Sue gave the desk a hapless little shrug and said, ‘I suppose it’s not going anywhere.’
‘I can help another time if you like,’ Raven surprised everyone by saying. ‘If it’s simple bookkeeping.’
‘Did you study it in college?’ Flo asked.
She nodded. ‘A bit, but mostly I learnt by helping my parents with the shop.’
‘Shop?’
‘It’s a pharmacy. A small one, so …’ Her eyes skimmed across the labels on the boxes. ‘Small business?’
Sue nodded. ‘Plumbing.’
‘Any employees?’
‘No, just Gary.’
Raven chewed on her bottom lip for a minute then said, ‘I’ll bet you can do most of it on an app if you want.’
Sue’s eyebrows lifted. ‘He’s got this book.’ She pointed at the accounts book that looked as if it had been bought around 1952.
Raven pushed her lips out and then gave a ‘your call’ shrug. ‘Pizza?’
‘Good idea,’ Flo enthused. ‘And once we’ve all got a nice little drink in our hands, how about we put it to Sue about our little adventure, eh, Raven?’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘Round the country?’
‘Oh, god, no love. Across it.’ Flo’s cheeks were pink. Whether it was from the heat or the fizz, Sue wasn’t quite sure. Excitement maybe? Raven was staying mysteriously silent, although Flo had assured her Raven loved the idea every bit as much as she did.
A charity cycle ride across the country. She wasn’t even sure she knew where Hadrian’s Wall was, to be honest. Somewhere up North.
‘I’ve not ridden a bike in years, I don’t think. Not since …’ Her eyes went opaque for a moment then cleared. ‘It’s been quite a while.’
‘It’s for a good cause. It’s that mental health charity Kath off of Kath and Kev is the ambassador for. LifeTime?’
Sue shook her head. She didn’t know it.
‘It’s a mental health charity, love. She joined up with them when her brother died. He had the depression, didn’t he? I thought you might enjoy raising some money for them considering what happened with your Gary.’
Sue took a sip of her drink. She was using coins from her special holiday coin jar to buy food, had accepted money from a stranger who now lived in her bedroom and now Flo wanted her to ride her bicycle across the country to earn money for a charity she had never heard of. She thought of the solitary phone call Gary might have made if he’d known help was available to him.
‘How far is it?’
‘Two hundred miles.’
Sue’s eyes popped open.
‘Less. More than one fifty, less than two. And very flat apparently.’ She flattened her hand. ‘Like a pancake. And you don’t do it in one go. It’s over about five days.’ She suddenly beamed. ‘It’s camping I think!’ Raven choked on her pizza and Flo, without missing a beat, patted her on the back, went to the sink, got her some water and handed it to her all without losing eye contact with Sue.
‘Does it cost money? You know, to join?’
Flo’s light eyebrows templed. They were blonde, unlike Flo’s hair which was a rather lovely silvery grey. It was the type of grey her mother would’ve preferred to go. A bit more Helen Mirren chic rather than the practical Jamie Lee Curtis she’d ended up with. ‘I’m not sure, love. That’s a good question. I was just watching Kath talk about it on the telly, but I’ve not yet looked up the details on the internet. Raven and I were talking about it on the ride over here, weren’t we, Raven?’ They both turned to Raven who was in the middle of biting into the Big Meaty Deluxe now that she’d recovered from her coughing spell. She waved. ‘… I was saying to her, wouldn’t it be fun? And wouldn’t it be even more fun if you were to join us.’ Raven nodded in agreement.
‘Why are you going?’ Sue asked.
For the first time that night Flo looked as though she were caught off guard. She took a bite of pizza and made a thoughtful face as if she were finding just the right way to explain her reasons. A hidden tragedy? A personal loss? Mental health problems of her own?
‘Oh, I love a new adventure,’ Flo finally answered, then with a glint in her eye, added, ‘And I can’t stand that Kev. This is the first thing Kath’s done on her own so far as I can remember and I want to support her. And her charity of course.’ She looked down at her piece of pizza then, as if she’d made a decision on a great matter, put it back on the plate and looked Sue square in the eye. ‘If I’m being entirely honest, I want to stave off old age as long as humanly possible. I need a bit of va-va-voom in my life. Want to get a little je ne sais quoi running through my veins. Riding across the country ought to do it, don’t you think, girls?’
Sue and Raven tipped their heads side to side as if the idea were a shiny orb navigating its way through the maze of their minds. Yes. Riding a bicycle across the country would definitely add something to someone’s life. Raven looked about as unsure as Sue felt as to what that something would be, but … would doing something for someone else help her feel whole again? Useful? Valuable? Sure, she took calls from people seeking help every day at work, but most of the time it didn’t feel as though she was actually, genuinely responding. How could she when her responses were pre-scripted? Oh, god she needed something to make her feel useful again. ‘When is it?’
‘Not for a few months yet. May, I think? End of April.’ Flo was clearly fibbing. She didn’t know. But strangely, Sue didn’t mind.
The more time she spent with Flo, the more Sue got the impression this dynamic, vital woman was a big-picture person. A blue-sky thinker who trusted that the details would sort themselves out so
