Anna laughed and the mood lifted again.
I stirred some sugar into my coffee and took a sip. How was it that coffee tasted so much better here than back home? Was it the whole experience, sitting at a French pavement café in the morning sunshine, was it made in a different way, or was it that I was just tired and over excited? Looking around, seeing things I had longed to see, was marvellous. Perhaps it was better to be doing this now rather than back then when I had been young and silly and probably wouldn’t have appreciated it in the same way. I had changed; we all had. We couldn’t pretend we were eighteen any longer and it would be daft to think we could. Even so, being in a strange place where the language and customs were so unfamiliar was slightly unnerving.
Escapades were all very well, but somehow it would have been good to see something a bit more familiar. And foolishly, just for a moment, I thought about the man on the train. Who wasn’t at all familiar but there had been something about him that had been reassuring and solid. Although I had been embarrassed when I fell over, he had been kind and calming. What he thought of me was anyone’s guess.
We walked on, until we came into a broad open plaza with black and white chequered stone tiles. Ahead of us the buildings were lower, more spread out so that the sky looked bigger, and there was an unmistakeable light on the horizon which hinted that the sea wasn’t far away.
Harriet and I had fallen behind a little, and even Anna’s steps were slowing. I could feel mutiny on the horizon.
‘I’m not going to be able to walk much further,’ Harriet mumbled at last, and she stopped and sat down on a concrete bollard.
‘Oh, come on! Honestly, it’s not far. I remember this bit, don’t you?’ Anna insisted.
Harriet fiddled with the handle of her suitcase, her expression mutinous.
‘No, I don’t, Anna. You said that a very long time ago. In fact, I think you said it when we got off the train. Oh, it’s not far. And over the last twenty-four hours we have been walking and walking and I’m not used to it. My feet are about to burst into flames and my knee is sore and we still haven’t got anywhere.’
Anna huffed and looked a little impatient, and for a few minutes there was a bad-tempered silence. I began to see that my role on this trip was going to be the peacemaker unless things changed, and I didn’t like the sound of that. It wasn’t what I had imagined at all.
Anna stabbed at the map with her finger. ‘There’s a little archway around here with some steps down into an alleyway. And look, there it is, I was right. And the place we are staying is just near there. Honestly, we did this before, surely you remember it? You didn’t mind back then as I remember.’
‘Anna, I was eighteen! Now I am sixty-four. Things are very different,’ Harriet shouted, causing a couple of people to look around. ‘It’s all very well to talk about recreating that holiday all those years ago, but to be honest I’m done with all that roughing it stuff. Back then we would have made do with three pairs of knickers, a bikini, a clean sundress and a toothbrush in a bag and that’s about all. Well, we aren’t those people any more. I’m certainly not. I want a comfy bed and hotel staff fawning over me and hot towels and champagne. I don’t want to rough it. I want to… smooth it.’
‘That makes absolutely no sense,’ Anna said.
‘Well, nor does this,’ Harriet shouted, ‘and this was all your idea!’
Anna looked outraged. ‘We all agreed, and you were quite comfortable with the plans, perfectly nonchalant.’
Harriet stood up and faced her, stuttering with annoyance.
‘Well, now I am – chalant. The time for being nonchalant is over. I’m beginning to remember things as they actually were. And I’m not putting up with that again! If I don’t get a comfortable bed, a paracetamol and a chance to take my shoes off very soon, I am going to have a full-blown toddler tantrum.’
‘Don’t be daft!’ Anna laughed, which was exactly the wrong thing to do, and Harriet’s face looked even more forbidding.
I tried to cool the heat of the moment although secretly I felt much the same as Harriet did. I hated to see them arguing like this; it didn’t fit in at all with what I had dreamed this trip would be like. But it seemed Harriet had the same reservations. And that was interesting.
I went to get Harriet’s bag. ‘Look, Harriet, prop your backpack on top of my case, you can tie it on with the straps, and I’ll look after it for a bit and get it down the steps. Come on, it’s not far now, let’s just keep going and then we can find the place Anna’s booked and have a proper rest. It’s been a long day.’
‘Too right,’ Harriet grumbled, ‘and why Anna is so determined to recreate a holiday which, if I think about it now was one disaster after another, I have no idea. I hated just about every minute of it. It was so long ago and I must have forgotten what it was really like, but this is bringing it all back to me. I must have been completely mad to agree to this.’
I stood with my eyes wide on hearing this. I’d begun to have a few doubts but this was astonishing and not what I had expected to hear.
One disaster after another? She’d hated it? Surely that wasn’t true? I had only heard good things about that trip at the time. How much fun they had enjoyed together. The meals, the unforgettable sights and experiences they had shared. All the excitement and laughs I had missed.
While they were away they had only sent me two postcards, one each from Paris and Barcelona which had arrived with foreign stamps and rather dog eared, and that was all. I’d had to wait until they came home to hear the details of all the sights they had seen, the people they had met, to hear the funny in-jokes that I didn’t understand. And each little tale had made me even more resentful that I hadn’t been there to share it with them.
I had assumed that every day had been sunny and filled with fun and laughter. Which with the benefit of hindsight was of course completely unrealistic and obviously not the case. What we needed to do now was deal with things as they were, not as they had been. Perhaps I would ask Harriet about it when I got the chance. It would be interesting to find out.
7
After a while peace was restored and Harriet apologised for shouting, and Anna insisted that we really didn’t have far to go and Harriet could choose the best bed in the room when we got there. This made Harriet cross again, because she said she hadn’t expected to share with anyone and repeated several times that she wanted a bit more comfort than she might have expected when she was eighteen.
We plodded on in silence, and it seemed as though everyone else who passed us was cheerful and enjoying themselves, while the three of us must have looked very glum.
We went through the stone archway Anna had mentioned and down some well-worn marble steps and through a narrow alleyway lined with cosy little restaurants and bistros.
All of them were lit with glowing lights and seemed to be filled with happy-looking couples adoring each other over the flowers on the tables. At last, the wheels of our cases bumping on the uneven cobbles, we reached an unexciting doorway which smelled of cats, and Anna turned to us in triumph.
