Honestly. All of these people and only the one poor girl running between reception and the kitchen like a headless chicken. Why wasn’t anyone helping her?
‘They’ve put you to work, have they?’
‘Oh, hello there, Trevor.’ He was a fifty-something chap Flo had met at the pub last night during the ‘Riders Social’ now looking the tiniest bit worse for wear. Silly man. Downing pints like water the night before their big ride. She’d met him a thousand times over on the airlines. Economy exit row-type who never slept. Not even on the long hauls. Always awake, always hungry and always knew something about everything. Regularly offering little tidbits about their destination – I’ll bet I know something about Buenos Aires you don’t. (It was founded twice and yes, she had known.) – or, worse, the airplane. Did you know the Boeing 737— Yes. She did. She flew on one for a living.
‘Need something nourishing to take on the world?’ Flo jiggled the two yoghurt pots in front of her.
Trevor laughed a loud attention-grabbing laugh. ‘Watch how you go, love! People will think you’re flirting with me and if I’m not mistaken, you’re a married woman.’
Flo’s smile froze a little. The reminder made her heart cinch more that it normally did at mentions of Stu. Like the stalwart he was, Stuart had driven her and the girls (and Captain George who still wasn’t his usual self) to the studio in Birmingham yesterday after weighing their bags on the bathroom scales (no more than 15kg each), checking their helmets for cracks, noting down their emergency numbers and, of course, blood types (O+ for Sue, B- for Raven, both of whom had donated at a recent, in-house drive at the call centre). He’d also given each of them a set of pocket hand warmers “just in case.” All of which had driven her to distraction until Stu, Captain George by his side, along with the other rider’s families, had waved them off until they’d disappeared from sight, at which point she’d missed them more than she could have ever imagined possible. Missing Stu in this way simply wasn’t like her. Throughout their entire married life, they had spent countless nights apart, what with her flying to one end of the world and Stu flying to the other, tag teaming one another for school runs, the electrician/plumber/builders coming at nine, the telly man fixing the aerial on Sunday as a special favour, making sure the milk wasn’t rancid before pouring it into the children’s cereal because another trip to A&E for food poisoning was out of the question. No, this felt more like a separation. As if the lies she’d been telling him about heading off to work these past few weeks had driven a wedge between them only she could see. Stu, you see, wasn’t a liar. He was the most loyal, reliable, honest man she’d ever met. Up until now, Flo had been the occasional bender of truth, more to expedite things that to actually deceive, but this was different. A slippery slope of deceit Stu didn’t deserve to be a part of.
She stared at Trevor, vaguely tuning in as he asked ‘did she know’ that there was genuine quicksand out on the beach which, by the way, was a tidal estuary composed of three rivers, not the sea as most people thought. Right now Flo didn’t care what most people thought. She only cared about Stu, no doubt innocently sitting at home finishing his puzzles, perfectly satisfied that his wife would never ever tell him anything that wasn’t true. A complicated knot of regret and frustration formed in her throat. If she’d been honest in the beginning she’d most likely be in Portugal now, with Stu, preparing for another sunny day of avoiding the speed-walking golf widows and their decaf coffee mornings.
A surge of injustice rushed through her. Why did it feel brazen to want to participate in life despite the fact she had to take joint supplements? The Paralympics was all about triumphing over adversity. Ageing should be the same. Judged on a case-by-case basis. It wasn’t as if David Attenborough was being forced to hang up his hat despite an inability to yomp through the jungles of the Amazon anymore. Quite the opposite in fact. The world was desperate to squeeze as much out of him, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Clint Eastwood as possible! No one was jamming them into cabbage scented care homes in a pair of adult nappies. She was exactly the same as she had been ten years ago. Better if she had any say in it. So! It was society’s fault she’d had to lie to Stu. Not hers. She’d been doing her very best to be a contributing member of the United Kingdom’s economy and door after door was being slammed in her face. Despite some rather heroic efforts down the local library and even, on one particularly bleak day, the job centre, it became remarkably clear that no one wanted to hire seventy-two-year-old woman who’d just been fired from their call centre position for using plain old common sense. No one apart from mobile care centres looking for ‘paid companions for the elderly’ – a job she would never take in a million years because a) old people and b) it was plain wrong to be paid to chat nonsense with someone over a cup of lukewarm tea and a packet of Rich Teas when they should have family there to talk and reminisce. All of which made her wonder if her own children would come back home and talk to her when she didn’t have teeth and could no longer remember the name of the Prime Minister. Jennifer might. Jennifer always liked being right.
Anyway. It was all much of a muchness now. She’d come clean to Stu when she got back. That, or start volunteering down at the local RSPCA centre and slip it into conversation as if she’d been working
