Further ahead, there was also the issue of university thatwould have to be tackled at some point. She had told him all about her careerplans on one of their first meals out. He had seemed enthusiastic andencouraging, but again it had not been mentioned since. Now she was at thepoint where she needed to accept a place if she was going that September. Sheknew she couldn’t stay in Oxford with him unless she changed her course tosomething they offered, which she was not willing to do. She still had herheart set on media studies and was strongly considering Leeds or Durham as herbest options.
Alan had made her feel so wanted and happy that she wasgetting strong feelings of guilt over her plans. Would leaving him to travel orstudy be an act of betrayal after all he had done for her? If there had beenany cracks in their relationship at that time then she would at least have hadsome reason to justify leaving, but he was just so damned perfect. That wasgoing to make it all the harder to leave.
With the benefit of decades of hindsight, Kay now wonderedif he had been manipulating her even back then. She had assumed then that hehadn’t asked about her plans because he had forgotten about them, but was he infact playing a clever game with her? Had he been so nice to her purely so thatshe would feel unable to leave?
His impeccable conduct back then was a far cry from what shewas to experience in later years, once he had got her where he wanted her. Butshe was only nineteen then. She simply didn’t have the life experience to seewhat he was doing. Maybe there had been warning signs that herforty-three-year-old self would have spotted a mile off, but she was young andin love, and as she had heard people say many times, love is blind.
Spring gave way to summer, and as June dawned she knew shecould not put off her decisions any longer. Breaking away from Alan would bevery hard but she had saved for and planned her trip round Europe for so longthat she couldn’t turn her back on it now. It didn’t have to spell the end ofthe relationship – if he loved her, he would wait for her to come back –wouldn’t he?
She had over £3,000 in the bank and a clear plan in her mindas to what she wanted to do. Her plan was to start at the top of Europe andwork her way downwards.
She had decided that one of the Scandinavian countries wouldbe her first destination, with mid-June as her planned departure date. Thiswasn’t a date she had chosen at random. A year or two before, she had watchedthe latest David Attenborough series, Life in the Freezer, on BBC1. Shefound it fascinating to learn how the sun never set in the summer in the Arcticregions.
She had vowed there and then that she would one day go andsee the midnight sun. Hence her rather unusual choice of country to begin hertravels through Europe. By choosing a date as close as possible to the summersolstice, she wouldn’t have to travel all the way to the North Pole. All shehad to do was get inside the Arctic Circle. Her best options for this seemed tobe Norway or Finland.
She had opted for Finland. This gave her the option to visitLapland, somewhere she had seen depicted in many Christmas movies. She doubtedit would seem very Christmassy in June, but no matter. She would get a budgetflight to Helsinki, and from there travel north to the city of Rovaniemi. Shewould give herself the best possible chance of seeing the midnight sun byensuring she was there on the date of the summer solstice. Then she just had tokeep her fingers crossed for a sunny day.
From there she would travel south by train using a studentrailcard. She would visit as many countries as she could, finishing with a tourof the Greek islands in September. She had built up a good selection ofguidebooks to help her find the youth hostels where she would stay and theplaces of interest she could visit.
It would mean lugging a lot of books around with her, butthat was how people did things in those days. It was 1995 and the internetrevolution was only just beginning. Online guides, the few that existed, werein their infancy and the only way to access them would be in one of theinternet cafés which were springing up all over the place at that time.
It would be an exciting time to be travelling in Europe. TheIron Curtain had recently come down and there were a host of newly independentstates springing up, formerly part of the Soviet Union. These had once beenvery difficult to visit but were now throwing open their borders, keenlyembracing and welcoming visitors from the Western world.
Kay hoped to include some of these on her journey. Everyoneelse went to France, Spain and Italy, but she wanted to do something different,something unusual. It was going to be the adventure of a lifetime.
The thought that she was just nineteen, inexperienced andpotentially vulnerable, didn’t dissuade her. She was young and fearless, herheart and mind full of adventure. To her, this would only be the start – oneday she planned to be the one writing the guidebooks rather than reading them.
But none of it ever happened.
She kept putting off telling Alan, even booking her flightbefore broaching the subject with him. On the same day she booked the flightshe also accepted a place at Leeds University. She didn’t tell him about thateither.
It was just four days before she was due to fly fromHeathrow to Helsinki on the third Saturday in June when she finally plucked upthe courage to tell him. She hadn’t expected him to take it well, but he wassurprisingly supportive. He even offered to drive her to the airport the nightbefore and
