’t ride over them?’ Molly asked.
‘Errr … no.’ They were totally bumpy and her tyres could fall through them and the assault on her ass wasn’t even worth contemplating.
‘Why not?’ Molly wasn’t slowing down.
‘Because, they’re a hazard.’
‘Really? Or are they a perceived hazard? A risk worth taking?’
What school of counselling did this woman come from? She most likely had an internet degree or was lying and was actually a Scientologist on a secret recruitment mission. Was it Tom Cruise in disguise? Would she pull her face off for a big reveal when she decided to convert?
‘C’mon, let’s ride across it together,’ Molly encouraged. ‘I bet you’ll surprise yourself.’
Raven glanced at her, the cattle grid, the pouring rain, desperately trying to remember the contents of the first-aid kit she’d stuffed in her CamelBak (thanks Mum and Dad). There were plenty of bandages in there. Bandages that would have to swaddle her huge helmet head, because on the off chance she suffered a massive brain injury that put her in a coma forever, they would have to leave it on until emergency services arrived. Maybe there weren’t enough bandages. She should walk. On the other hand, if she rode and took the optimist’s view of massive cerebral injuries courtesy of the cattle grid and/or the tarmac, a brain bleed would a) very likely put an end to this conversation b) mean she’d never have to pick what she was going to study at uni and c) allow her to live out the rest of her life in a nice quiet ICU ward with, hopefully, her parents keening by her side lamenting the fact that they’d ever suggested she work with Uncle Ravi forcing her to leave the family home armed only with a duffel bag full of fantasy books and another full of black clothes and a lifetime’s supply of eyeliner. She would also get to ride in Becky’s warm, dry van until the ambulance came (air ambulance if the injury was truly traumatic although … rain).
‘Okay,’ Raven decided about a metre from the grid. ‘Let’s do it.’ From there everything turned slow-motion. She actually felt her heart stop beating as she held her breath, heard the individual plippity-plop of rain drops on her helmet, vibrated with the whirr of rubber on tarmac as she pedal pedal pedalled and then … oh! You could ride over a cattle grid and survive.
‘See? Perceived hazard.’ Molly looked smug, but the happy kind of smug that came from proving to someone they were capabl
e of overcoming something that terrified them, all of which meant … was Molly not a Scientologist at all, and actually an imaginary angel sent to teach her a valuable lesson about fear? She thought about taking her photo to see if she was actually hallucinating her and then thought better of it. This was a moment to live in, not record for posterity.
‘Why are you on the ride?’ Raven asked. ‘Are you building up your client list?’
‘Ha!’ Molly smiled, her grey/brown plaits swishing across her shoulders, ‘I suppose you could say it’s pretty good feeding ground for people who are interested. But no. I’m riding for my kids.’
‘You have children?’
‘No. I couldn’t have kids,’ she said, then pointed at her womb. ‘Barren as the Sahara.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Not your fault.’
‘No, but I – I can feel badly for you.’
‘True …’ Molly said, then. ‘How ’bout you? What’s your plan? Kids? Uni? Digging a hole somewhere to prepare for Armageddon?’
‘If I believed Armageddon was coming, I’d probably prefer a cave … a cave on a mountain top.’
‘So you could see it all coming?’
‘Exactly,’ Raven grinned. She was beginning to like this Molly.
‘So what is it you didn’t see coming?’
This whole entire situation for one. Not living at her parents’ for another. Being so dithery about what to do with her future. Living with Sue. Realising how many gazillions of people lived with mental health issues and called into 111 for reassurance that they weren’t going completely mad. The epidemic of loneliness that seemed to be seizing the country. Exhausted parents, middle-aged men having heart attacks, people googling their symptoms and refusing to accept the worst-case scenario might not actually be the scenario at all. There was a little bit of her now linked to every single one of her callers and, now, her Instagram followers. She didn’t really know how to deal with all of their pain, let alone understand her own. There was also the fact that she might’ve been the one to break the link with her parents, not the other way round, and, as such, she might never have her mum’s pakoras again, or worse, never make them proud. The more she thought, the scratchier her throat got.
And just like that, Raven began to weep. Weep and talk. Things she didn’t even know she’d been worried about or frightened of came out in a worrying volume. Aisha, her family, her grades, her spot at Oxford (which she did, a little bit actually, kind of want), her Uncle Ravi, the time her brother’s little girl threw up on the floor and Raven had just left it there waiting for someone else to discover. By the time her verbal well ran dry, her tears had stopped and the biscuit and tea tent appeared on the horizon, Molly pointed at her odometer and said, ‘Look at that. See how far you’ve come?’
‘You know it was Europeans who built Hadrian’s Wall – not just the Romans.’
Flo squawked out a short scream, horrified to discover Trevor pedalling alongside her. More so when he appeared completely oblivious to the spray he was sending her way as he ploughed through the endless puddles. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Didn’t you see me ride past?’ He pinched a bit of his startlingly reflective waterproof jacket. ‘I rode past you about ten minutes ago on my way to get this from Becky. The other one was soaked through.’
Hmm. No. She hadn’t seen him at all. Or noticed Becky stopping even though Stuart had put a rearview mirror on her helmet. And a blinking light. Not that the blinking light would’ve helped, but – ooo, this wasn’t good. Hello, Alzheimer’s, farewell sweet youth. She willed her aching joints to play ball just until Trevor had bored of her more … oh, god … her more senior pace.
‘I wonder if Hadrian had his lads out in this weather or if they had a union. Ha!’
Hmmm. It could be some time. Perhaps he’d already bored everyone else silly and was here to torture her until the next so-called comfort break.
‘That’s right,’ said Trevor as if she were a willing participant in this conversation. ‘Syrians, Romanians, Romans – of course – always the Romans, the Spanish … from the North of Spain of course, so they wouldn’t have considered themselves Spanish in the way modern Spaniards do although, if you follow the papers, even that’s up for question, borders being the negligible things they are these days. Perspective, isn’t it?’
‘Mmmm.’ Flo wasn’t really up for snippets of historical and topical insight today. Then again, it might be a good chance to try and remember things to prove she hadn’t lost her marbles. Plus Stu might find them interesting and she owed him a call. Yesterday she’d been so tired she’d fallen asleep before her head had hit the pillow. She’d woken up to a darling picture of Captain George nestled on the settee on her phone and two melted ice packets tied to her knees with socks, now hanging on the back of one of the seats in Becky’s van because she knew she’d need them again tonight and she was damned if she was going to tie wet socks to her already aching knees.
Flo breathed into another sharp pain (as recommended by Fola) while Trevor waxed lyrical about the definition of a Roman mile (a thousand paces or 5,000 feet as opposed to the modern mile which was 5,280 feet thus making the modern mile longer than the—). Oh dear god, this trip wasn’t at all what she’d imagined it would be. For some reason she thought she’d be feeling much more triumphant. Inspiring poor, shy, grief-stricken Sue out of her humdrum, miserable life up to the wild Cumbrian coastline to confront her grief and then embrace a future happiness. For Raven she’d imagined … well … she wasn’t quite sure what she’d imagined for Raven. A bit of weight loss? A desire to wear brighter colours? It certainly hadn’t been an ever-increasing Instagram following and a crowd of people begging her to draw flowers on their shirts (even though Flo had to say, the one Raven had drawn for her was rather fabulous). Then it came to her. She’d wanted to be the hero. The amazing woman who’d seen the despair and woe in these poor women’s lives and Flo having been the one to eagle-eye it and change it by pushing them both out of their comfort zones and into a place of unexpected bliss and discovery. Elements of it were coming true. Not because of Flo, though, but because of what Sue and Raven had been carrying in their own emotional arsenals. They were both made of sturdier stuff than she’d given them credit for. Sue had ridden ahead ages back after checking several times that Flo would be alright on her own, but she’d promised one of the women – Rachel? Marianne? – one of them, anyway, that they could have a talk about grief counsellors. And then off she’d pedalled, riding her bicycle as if she’d never heard of joint pain or arthritis. Raven, too had powered off after checking that Flo would be okay. She didn’t seem to need human company quite as much as Flo did. Despite the fact she knew Raven had hardly ridden her bicycle at all prior to the ride, Flo, it seemed, was the only weak link.
‘… and did you know that Hadrian’s Wall is not just a wall?’
‘What? No. No, Trevor. I did not know that,’ Flo snapped, hoping her tone would spur him to ride on and fill some other poor sod in on the inner machinations of empire building. He did not. Rather, he kept expectantly looking at her until finally, she broke and asked, ‘What is it if it is not a wall?’
‘More like an obstacle course!’
‘An insurmountable one, presumably?’
‘Well, no. I think history proved that wasn’t the case, particularly as only ten per cent of the wall is visible now, unlike the viaducts the Romans built that still stand today, but as you will no doubt see for yourself, there are the ditches – or vallums—’ Trevor droned on and on as if he’d committed the entire shelf of Hadrian’s Wall history books to memory.
‘Trevor!’ Flo finally erupted. ‘What exactly is it you’re trying to achieve by passing on all of these endless, boring, tedious facts about the past! I did not come up here to learn about history!’
Trevor, much to her horror, looked genuinely wounded by her outburst which, to be fair, had not come out in a remotely friendly fashion. ‘Why did you come?’
>
It was a very good question. So good, she actually forgot about her aching knees and burning thighs and sore buttocks as she contemplated an answer. ‘I suppose I wanted to prove I still had a bit of life in me.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I just … everyone around me is getting old. Getting old and grey and achy and dying or fussing about the fact that I should be behaving more like one of them.’
‘One of whom?’
‘The old, grey, dying people.’
‘It sounds nice.’
‘What?’
‘Having people to fuss about you.’
She hadn’t really thought about it like that before.
‘It means they care, doesn’t it?’ Trevor asked. ‘It means you have people who love you.’
Yes. Yes, she supposed it did. And somewhere along the line she’d led herself to believe that that type of love was suffocating, when in actual fact, Trevor here saw it as a comfort.
‘Do you have family?’ She asked.
He shook his head. ‘Sadly, no. My parents both passed a while back and I never managed to tempt anyone to be my lawfully wedded … so …’
A wash of shame flushed through her. Poor Trevor. He was a kind, lonely man trying his best in a world that didn’t take to people who didn’t conform. She’d been incredibly rude and unforgivably thoughtless. It was quite uncomfortable to confront the reality that, despite having always considered herself a kind, friendly, selfless woman, what she actually was, was … ha! Jennifer would love this. She was actually a selfish, myopic, insensitive know-it-all who briskly put people in their place all to serve her quest to prove to the world little Florence Pringle (yes, she’d dumped the maiden name sharpish) … that little Florence Pringle was interesting. Interesting despite the fact her parents had lived a small, insular, incurious life on the outskirts of Birmingham. They’d always said they were perfectly happy as they were but she’d found it impossible to believe them. How could they be happy without having tried a croissant from a proper boulangerie in Paris? How could they be happy having never stood with twenty-thousand people singing along with one of the world’s greatest ever superstars. How could they have been happy in that square mile of city they never once expressed an interest in leaving?
