‘You had a nose job? Why?’ Harriet said.
Anna looked incredulous. ‘You must have noticed! I thought you were being polite not mentioning it! Don’t you remember my nose? It was terrible.’
‘Was it? No it wasn’t. I swear you look exactly the same now as you did back then,’ I said, peering at her.
‘No I don’t. When we were at school Miss Shaw used to call me Woodpecker, because I had a beaky nose and my surname was Wood. She wouldn’t be allowed to get away with that these days. I got very self-conscious about it,’ Anna said, obviously annoyed even after so many years.
How horrible it was to feel like that. When a spiteful or thoughtless comment could linger and damage. But then I knew exactly how that felt. Fred had criticised, commented and belittled for years to make himself feel superior. Not just me but our son too. And Fred had been wrong in the unkind things he’d said; Ben was not a disappointment, he was clever, he had worked hard and made something of himself. And I did not have a naturally grumpy face which embarrassed Fred at staff gatherings after all. I was better than him at decorating, gardening and particularly finding things he had mislaid. And I had friends, proper friends while Fred’s colleagues in work only seemed to hang around him hoping to impress at the end of the tax year.
‘Miss Shaw was a prize cow,’ I said supportively. ‘And she had an arse the size of Jupiter. Anyway, back to the packing problem.’
‘Can I bring my laptop?’ Anna wondered.
‘We’ve been through this already. Yes if you don’t mind carrying it, and all the cables and adaptors you need,’ Harriet said firmly. ‘It’s two weeks of your life, surely you can do without Candy Crush for a few days?’
Anna huffed. ‘Perhaps I’ll just take my iPad instead. So just a phone and charger? Underwear, T-shirts and – oh heavens. What about makeup and toiletries? The last time Rupert and I went to Rye the back of the car was rammed with stuff, and we were only going to a hotel for three days.’
‘They sell shampoo and mascara in Europe you know,’ I said, having just wondered something similar.
What we were forgetting was that at eighteen one didn’t need or expect to have much luggage; at sixty-four other factors came into play. Not the least of which were prescription medications, comfortable shoes, proper sunglasses, giant tubes of factor 50 suncream, insect repellent, a pouch of charging cables and plug adaptors and if there was room, a decent pillow. When I was eighteen I could nap anywhere; at sixty-four I could quite easily put my back out just by sleeping wrong.
We wrangled about this for a while until Anna wondered if she could just make do with a bigger backpack but then imagined herself like a soldier going off across Dartmoor with something the size of a small car on her back and finally decided she was definitely going to take a case after all.
‘Minimalism, girls, that’s what we need to go for,’ Harriet said firmly as though a few minutes earlier she hadn’t been worrying about the weight of her hair dryer.
‘I think we should all have a final trial run and report back,’ I said, ‘and be ruthless.’
‘Gosh, I knew a girl called Ruth at college. She played the trombone so no one wanted to share a flat with her,’ Harriet said.
‘So, in fact everyone was Ruth-less?’ I said.
‘Oh, very funny.’
* * *
It was a proud moment for me as I stepped onto the London-bound train. This was what I had wanted to do all those years ago and instead I had been left on the platform as the others pulled faces at me and waved out of the window. I couldn’t have been more excited.
I was looking forward to some fun, to seeing new places and meeting new people. There might be brilliant sunny days and marvellous food to enjoy. I had company and yet at the same time I was free to experience all of it through my own eyes and with my own thoughts.
In the event, all of us had decided to bring medium-sized wheelie suitcases and we stored them without incident in the luggage bays.
Then we settled into our seats and I looked out as we passed the acres of countryside, the trees just starting to turn to their autumn colours in the bright morning sunshine. We checked and rechecked our passports and tickets, bought coffee and biscuits from the trolley and at last reached London and the vaulted halls of the station where we rubbed the nose of the Paddington Bear statue for luck.
Then, filled with enthusiasm, we got a taxi to St Pancras as Anna said she couldn’t cope with the Underground, joined the queue for our passports to be checked, texted our families to reassure them we hadn’t got lost and had a forgettable cup of coffee while we waited to board.
Harriet, who had been in charge of most of the arrangements because she had spent years organising student trips, had booked our seats around a table for four and just as we were congratulating ourselves on having plenty of space, a tall man of about my age came to sit in the empty seat next to mine.
I said hello and gave him a small, polite smile, which he ignored. Instead, he took out a laptop, spread it over the table and started typing before the train had even started. Anna, sitting opposite him, looked annoyed and firmly pushed her magazine back onto her half of the table.
‘Lovely weather. Off to Paris?’ I said, still feeling excited and in the mood to communicate with strangers.
He didn’t look up. ‘I would have thought that was obvious.’
‘Business trip by the looks of things,’ I said. ‘We are off on an escapade.’
He didn’t answer, just nodded.
‘You might have been going to Disneyland,’ I murmured, ‘for a bit of fun.’
