Sarah’s Journey
By Susan Bella Ikin
First published 2017
Copyright © Susan Bella Ikin 2016
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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.
1.
I was going to pay for this. I just knew it. My small but domineering cat was giving me a baleful look from inside his cat carrier. He was not going to forgive me in a hurry for disrupting his rightful rule of my house, then putting him in a cat carrier and then in the car. The car of all things! I was not looking forward to seeing the condemnation in his eyes when he realized I was taking him to a cattery, and that I was planning to leave him there. He wouldn’t understand that it would only be for two weeks, and he wouldn’t care.
I sighed as I drove my car out of my driveway, and then turned up the radio in a vain attempt to drown out the yowling coming from the cat carrier which I buckled into the passenger seat beside me. It was only about half an hour’s drive to the cattery where I would leave Snowball, but I was sure that it would seem much longer. Finally we arrived, met with the owner as previously arranged, and I delivered Snowball to the group cage. I tried to tell him it was only for a short while, but he was not interested in my attempts to pacify him. I grimaced as he glared at me in disgust, and then drove the short journey home to finish packing.
I pride myself on being organized, and I had written lots of lists to make sure nothing was forgotten for this trip, and was slowly working through them. The delivery of Snowball to the cattery had been something I hadn’t been looking forward to, but it was done now. I hummed to myself as I checked items off my list as I packed them into my case, the house seemed somehow too silent and I needed some noise for company. Although Snowball didn’t make a lot of noise, except of course for when he demanded his dinner, I was just so used to his presence, I found myself missing it. I smiled to myself as I vainly tried to brush cat hairs off the suitcase, Snowball loved to snuggle up in my wardrobe on the case which was normally on the floor.
It had been a really long time since I went on a holiday, the last one had been disastrous, and it had put me off wanting to repeat the experience. On my last holiday, which I had thought would be a chance to rekindle the romance in my short marriage, Nathan had dropped the bombshell on me that he wanted a divorce. The idiot could have told me at home, but instead had chosen to let me book a trip to Surfer’s Paradise, and our first night there had been our last night. I should have realized something was wrong, Nathan had been very preoccupied on the journey from home, and he hadn’t improved when we checked into the hotel. When I asked if anything was wrong, he curtly dismissed me. Then came the big, earth shattering event. It had started off simply, Nathan hadn’t liked the outfit I had put on to go out for dinner. I didn’t see what the problem was, so asked him what was wrong with it, and then he had turned nasty:
“It doesn’t matter anyway, somehow you manage to make a normal dress look frumpy. You are scrawny and disgusting and everything just hangs off you like a sack. Why can’t you dress better? I’m sick of being embarrassed by you! People see us together and wonder why someone like me is with someone like you. It’s not just what you wear, it’s how you present yourself, what you want to do with your life, you don’t have any ambition and I do. I have had enough. I have been seeing someone who is not only shaped like a woman and not a boy, but takes a bit of pride in herself, and I would rather be with her than with you. I was going to try one last time to make this work, but clearly you are never going to try, so I am going home. When you get back, I will be gone”.
He had then returned to the airport, and taken a flight back to Melbourne, leaving me shocked and in tears, and the week that I thought would be a romantic getaway, had instead become a week of contemplation and more tears. I had known that we had problems, but really had not known the depth of his contempt for me, and of course I had no idea that there was another woman in the picture. For the first couple of days, I wallowed in self pity, with a small amount of self loathing thrown in, but the more I thought about Nathan’s recent behaviour, the more I realized that the he had not been fair. I might have been oblivious to the extent of his dislike for me, but he could have said something sooner, instead of letting me believe that everything was fine. He had obviously only been looking for an excuse to leave, and instead of being mature and telling me that he didn’t love me any more and wanted to separate, he instead had cruelly blamed me for everything so that he felt justified in leaving.
Towards the end of the week, I started feeling a bit less fragile, and decided to try to salvage what I could from the trip. A couple of times earlier in the week, I had tried to go out to see the sights, but hadn’t got far before the tears began, and had fled back to the hotel to cry myself into a stupor. In the last couple of days, I spent a lot of time walking along the beach, replaying various incidents in my mind, and spending a lot of time soul searching. After a miserable week, I somehow found my way to the airport, and back to what I had thought was our home, only to find that not only had Nathan taken his personal effects, but had also taken a lot of things that I thought belonged to us both, without even giving me the chance to talk to him about a fair division of our belongings. I assumed he had gone to live with her, whoever she was. Fortunately during my week of crying and thinking, I had finally realized that for all the time I had been with Nathan, I had allowed him to make the decisions for the both of us, and over time had found myself living the life he chose for us, instead of a life we had both decided on together. I had probably let Nathan do this because he was the only person left in my life who was important (or so I thought), so I had been trying to please him, and had given in to him on too many issues. So what if I wanted a simple life, what was wrong with that? Nathan wanted the high flier’s life, rubbing shoulders with the people he saw in the society pages. I just wanted to be happy with my man, in our home, with a couple of children running around in the backyard. If that was too dull and ordinary for Nathan, well that was his problem, not mine. Things were going to change for me, but for the better. Nathan leaving would not be a negative milestone in my life, but I would make sure it turned out to be a positive one!
Over the period of a few weeks, we arranged the sale of our very fashionable, very sterile, inner city apartment and divided up the items that Nathan hadn’t taken. I had thought about the things that Nathan had taken from the apartment, and decided that there was nothing important enough to fight over. Most of our belongings were Nathan’s idea of trendy decorator pieces anyway, and weren’t really to my taste. I preferred comfort over looks, and found all of our furniture hard and unwelcoming. It was a simile of my marriage really. If Nathan thought I was being a pushover again, I didn’t really care, I just wanted to start my life afresh, and having constant reminders around of Nathan was not the best way to do that! In fact, I really didn’t want anything from our lives together, I only wanted the few possessions that I had brought into the marriage, and the things that had belonged to my parents. Both my parents died in a car a
ccident, when they were both much too young, and that was probably why I had let Nathan take charge of our lives, I had obviously leaned on him too much and had let him assume too much importance. As an only child, my boyfriend (as he was at the time) was the only significant person left in my life and I hadn’t wanted to upset him, so I had gone along with whatever he wanted. My grief at the loss of my parents had probably blinded me to Nathan’s true character, and I had probably married him without being honest with myself – in hindsight I had leaned on him because he was there, if I hadn’t needed a shoulder to cry on as much as I had, maybe I would have realized sooner that he was not the person for me.
Well, now I would be on my own, so I planned to start living my life on my terms. I took my half of the proceeds of the sale of the apartment after the mortgage was paid out, obtained a small mortgage in my own name, and bought a tiny unit in a suburb near to where my childhood home was located. Nathan had tried to get me to sell it when I inherited it, as it was quite dated and needed a bit of work, but this was the one area where I had not allowed myself to be bullied into acquiescing with his plans. Instead I had put my parent’s furniture and personal belongings into storage, arranged for some maintenance on the place, and had rented it out. At least Nathan had been happy with the rental income, and as the property values had increased in the area, he had stopped nagging me to sell, perhaps only biding his time. Thankfully, as I inherited the property before we married, I was able to keep it, and hadn’t had to sell it during the divorce. That really annoyed him, and he had spent a lot of money on solicitor’s fees trying to get it included in our joint assets, but thankfully I won that argument, although it had cost me a lot in legal fees as well. I was happy to keep the house, as it had a lot of sentimental value, and always in the back of my mind I had thought that one day when we had a family, we might move into it, but since I couldn’t now see a family in my future, I decided to leave the tenants in place as sentimentally I liked the thought of a family living there. So I found contentment in my little unit with the tiny garden. I furnished it how I wanted, with comfy chairs and a soft bed, in vibrant colours instead of the trendy slate and black colours that Nathan preferred.
Nathan had also hated the thought of pets, so as soon as I took possession of the keys and moved into my unit, I made a beeline for the nearest shelter and came home with a deceptively sweet looking white furry kitten, who I soon realized was not as sweet tempered as he looked. Still stinging from Nathan’s rejection of me, I had planned to choose a female cat, but had been well and truly suckered by the little ball of fluff that had mewed at me through the wire of the cage, and which snuggled in to my chest when I picked him up. Shortly after getting him home, I realized that Snowball was a bossy and demanding little kitten, but also one who was deserving of a home, so I didn’t take him back to the shelter as I often threatened to do. Snowball and I soon settled into a routine where Snowball pretended that he didn’t need or care for me, but snuggled up to me on the couch of an evening, especially when it was cold, and later, when I went to bed. However, Snowball could always be counted on to be near me when I had a low day, his method of snapping me out of a teary mood was to demand that I pay him attention. It is difficult to keep feeling sorry for yourself when you are being nudged and clawed by a demanding cat.
After a couple of years, I was made redundant at my job in the city, and luckily I managed to find a new position in the suburbs closer to home. The pay wasn’t as good, but I soon found that the people I worked with were really friendly and helpful and although the work was mundane and I often found it quite dull, my colleagues made the day brighter. The extra time every day now that I was working closer to home turned out to be very useful, as I had begun indulging in my creative side, something I hadn’t done when I was with Nathan, as he thought any time away from working on my career, or waiting on him, was a waste of time. So I went to a lot of adult education courses, learning various skills, and eventually found myself in a photography class, and discovered that I not only enjoyed trying to take good photos of interesting subjects, but was quite good at it.
I loved to photograph things that were iconically Melbourne, and eventually I found a small café nearby that was happy to display my works for a commission if they sold a piece. A few pieces had sold, and this small creative outlet gave me great satisfaction. Just the thought that my photos would be hanging in people’s homes and that the purchasers obviously got enough enjoyment from my photos to convince them to part with good money for them, made me happy. Every artist has a small centre of conceit that something will live on after them, and I was no exception.
2.
I was quite happy with my routine, at least until my employer noticed that I hadn’t taken enough leave each year since I began working there. I really didn’t want to go on holidays any more, and thought that I didn’t have anyone to go with anyway, so had been avoiding the issue for as long as I could. It was when I was returning to my desk from my meeting with the human resources department that things changed for ever. One of my colleagues was a woman named Emily, and we had become friends since I began working with the company. Although I am a naturally reserved person, and my experiences with Nathan had made me even more shy of involving myself with people, Emily had refused to give up, and had eventually broken through my reserve, and our work friendship had deepened to a personal one where we often met outside work for coffee, drinks or a meal. Emily was a wonderfully astute woman, and seemed to know when I wanted to talk and when I didn’t. Somehow she had managed to get me to do what I had vowed never to do – tell anyone about what had happened with Nathan. Emily had made a face when I finally told her, or maybe it just looked to me as if she had made a face, as I had probably had a bit too much to drink at the time, and said that I was too good for such a bum anyway, and was well rid of him. I had recently been able to return the favour, as her relationship with her boyfriend had just abruptly ended. I had never liked Justin, but had not said anything while they were together, as he was Emily’s choice.
Emily had looked up from her computer screen as I returned to my desk.
“Why the long face? Are you in trouble for something?” she said jokingly, knowing that was pretty unlikely, but obviously curious.
“No,” I replied, “I’ve just been told that I have too much leave owing, and unless I come up with a plan for taking some leave soon, HR are going to make me take time off. I can spend some time on photography, but three months?”
“Three months!” exclaimed Emily “You’ve got three month’s holidays owing to you, and that is a problem? You are one crazy woman Sarah! Well, I don’t have an idea for keeping you busy for three months, but I can think of something you can do for eleven nights. You know that I wanted to go on a cruise with Justin before we split up? Well, I keep getting emails from the cruise company, and they’re having a sale. Why don’t we share a cabin and have some fun? Come over to my screen and I’ll show you”.
Emily then brought up the website of the cruise company, and showed me the cruise that she was considering. It was a bargain price as the first few days were in the school holidays, but the last few weren’t, so obviously it was not a popular time to go, but it would take us on a South Pacific adventure if we chose to let it. As it sailed from Sydney, Emily suggested that we could even stay on in Sydney for a few days to extend our holiday to two weeks. Although initially reluctant, I looked at all the lovely pictures of the places to go, and read about the activities tourists could participate in on ship and on shore, and thought it was time to spoil myself a little. I then returned to HR and negotiated a deal with them – as the cruise didn’t leave for almost two months, if they would let me hold on to my leave until then, I would take all my excess leave both for the cruise and the time in Sydney, and then for the ten weeks after that.
I knew that the tenants in my parents’ house wanted to leave at the end of the lease which was coming up soon, and I had been tossing around various ideas in my
mind on whether to re-let the house, or renovate it, so this leave situation made the decision easier for me. I decided it was time to renovate the house and try to make it “mine” so that I stopped thinking of it as “Mum and Dad’s place”. I contacted an architect, and with the tenants’ permission, took her through the house discussing various ideas, while she took measurements and photographs. She agreed to do some preliminary sketches and have them ready for me when I got back from my holiday. When I returned home from the cruise, I would start packing up my unit, as without the income from the rental I wouldn’t be able to afford the renovations, so I decided to move into the old house when it was vacant, and rent out my unit instead. I would surprise Snowball by providing him with a bigger kingdom to rule, including a spacious garden with some beautiful established trees that he could try to climb. More importantly, I would also have more space for photography, and was tossing up between turning the garage into a studio, or building an extension on for that purpose so that I could keep the garage for my car. Yes, HR was right, I really did need to take some time off, and really should have taken the time as it fell due. There would be so much to do, so many choices to make, that I would need a bit of time to do everything. To that end, I decided that if I needed more time than just the ten weeks after the cruise, I would return to HR and ask if I could have all the leave owing to me. I thought I might actually have another month owing, as I had been with the company for almost four years now. I then spent time wondering about how I had managed to let so much time pass me by. Maybe I really was in a rut.
So Emily and I booked the cruise, the flights to and from Sydney, the airport transfers, and even chose the hotel we would stay at near Circular Quay after the cruise, Emily wanted to stay in The Rocks so that we could go to the market on the weekend. Emily had a passport, but I did not, so I quickly made the necessary appointments and filled out all the forms to get the processing started. We then spent a lot of time over coffee planning what to do in each port that the ship visited, and I even made the effort to lose some of the weight I had gained after breaking up with Nathan. I had eaten too much chocolate consoling myself, and had gone from being quite thin to having a few wobbly bits that made me a bit uncomfortable. I didn’t have time to lose it all, but got to what I considered to be a good compromise. Although I still thought I could do with a bit more weight loss, Emily told me that I was being silly, and that I now had curves in all the right places, and insisted on coming shopping with me for a bathing suit. While I would have chosen a conservative one piece, Emily picked out a vivid blue bikini, which appeared to me to be nothing more than a few bits of material held together with some string. When I came out of the change room, very self conscious about displaying so much of myself, Emily scoffed at my concerns, telling me I could wear a sarong over the top for walking through the ship from our stateroom to the pool. Emily and the saleswoman between them convinced me that the bikini was just what I needed for a tropical summer, so I parted with the outrageous sum that the shop was charging for the skimpy little outfit (and the sarong of course). To her credit, Emily also bought a similar tiny bikini – saying she would not let me have an unfair advantage! Hers was a hot pink, which looked very good with her fair complexion, and she wore it with style. I knew she would be turning heads at the pool in that outfit!
Sarah's Journey Page 1