‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Not your fault.’
‘No, but I – I can feel badly for you.’
‘True …’ Molly said, then. ‘How ’bout you? What’s your plan? Kids? Uni? Digging a hole somewhere to prepare for Armageddon?’
‘If I believed Armageddon was coming, I’d probably prefer a cave … a cave on a mountain top.’
‘So you could see it all coming?’
‘Exactly,’ Raven grinned. She was beginning to like this Molly.
‘So what is it you didn’t see coming?’
This whole entire situation for one. Not living at her parents’ for another. Being so dithery about what to do with her future. Living with Sue. Realising how many gazillions of people lived with mental health issues and called into 111 for reassurance that they weren’t going completely mad. The epidemic of loneliness that seemed to be seizing the country. Exhausted parents, middle-aged men having heart attacks, people googling their symptoms and refusing to accept the worst-case scenario might not actually be the scenario at all. There was a little bit of her now linked to every single one of her callers and, now, her Instagram followers. She didn’t really know how to deal with all of their pain, let alone understand her own. There was also the fact that she might’ve been the one to break the link with her parents, not the other way round, and, as such, she might never have her mum’s pakoras again, or worse, never make them proud. The more she thought, the scratchier her throat got.
And just like that, Raven began to weep. Weep and talk. Things she didn’t even know she’d been worried about or frightened of came out in a worrying volume. Aisha, her family, her grades, her spot at Oxford (which she did, a little bit actually, kind of want), her Uncle Ravi, the time her brother’s little girl threw up on the floor and Raven had just left it there waiting for someone else to discover. By the time her verbal well ran dry, her tears had stopped and the biscuit and tea tent appeared on the horizon, Molly pointed at her odometer and said, ‘Look at that. See how far you’ve come?’
‘You know it was Europeans who built Hadrian’s Wall – not just the Romans.’
Flo squawked out a short scream, horrified to discover Trevor pedalling alongside her. More so when he appeared completely oblivious to the spray he was sending her way as he ploughed through the endless puddles. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Didn’t you see me ride past?’ He pinched a bit of his startlingly reflective waterproof jacket. ‘I rode past you about ten minutes ago on my way to get this from Becky. The other one was soaked through.’
Hmm. No. She hadn’t seen him at all. Or noticed Becky stopping even though Stuart had put a rearview mirror on her helmet. And a blinking light. Not that the blinking light would’ve helped, but – ooo, this wasn’t good. Hello, Alzheimer’s, farewell sweet youth. She willed her aching joints to play ball just until Trevor had bored of her more … oh, god … her more senior pace.
‘I wonder if Hadrian had his lads out in this weather or if they had a union. Ha!’
Hmmm. It could be some time. Perhaps he’d already bored everyone else silly and was here to torture her until the next so-called comfort break.
‘That’s right,’ said Trevor as if she were a willing participant in this conversation. ‘Syrians, Romanians, Romans – of course – always the Romans, the Spanish … from the North of Spain of course, so they wouldn’t have considered themselves Spanish in the way modern Spaniards do although, if you follow the papers, even that’s up for question, borders being the negligible things they are these days. Perspective, isn’t it?’
‘Mmmm.’ Flo wasn’t really up for snippets of historical and topical insight today. Then again, it might be a good chance to try and remember things to prove she hadn’t lost her marbles. Plus Stu might find them interesting and she owed him a call. Yesterday she’d been so tired she’d fallen asleep before her head had hit the pillow. She’d woken up to a darling picture of Captain George nestled on the settee on her phone and two melted ice packets tied to her knees with socks, now hanging on the back of one of the seats in Becky’s van because she knew she’d need them again tonight and she was damned if she was going to tie wet socks to her already aching knees.
Flo breathed into another sharp pain (as recommended by Fola) while Trevor waxed lyrical about the definition of a Roman mile (a thousand paces or 5,000 feet as opposed to the modern mile which was 5,280 feet thus making the modern mile longer than the—). Oh dear god, this trip wasn’t at all what she’d imagined it would be. For some reason she thought she’d be feeling much more triumphant. Inspiring poor, shy, grief-stricken Sue out of her humdrum, miserable life up to the wild Cumbrian coastline to confront her grief and then embrace a future happiness. For Raven she’d imagined … well … she wasn’t quite sure what she’d imagined for Raven. A bit of weight loss? A desire to wear brighter colours? It certainly hadn’t been an ever-increasing Instagram following and a crowd of people begging her to draw flowers on their shirts (even though Flo had to say, the one Raven had drawn for her was rather fabulous). Then it came to her. She’d wanted to be the hero. The amazing woman who’d seen the despair and woe in these poor women’s lives and Flo having been the one to eagle-eye it and change it by pushing them both out of their comfort zones and into a place of unexpected bliss and discovery. Elements of it were coming true. Not because of Flo, though, but because of what Sue and Raven had been carrying in their own emotional arsenals. They were both made
