He sat back, grabbed the inflight magazine, opened it and pretended he was deeply absorbed in an article entitled ‘Top Beauty Spas in Copenhagen’. No wonder he’s single, I thought. He was most definitely not my person.
When the flight attendant arrived with our drinks, she must have sensed the tension. Couple’s fight. Instead of being the soft understanding type, she was the other. The Swooper. Diving onto my once-potential-boyfriend like an eagle spotting fresh prey. She plonked down my Bloody Mary without a look, and then handed Norse God his whisky, so her hands met his.
‘Sir let me help you with anything else you need. More pillows? Blankets?’
I drank my Bloody Mary quickly and loudly, so the sound of straw slurping interrupted any potential romantic spark. In my mind I was saving her, because if backpacking didn’t please him, I’m sure flight attendant-ing wouldn’t either. But she didn’t pick up on that because she looked at me painfully. He stared through both of us, as if we didn’t exist. He downed his drink, passed her the glass, curled up away from me and towards the aisle, and went to sleep.
For the last two hours of the flight I watched Bridget Jones’s Baby again, so I could remember that maybe it did work out for thirty and forty-something singletons, and when I cried and got puffy, I told The Swooper I had allergies, and asked if she couldn’t bring me an aspirin and another Bloody Mary.
***
I finished eating my delicious minty watermelon and took a last sip of milky coffee. The sound of the sea in the distance, crashing waves, and then the roll of the tide on the sand, was like a lullaby. I felt the sun beat down upon my skin, the rays making my muscles melt, thinking, I’ll just close my eyes for a bit.
When I woke up the sun was almost behind the hill. I’d spent the entire afternoon sleeping? Oh, well, that was the beauty with holidays, it really didn’t matter. Suddenly, I realised I’d spent the whole day on the balcony day bed, in the sun. Oh, God – my skin! I rushed to the mirror, expecting to see lobster red, but thankfully I’d put on a thick layer of sunscreen before drifting off, and instead I’d gone a slight brown with only a hint of small red around the chest. At least I no longer looked like a goth.
The Fijian air was warm and humid, even at night, and I sweated just pulling on a maxi dress and throwing my long, wavy, dark blonde hair, which was now huge and frizzy – as big as a planet and twice the size of my head – into a loose, messy bun.
The pathway below my room gave way to a lush fern garden, beneath a strand of palm trees. A short sand walk took me to a soft white sand beach. The sea was calm and frothy, small waves washed up on the shore, but otherwise it remained flat and glassy. I kicked off my shoes and walked into the water, feeling the waves wash with warmth over my bare feet. I looked up at the sky and put my arms up and shouted, ‘YEAA!’ This was the sense of freedom I loved, the newness, the variety, places that were beautiful and where I could marvel at the world. There was so much sky out here. So many places to breathe.
Further out, someone was fishing off a dock. I thought about raising my hand in greeting but then thought better of it. What local wants a strange sky-yelling tourist waving at them as if they were long-lost BFFs?
Thinking of BFFs, I was stunned to realise I’d left the UK without even telling Maggie or Tansy, my best friends in Sydney, that I was coming home. They had no idea that right now I was standing under a full moon in Fiji. This wouldn’t have happened before when we were single and free, nope, the whole gang would have been together, probably downing Pina Coladas or doing shots of something terribly girly, like Malibu.
But now there were kids, lots of kids, and my friends were mothers – busy, tired, distracted. Before I’d left, they’d all been married and had baby bumps, and little ones running around. The truth was, we’d all lived in the same city, but emotionally it was as if the Grand Canyon had opened up between us and our lives had all fallen away from each other.
Would it always feel this distant? I felt a bit like crying, and you can’t cry on a holiday. It’s simply not allowed. In true London fashion I knew what I needed to buck up – a stiff drink.
The sun had set and the night sky was scattered with stars. I headed to the open-air beach bar for the complimentary welcome drinks. A swarm of people – mostly couples, some with kids – were standing about chatting and meeting each other. The women had on long dresses and strappy gold sandals, the men had beige shorts and polo T-shirts, with jumpers slung around their shoulders. I started to laugh because they all looked a bit like each other, and then I felt sad again, because if my friends were away with their families they’d look like this too, which made me miss them even more.
Right, Emma, I told myself, get a grip. I thought my floral maxi dress might be making me weepy, the way it was all floaty, so I went back to the room to change into my shorter, black wrap dress and applied some red lipstick and two coats of extra-curl mascara. Although I would never have a thigh gap, or wear size eight jeans, at least I’d won the genetic lottery of eyelashes: mine were super long and everyone always commented on how they framed my sea-green eyes. My friend Tansy had once said my eyes were so beautifully large that I must have been a cow in a previous life. I wasn’t sure how to take that, because really it sounded quite awful, but she assured me it was a very good thing and with her smaller, dark eyes she was incredibly jealous.
Back at the beach club, I marched straight up to the bar and ordered two whiskys. Neat and straight up. I downed the first one and it felt like fire in my mouth. I love that feeling. So, I downed the second one. Dutch courage. I didn’t know a soul here. Was I expected to just go up and start chatting to random couples with kids? And what do you say? Hello, how’s your tan line? Your hair in this humidity? Which one is your husband?
Husband. I’d almost had one of those, I thought. But then, I shook my head, and thought No, Emma, now is simply not the time to think about that.
Anyway, I didn’t want to focus on the past. I wanted to figure out my life. Plan for the future. As soon as I landed in Sydney, everyone would be asking me – what now? What next? And I wanted to tell them, I’m staying. I’m settling down. I’m doing what you’ve always wanted me to do. Tansy had always joked that I’d had wings for feet, because I’d been struck by the travel bug ever since my first trip at nineteen, to Lake Tekapo, a creamy spearmint glacial lake in the middle of New Zealand’s South Island. It had been a beautiful, picturesque small village, with snow-capped mountains dotted all around it, and the most wonderful spring lupines with cherry pink and smashed violet blossums. I still remember holding a warm coffee, and eating a freshly baked cheese scone, sitting in front of that lake just after dawn as the sky turned a firey red, the biggest grin on my face. It was so peaceful, and it made me feel like there was nowhere to be, and nothing to do – like I had all the time in the world.
From then on, I travelled whenever I got the chance – Fiji, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Japan. It was mountains that tempted me, or large sandy beaches, places I could enjoy the peace. I liked silence. Places I could get out my makeshift easel and paint, or just take a white pad and sketch the landscape in charcoal, or pencil, or pen – whatever I had with me. It was like my own little meditation and zen, just me and nature.
Who knows how I’d recently ended up in busy, bustling London. Sometimes, on the weekends, I’d take the train to France, to the countryside just for the day, so I didn’t have to hear the sounds of the tube, the midnight sirens wailing down the street. I wanted to stay every time, but London called me back – cities offered jobs, opportunities, they were the places you could earn as much money as possible, and ‘make it’. I’d move to a small country town in a second if I could. I’d tried before in Wales, but I didn’t have any skills or trades, and no one in a small town seemed to want to hire someone who wanted to work in marketing or public relations – there was just no need. So I’d moved back to London, and realised maybe I did belong in a city after all.
Sure, I’d never wanted to settle down before I’d left, but now I was older. I was in my thirties. My mid-thirties. Things were going to be different. Maybe I could be like Tansy and Maggie now too. With a husband