by Daisy Tate
Sue laughed a silly, girlish laugh. ‘Course I do!’ She laughed again, hoping it would mask the terror consuming her. Grow a spine or face bankruptcy. The choice was hers. ‘Course I do.’
Raven ripped the piece of paper out of her notebook and handed it to Sue.
‘Oh,’ Sue said, then sobbed, ‘A flower. No one’s ever given me flowers before except—Thank you, Raven. It’s a beautiful rose. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one this colour.’
‘Coral,’ said Raven.
‘Any particular reason you chose it?’ It really was quite an extraordinary rendition of a rose. Complete with dew drops. She leant down towards the paper, fully expecting to smell it.
Raven shrugged, still unable to meet Sue’s eye. ‘It stands for a couple of things. Friendship …’ her eyes lifted to meet Sue’s. ‘And sympathy.’
‘Oh. I see,’ said Sue, bursts of joy and pain colliding in her heart. Then she did what she always did when she had absolutely no idea how she’d get through another day. Turned, walked into the kitchen, and popped on the kettle.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘For Christ’s sake, Mother. How bloody long is this ride meant to be?’
‘Not long, darling. Just a couple more miles.’ Flo ground her legs round again, discreetly shifting the cycle up a gear. When would this interminable ride ever end?
‘I think we should turn around. This is too long for the children and Captain George will be exhausted by now.’
‘Nonsense! The children are loving it,’ Flo protested. ‘And George has plenty of life in him yet, don’t you, Captain?’ She gave him a smile then made a train noise for a reason she couldn’t entirely fathom, but matter and mind were having a bit of a tug of war for supremacy at the moment.
As pleasant as it was to see her daughter and grandchildren, Flo wished Stu hadn’t greased up everyone’s old bikes and sent them all out together. She’d done three rather long miles along the canal yesterday as a trial run on her new new bike and was feeling it. Not that she’d admit as much, but her bum was hurting far more than she’d anticipated and if she wasn’t mistaken her knees had made a rather peculiar crunching noise when she’d run upstairs to fetch a hot water bottle for seven-year-old Lily who had a cold which she would, no doubt, transfer to Stu, who didn’t seem to be able to resist his grandchildren’s various contagions in even the best of scenarios – i.e. – absence.
‘Is this bicycle working out well, then?’ Jennifer grunted as they rode up a rise that looked easy until they were peddling up it. ‘Dad told me about the racing bike debacle.’
‘He called it a debacle, did he?’ Flo tried and failed to avoid using her snippy voice. Was she not allowed to make mistakes now? She didn’t want to bring up the calamity that had been the handsfree scooter tour in Cancun, but he could be assured she would if cornered about this.
Jennifer made one of those noises indicating there would’ve been no need to call it a debacle, if it hadn’t been. Such a daddy’s girl.
Flo stuffed a bit of hair sticking to her forehead back under her ridiculous helmet, intensely annoyed that her husband had said anything whatsoever to Jennifer, a woman intent on taking a parental caretaker role decades earlier than necessity warranted.
‘Mum? Are you sure Captain George is up to this?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I know that dog better than I know myself.’ A familiar raft of irritability clanked through her. Jennifer and Stu were always questioning her. Are you sure you checked this? What did the instructions say about that?
What her husband and her daughter failed to understand about her was that Flo was logical. Sensible, even. Down to earth. Being raised in an unheated house where neither parent was functioning at full capacity did that to a girl. Sure. She liked pretty things. She liked whimsy. She liked fun! But despite what anyone said, being a flight attendant took a lot more than an ability to smile and pour hot coffee at ten thousand feet. It took tenacity. Epic amounts of patience. And courage. She never talked about it, but the time she’d strapped into the emergency harness at the bottom of the plane so she could drop a smoking laptop battery out of the hatch and into the Pacific midway between Los Angeles and Hawaii had been one of the most exhilarating in her life. The harness had been so strong there’d been zero chance of being sucked out of the plane, but even so … that adrenaline rush had never been equalled. The passenger who’d owned the phone had been particularly irritating, so it had been a double pleasure. And there had been the time with the terrorist, of course. A bipolar man who’d forgotten to take his meds it turned out, but at the time they’d all thought he’d been a terrorist including Flo who, without even thinking, had leapt upon him and taken away his weapon. She generally left out the part about how it had been a Pez dispenser rather than a detonator, but either way, the passengers had been alright and the plane had landed safely in Houston where she’d enjoyed margaritas on the house for the entire three-day layover.
‘Most bikes have at least eighteen gears these days,’ Jennifer said, eyes glued to Flo’s handle bars.
‘Pothole,’ Flo pointed out a bit too late for her daughter to notice, and then, ‘Nonsense.’ She was well aware she could have chosen an eighteen or even a twenty-seven geared bike seeing as the one she’d returned (with Stu’s help) had had every single bell and whistle apart, of course, from an actual bell or whistle. ‘Seven’s plenty. I grew up on three.’
‘And rode fifty miles to the coal mines and back in all weather,’ Jennifer sighed (her one nod towards melodrama). ‘I know, Mum. I’m only pointing it out because you’re making life harder for yourself if you’re really going to do this.’
Flo shot her a quick look. ‘Why on earth wouldn’t I do it? It’s for charity!’
Jennifer pretended to be interested in her children, this sort of conversational impasse being all-too-familiar terrain for the pair of them.
A surge of outrage roared up in Flo. Why wouldn’t everyone stop picking on her? She had a brain. A body that functioned very well for a seventy-two-year-old woman, thank you very much. The GP had told her, her heart age was fifty-seven! So what if she didn’t have all the bicycle gears the universe had to offer? Mabel (her bicycle was definitely a Mabel) had seven of them.
‘The chap down the cycling shop said Mabel was perfect for riding round country lanes and in town.’ Flo had checked the Hadrian’s Wall route online the other day and they’d be out in the country alright. That and riding straight through the heart of Newcastle. So there you were, town and country. Mabel was also, the chap had said, excellent for hills. So. Seven gears it was. A bouncy leather seat, a basket on the front and a tingy bell she’d already used twice. It was perfect. Apart from the seat not being quite as comfy today as it had been during her two minute trial ride.
‘Why Mabel?’ Jennifer pursed her lips betraying the onset of a couple of lines.
‘I thought it sounded fun.’
‘Fun?’
‘Yes, you know that thing that sometimes happens when you’re not trying to talk your mother out of doing something for charity.’
Jennifer sighed again, then pushed ahead to instruct her son to zip up his waterproof because it looked like it might rain in the next forty-eight hours. She didn’t even notice the floods of daffodils coming up all along the towpath. Jennifer had loved daffodils when she was little. They’d made her utterly giddy with delight. Where had all of that glee gone? The wonder?
Flo shifted on her seat again wondering, as her posterior announced its discomfort, if her own mule-like tendencies were, in fact, hand-me-downs to Jennifer. After she’d returned the racing bike (to a different Halfords, there was no chance she was going to have that reedy, spotty boy give her a knowing, I get it, you’re old, look) and gone to the lovely little village cycle shop, she had point blank refused to buy any of the padded lycra shorts despite strong encouragement to do so. While Stuart had embarked on a lengthy discussion about the durability of something or other in Mabel, Flo had tri
ed on a pair, but it had felt like having nappies on, so no thank you very much my good man, but she’d do this the old-fashioned way. With her own natural cushioning. Cushioning, it was becoming clear, that wasn’t entirely up to the task.
‘Mum?’ Jennifer pulled to a stop. ‘It’s time to stop. The children have had it and I really don’t think Captain George is looking right.’
‘Honestly, Jennifer—’ Flo stopped and turned back to see Captain George doing his best to keep up but there was something decidedly out of kilter in his gait. She dropped the bike and as she went to him, he collapsed to the ground.
A phone call to Stu, a silent car ride and three hours of pacing in the waiting room of the veterinarian’s later, Jennifer was as livid with rage as Flo was hollowed out with grief. She’d hurt her baby. Over-stressed his raging joints and ligaments until – snap! His right cruciate ligament had gone.
‘It’s so typical of you,’ Jennifer was saying. She didn’t even wait for Flo to reply before continuing her lecture. ‘Pushing and pushing beyond what is actually enjoyable all for your own benefit.’
‘The vet said George would make a full recovery.’ A very expensive recovery, but cruciate ligament surgeries really were on a different level these days, he’d said. George would be enjoying the same technological advances as Alan Shearer had.
‘He’s old, Mum. He shouldn’t have been out running that long. Just as the children shouldn’t have been out for such a long ride in this bloody awful weather. Lily’s properly ill now. Dad’s going to get sick because you know he won’t leave her side. And Jake.’
‘Jake wasn’t sick when we left.’ According to Stu, he was happily watching a documentary on killer whales after a hot bowl of soup.
Jennifer gave a brittle laugh. ‘Believe me, Mum. He will be by the time we get back.’
‘And it’s all my fault, is it?’
‘It usually is, Mum,’ Jennifer said with uncharacteristic venom. (Normally it was world weariness that accompanied her slights).
Flo shifted in her chair so she could face her daughter. ‘Now what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Oh come on. You know you’re always pushing when it’s obvious no one else wants to take part.’ Jennifer’s eyes were lit bright with anger.
‘Really?’
Again, the hard laugh filled the empty, easily moppable waiting room.
‘Mum.’ Jennifer fixed her with a look of sheer disbelief. ‘Do you remember anything about our childhoods?’
Of course she did. Jennifer was being ridiculous.
‘All of the “adventures”? They all end in disaster.’ She began to tick things off her fingers. ‘The ski trip when Jamie broke his leg after the instructor told you it was too icy to take out a beginner? The walking tour of The Great Wall when Dad had a chest infection that took six months to clear because you insisted we see it through? My broken arm after that stupid muddy not-so-fun run you made us all do in Snowdonia?’
‘Adventure comes with risk, darling. No one died.’ Flo said trying to pin down exactly why these things were her fault and to block out the fact the vet had said putting Captain George under at his advanced age did come with added risks.
‘They weren’t fun, Mum,’ Jennifer ground out. ‘Not in any way. None of us enjoyed being dragged around so you could get an adrenaline rush. Not me. Not Jamie. Not Dad. You never saw it though. The nanny, or should I say nannies, saw it. The cleaners saw it! Dad saw it. But not you. Oblivious Flo intent on doing things her way, no matter the consequences!’
‘Jennifer, you’re being ridiculous. I’m hardly a tyrant!’
‘No,’ Jennifer said after a moment’s breathing (counting down from ten as instructed in some team-building exercise no doubt). ‘You weren’t a tyrant. You were just selfish.’
Jennifer gave her a look then began to study a packet of weight loss food for cats with a concentrated fury.
‘If you’ll remember, Jennifer, I’m doing this ride for charity.’
Flo didn’t feel on stable ground here. Even less so when Jennifer barked a ha! Then asked, ‘Which one?’
‘LifeTime.’
‘Okay, okay,’ she nodded intently as if trying to explain to a simpleton why having an excess of middle-management positions was a bad thing, ‘… so who’s the person you’re doing it for? And don’t you dare say Dad, because where I’m sitting, he’s the only sane one of the two of you.’
‘Oh, I uh—’ She’d not really got that far.
Jennifer’s eyebrows went up and her grim expression turned a bit too self-satisfied for Flo’s liking. ‘You’re doing it for yourself, aren’t you?’
‘I’m doing it for people who need comfort dogs,’ Flo said, a bit more majestically than intended. She wasn’t, but the walls were covered in pictures of people hugging their successfully healed cats and dogs and it was the first thing that had come to mind.
‘Comfort dogs?’ Jennifer clearly wasn’t going to let this fly. ‘Who do you know who uses a comfort dog, Mum?’
‘I – well – your father, for one. Your father loves Captain—’
‘No, Mum,’ Jennifer cut in. ‘You love Captain George. Dad loves cats.’
What?
‘But did you even for a second consider getting him a cat? No. Because you wanted your precious Wolfhounds. So as usual, dad didn’t say anything to make you happy because he knew you loved the dogs more than you ever loved us. You exhaust us, Mum. Squeeze us dry. Why the hell do you think Jamie lives in Australia?’
‘Jennifer! That’s not – of course, I—’ And then, with unsettling clarity, Flo realised Jennifer was right. But not for the reasons she thought. Children were so … needy! And dismissive. They’d always preferred a cuddle in Stu’s comfortable lap to hers. His story telling. The way he cut apples. Jennifer had always been so disapproving. Even as a little girl. Honestly, who cared if a sandwich was cut into triangles or rectangles? George didn’t. But Jennifer? Oh, Jennifer cared. Whereas Captain George … the love they shared was completely based on mutual admiration.
Before she could come up with a proper line of self-defence, Flo’s phone vibrated in the pocket of her cycling jersey (her one concession to cycling wear). ‘Work call,’ Flo mouthed, making a show of putting on a very serious face as she took it. She still had yet to tell Jennifer or Stu her ‘rota blip’ at the 111 centre was permanent. ‘Florence Wilson,’ she said.
‘Flo?’ A timorous female voice asked.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Sue, here. Sue Young from the call centre?’
‘Sue! Yes. Hello, Sue. What can I do for you?’ Flo asked pointedly, making it clear to Jennifer that despite having been tarred and feathered as Britain’s very own Joan Crawford, she was actually, an exceedingly thoughtful and helpful person who many people relied upon.
‘I was ringing to see whether or not we might meet.’
‘Yes, duck, yes, of course.’ Flo covered the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered, ‘This poor woman. Her husband hung himself a few weeks ago.’
Jennifer’s jaw tightened as if to say ‘There’s always someone more interesting than me.’
‘Raven and I were hoping to talk to you about the charity ride.’
‘The cycle ride for LifeTime? Which I am riding in aid of people who require therapy dogs?’ She gave Jennifer a pointed look she hoped translated as See? Not so selfish after all.
‘We’d like to go but, we just had a few questions before, you know, committing.’
‘Brilliant. Wonderful. Such a good cause. Why don’t we meet for coffee?’ Oh, this was cracking good news. Now she had an actual reason for going on the ride. As a support to Sue and Raven who were clearly going through complicated emotional issues far beyond the realms of angry adult children throwing a childlike sense of adventure and delight in your face.
After deciding upon the where and when, the vet appeared with a wobbly Captain George wearing a support sling. Unlike Jennifer when she’d appeared from behind the
A&E curtain with a freshly plastered arm, George began to wag his tail and grin in his lovely, toothsome way. Flo dropped to her knees and gave him a cuddle, ignoring the ‘where Flo goes, trouble follows’ looks she knew her daughter was sending her as she told him again and again just how very much she loved him.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Raven held her phone out at arm’s length. ‘Here … tip your head a bit more …’ Sue’s blonde head bobbed into view, out again and then, after she scooched her bike a bit closer to Raven’s, became fully visible. ‘There we are. One … two … three … ping! All done.’ She scrolled for Flo’s number, then sent the picture along with a ‘Hope there are bikes in Portugal!’ message.
‘Shall we head down that way?’ Sue pointed along the canal towpath. ‘I think it heads into the woods and then circles back. It’s maybe … seven miles?’
‘Sounds good.’ Sounded long. She tried to cover up her grunt as she climbed on her bike with a satirical whoop. Sue gave her a confused look, then a thumbs up and climbed on her own bike.
‘So …’ Raven nodded at Sue’s sky-blue bicycle after a few minutes. ‘What do you think?’
Sue patted the bike’s handlebars, wobbled for a second, gripped the bars until her knuckles were white then shot Raven a giddy grin. ‘I love it. Dylan really knows how to find a bargain.’
Raven gave a proud smile, as if it were entirely down to her that Dylan was, indeed, a bargain-bagging eBay savant. When it came to cycle stuff, anyway. And he knew some crazy sick cycle tricks as well. His humble bragging about cycle parkour – an insane way of riding a bicycle on the tops of walls and rooftops and jumping with the bike on and off of just about anything – was genuinely, honest to goodness, humble. He could pop himself and his bicycle … from a standstill … onto the top of a bin and then carry on riding it as if he’d done nothing more than dodge a puddle. She looked down the cycle path they were on and tried to imagine how Dylan would ride up or down or fly over all of it with a little cocky flick of the wheel this way or that. Just thinking about it made her exhausted. The boy was as full of energy as she was of teenaged disdain for her fellow teenagers. Dylan excepted, obvs.