The Kicking the Bucket List

by Cathy Hopkins

  Watching both of them, the foot and the vein, I felt the air go out of me like a deflated balloon. We’re all still holding in what we really feel, I thought. And probably a good thing. Fleur’s temple vein only ever showed when she was angry.

  ‘Would you like to talk about what’s kept you apart?’ Beverly asked.

  ‘No,’ snapped Rose. ‘It would be raking over old ground.’

  ‘Fleur?’ asked Beverly.

  Fleur shook her head. ‘I think we ought to move forward.’

  ‘Dee?’

  ‘No point if the others don’t want to,’ I replied. I wanted to break something. It would have been more therapeutic if Mum had organized a plate-smashing session, I thought, as I became aware that I was grinding my teeth, which was my giveaway for when I’d had enough.

  ‘A good start,’ Beverly said when our time was up. ‘You can’t expect it all to be resolved in one session, but at least you all got a chance to say something, and from these small beginnings come great advances.’

  What planet is she on? I wondered as I headed for my room. I had a headache and needed some space.

  Five minutes later, a text via Daniel from Mum arrived. ‘Often what you find annoying in a person is a reflection of yourself.’

  ‘Much as I loved you Mum,’ I said, ‘you could be a right smartarse sometimes.’

  10

  Saturday 10 October, 2 p.m.

  In the afternoon, we made our way to a modern spa in a building to the left of the hotel. A bright young thing with spiky blonde hair bounced out to greet us. ‘Hi. Michelle’s my name, colonics my game,’ she said in a New Zealand accent, without pausing for breath, ‘if we ate all the right things we’d feel a lot better and not need colonics but I know how it is, busy busy lives, but we must have our five a day and try to eat food without preservatives, but no matter, because today will leave you feeling like you’ve been on a three-day detox and that’s fantastic.’

  I didn’t dare look at either of my sisters in case I started laughing. I had to admire Rose’s self-control too, because what she didn’t know about eating right wasn’t worth knowing. I knew from visits to her house before our fall-out that she bought organic food from one of the posh home delivery services. Not that she ever cooked any of it. That task was left to the live-in au pair, who had always cooked the children’s supper before they’d left to go to university. As I remembered, Rose and Hugh rarely got home before eight in the evening.

  I knew all about eating the right foods too. I’ve long been a fan of organic food and a balanced diet and know that it’s true – eat rubbish, you will feel like rubbish; eat good, fresh nutritious food and you feel more focused and energetic.

  ‘So, remember girls,’ said Michelle. ‘I know this programme you’re on is about finding happiness. Eat right and you will be – happy, that is. In other words, you are what you eat.’

  I saw Rose flinch. She hated being called a girl, especially by someone half her age. Fleur burst out laughing.

  Michelle gave her a quizzical look. ‘Did I say something funny?’

  ‘Family joke,’ said Fleur and looked at me as if to say, come on, Dee, remember? ‘You are what you eat. School?’

  I remembered and burst out laughing too. Hah, take that Rose. The dynamic has shifted and now it’s Fleur and me against you. Rose had a face like thunder.

  ‘Wasn’t funny then, isn’t funny now,’ she said.

  ‘Are you gunna tell me what’s going on?’ asked Michelle.

  Rose shook her head. ‘My sisters are retarded. So. Michelle. Colonic. Shall I go first and we can leave these two adolescents to their silly sniggering?’ She walked off then turned back. ‘You know, Mum was right. You are full of shit.’

  That only made Fleur and me laugh more.

  It had been over thirty years ago. Fleur was twelve, in her first year, and the school had put on a series of lectures with the exact same message about making the right food choices. Bright posters showing fruit and vegetables with the slogan ‘You Are What You Eat’ were all over the classrooms and corridors of the school that Rose, Fleur and I attended. The idea of eating right was as popular back then as it is today.

  ‘Bring in examples of healthy produce for a classroom display,’ said Mrs Madison, our form teacher.

  Mary Riley put fruit on her head, ‘Oo, I’ve gone bananas,’ she joked.

  Anna Fairchild held melons to her chests, and her best friend, Claire, put runner beans round her neck and declared, ‘I’m a human bean.’

  Susan Wilson, being more daring, waved a courgette in front of her crotch and, to anyone who went by, said, ‘Hello darlin’, fancy a bit of this?’

  We were all a bit giddy and sex-obsessed back then.

  Fleur, being Fleur, had to take it further. She drew a human-looking penis with arms, legs, hairstyle and face remarkably like Rose’s, and in case anyone missed the likeness, she wrote Rose’s name under the drawing, along with the slogan, ‘You Are What You Eat’. She stuck it up next to one of the posters of fruit and got a public shaming in assembly as well as a week of detention. She didn’t care. She was school hero and a clown.

  Rose was furious and didn’t speak to her for a month. The cartoon was Fleur’s revenge. She was jealous. She fancied a boy that Rose had been seeing, but she was too young for him and, though easily the prettiest of us all, she was flat-chested with the figure of a boy while Rose had curves and breasts. Curiously, it’s Rose who’s thin now and Fleur who’s got the curves.

  Was that the beginning of the distance between Fleur and Rose? I wondered as Rose and Michelle disappeared into a treatment room. Could it have dated back so early? Maybe. Rose prided herself on her reputation as the model pupil, a little Miss Perfect, and Fleur had struck right to the heart of that. With her prank, Fleur had also shown she wasn’t to be trusted when it came to boys.

  ‘Tea?’ Fleur suggested, and strode off towards the library without waiting for a reply. I followed her in, intending to stay a short while then escape to my room to mull over the session with Beverly.

  ‘Rose used to torment us terribly,’ said Fleur as the waiter brought us Earl Grey tea in silver pots. ‘Remember that time she tied us to a tree in the park?’

  ‘I do. She’d told us it was a game. She was the sheriff—’

  ‘Of course. She always had to be top dog.’

  ‘She told us we were naughty cowboys—’

  ‘Then she disappeared and left us there while she went home for supper.’

  ‘I couldn’t have been more than seven; you’d have been about four. I guess Rose was jealous when we came along and usurped her role as only child, getting Mum and Dad’s sole attention.’

  ‘We were close once, weren’t we Dee?’

  I nodded vaguely. When we were very young, I thought, but then we grew to be teenagers, which brought its own hurdles with hormones and boys.

  ‘Remember, we used to tell each other all our secrets back then – who we’d kissed, who’d tried what,’ Fleur continued.

  ‘I do.’ I remembered her telling me about her early explorations, but I never had as many conquests to report, so would play up my fumbling experiences with the few boys who had showed an interest so that it sounded as if I was as popular as her. As Fleur got older and had boys falling over themselves to get near to her, she advanced to the ‘did you go above the waist or below?’ confessions. I still tried to join in, but she was way ahead of me and my role became that of listener.

  ‘Rose never joined in, did she?’

  ‘Not after the cartoon incident. I think that’s when she became more private and self-contained. She kept her secrets about boys and what she did with them to herself.’

  ‘Do you remember her diary? Hidden and locked.’

  ‘Did you try and get in?’

  ‘Course. Didn’t manage it though.’

  ‘She’s a typical Scorpio, secretive and with a sting in the tail if anyone crossed her.’

  Fleur looked at me
quizzically. ‘Do you still believe in all that stuff?’

  ‘I think it has something to offer.’

  ‘I’m Leo. What are they like?’

  I laughed. ‘Can be show-offs who like to entertain and be the centre of attention.’

  ‘Moi? Never. And you’re—?’

  ‘Pisces. According to the Zodiac books, the romantic dreamer.’

  ‘Maybe there is something to it then,’ said Fleur as she nibbled on one of the home-baked biscuits we’d been brought. ‘All seems a long time ago, doesn’t it? Hey, remember when we found Mum’s sanitary towels? You must have been about six. Not knowing what they were, we’d used them as doctor’s masks in a dressing-up game.’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘You must remember. We were having a great old time and burst in on Mum who was entertaining the vicar in the kitchen. Mum roared with laughter but the vicar didn’t know where to put himself.’

  A long time ago, I noted, aware that Fleur’s recollections were from when we were very young, with no recent ones to share. As we laughed over the vicar incident, I suddenly felt overwhelmingly sad about the years in which she’d been lost to me.

  *

  Back in my room for a quick break, I called Anna and told her about the session with Beverly. ‘I’m not sure Mum’s scheme is going to bring us any closer.’

  ‘What you resist, persists,’ she said. ‘Give it time.’

  ‘Wise words,’ I said.

  ‘That’s me. Embrace the experience.’

  ‘It’s a colonic next.’

  ‘Ah … well, enjoy.’

  After I’d hung up, I thought about what Mum had said about wanting us to be happy. Fleur had described me as a happy person. What happened to that girl/woman? Daisy, the easy one? The happy one? The peacekeeper? If Mum’s list of tasks will help me get back to her, then great, I’ll do it. And if part of the programme means clearing the crap, I’ll do that too. As I went down to have my treatment, I wondered what Mum had lined up next – a vajazzle maybe, to complete the front and back.

  *

  Half an hour later, I lay on a couch in a clinically white room with a rubber tube inserted into my back passage while lukewarm water avec les herbes flushed in and out of my colon. All part of life’s rich tapestry, I thought as the tune of ‘The Hokey Cokey’ ran through my mind, accompanied by the words ‘les herbes go in, les herbes go out, in out, in out, shake it all about; knees bent, arms stretched, rah, rah, rah.’

  For some odd reason, lying there with a strange object inserted into one of my orifices made me think back over my relationships. With my husband Andy, I’d married my best friend, so sex was never erotic or dangerous, it was comfortable and familiar. We were young and, despite thinking we knew it all, we really didn’t. Once, after reading some article in a magazine about how to spice up your sex life, I suggested experimenting, maybe trying role-playing or dressing up. I’d imagined doctors and nurses, or me as a French housemaid sort of thing. That evening, Andy came to bed naked apart from a plastic Viking helmet complete with horns that he’d found in our dressing-up box for parties. Sadly, our role-playing turned into the weary eunuch and the frigid nun. But he could make me laugh like no one else and, for a while, I had no need for passion. John, my last partner, was different. He did like to experiment sexually – sadly with other women as well as me. And with Nick, the man in between Andy and John, the sex was exciting and passionate. It was with him that I’d discovered that sex could feel sacred, a communion of spirits. He told me that he felt the same but he wasn’t ready to settle down. Back then, the fashionable attitude was to be cool and undemanding when it came to love. Needy and clingy were dirty words. My friends and I told each other that if you loved someone, you had to give them their freedom, let them go and if they kept coming back, then it was meant to be, if not, it wasn’t. Nick and I parted tearfully but I let him go and didn’t pursue him. I waited to see when he’d return. I felt sure we were meant to be. That was the last time I saw him. I heard that he married a Brazilian girl six months later, which taught me a major lesson in life – when a man says he doesn’t want to settle down, he means: not with you pal. I went to my favourite book at the time, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and read, ‘For even as love crowns you, so he shall crucify you, Even as he is for your growth so he is for your pruning.’ Nick cut back the flower of love I felt for him and left the branch bare.

  There had been a few lovers since John, a couple of disasters, a few maybes, no one special. My last disaster came to mind. It was with Martin Mitchell. Not really my type – too swarthy, with Mick Jagger lips and full of himself, but I knew he liked me. He lived in London, was divorced, and had a holiday home up on the cliffs. He’d asked me out several times when he was down in Cornwall. I refused over several summers, but his attention was flattering and, in the end, he wore me down. For lack of anyone else and a fear of becoming an old maid, I agreed to go out for dinner. Watching him eat was like watching a cow chewing cud and I should have quit then, but after two bottles of wine on our third date, we went back to his house and fumbled our way to his bed. Much to his embarrassment, he couldn’t get an erection. I tried to reassure him it was all right and, as the wine wore off, was already regretting being there. But no. He had to show his worth.

  ‘There are other ways to pleasure you,’ he’d insisted, and not wanting to hurt his feelings or make him feel like a failure, I stayed. I knew how fragile the male sexual ego was. It will be my good deed for the week, I thought, then I’ll be out of here.

  ‘This should do the trick,’ he said romantically as he nosedived under the sheets, where he stayed for the next half-hour suckling and breathing air up my lady parts.

  I counted cracks in the ceiling as he continued his task with enthusiasm, and did a bit of appreciative moaning so as not to seem like a spoilsport, but it felt like a slug was doing aerobics between my legs. The sooner we get this over with, I thought, the sooner I can go home to a cup of tea and a good book.

  When he finally detached himself, we heard a fft fft fft sound. He’d been going at it so long, air had got trapped inside me and of course had to get out some way or other. I couldn’t stop it rippling out. So much for all the pelvic floor work I’ve done over the years, I thought. The air had been breathed in, the air was coming out, no stopping it.

  We could have laughed about it – sex can be a funny business, after all – but he came up from the sheets looking dismayed and said, ‘I’ve been fantasizing about you for years. I finally get close to you and what do you do? You fart in my face.’

  I was indignant. ‘It was not a fart. It didn’t come from the intestines so no gas or odour.’

  But the moment for shared amusement had been ruined.

  He sent me a text the following week. Got some Viagra. Ready 2 give it another go?

  I texted back. Friends staying. Sorry.

  He didn’t pursue it and I decided to give up on men after him.

  ‘It was like he was blowing up a balloon,’ I told Anna, ‘I’m surprised I didn’t float off out of the window and into space. I could have made the news. A strange object was seen orbiting the planet last night. Was it a bird? Was it a plane? No, it was Dee McDonald after a session with Blubber Lips Mitchell.’

  Anna thought it was hilarious, hence her gift of the Greek satyr and the message not to give up.

  ‘Wind up the Watford Gap,’ she said. ‘There’s a word for that.’

  ‘A word?’

  ‘There is. “Queef” – the fanny fart.’

  ‘So you’ve experienced it?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, but queef is a useful word to know when playing Scrabble.’

  That was five years ago. I hadn’t had a lover since.

  *

  When I came out of the session, neither Fleur nor Rose were to be seen. I looked to see if either of them had texted me to suggest supper together, but there were no messages. My room, bed and a bath beckoned, and I succumbed to the luxury awai
ting me. It was only day one on Mum’s plan and I had reconnected a little with Fleur, so that was progress of sorts. I ordered room service and sank back into the sumptuous cushions on my bed.

  11

  Sunday 11 October, 10 a.m.

  The scent of joss sticks drifted out of the conference room at the back of the hotel where our meditation session was to be held. Daniel was there, sitting at the feet of an elderly Indian man who was seated on a chair covered in a white sheet. Both of them were wearing white kurtas and loose white trousers.

  ‘Guru gear,’ whispered Fleur, as Daniel nodded at us and indicated that we should find a place. There were already about twenty other people in the room, seated on yoga mats that had been placed on the floor, so we went to take our places at the back. Rose sat cross-legged with ease. I knew from Mum that Rose attended yoga classes regularly, the kind where you do it in a hot room. Bikram yoga. Anna calls it Biryani yoga, after the time we went to the village hall to give it a try. We couldn’t do the postures so snuck out the back and went for a curry instead.

  As we waited for the session to begin, I sat with my knees up in front of me and Fleur did the same. I looked around at the other people. Some were sitting with their eyes closed, others like us, just waiting. No one spoke and the atmosphere felt very peaceful.

  After a few more people arrived and settled, Daniel stood and introduced the Indian man as Swami Muktanand. He looked like Father Christmas, with smiley eyes, a white beard and a serene face. It was hard not to smile back at him.

  ‘Welcome my dear friends and brothers and sisters. I am so pleased to meet you,’ said the swami. ‘First today, listening short time to me. Second, practising meditation. The word meditation means concentration. What differs in the various methods of meditation is what you concentrate on. Some use a mantra or music or sound, some meditate on candle or an image, some turn inside and focus within on breath. Today we will do very easy method to help release negative thoughts and feelings. Sit comfortably. OK. Everyone ready? We begin. Breathe in, hold for three, one two three, exhale. Imagine when you breathe in that you are inhaling energy, purity, goodness. When you breathe out, you are letting go of any anger, hatred, fear, bad feeling. OK? Simple. Focus on breath. If thoughts wander, no worry, imagine you are mountain, still and ancient, thoughts are birds flying by overhead, let them go. If thoughts wander, no worry, bring them back to breath. It is your anchor to present moment.’