Welcome to My World

Chapter Six

Hide-and-Seek

The door to the ladies’ opens with an unwilling creak.

‘Is she in here?’ a female voice asks.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ a young man answers from the corridor beyond, his tone uncertain. ‘Maybe she’s gone home.’

‘Well, I never saw her leave, Thomas, and not much escapes my notice.’

‘You can say that again – ouch!’

‘Less of your cheek, sunshine, thank you very much.’ The door opens a little wider and Harri can hear a step onto the dull magnolia tiles. ‘Harriet? Am you in here, chick?’

Harri holds her breath. She can’t face a conversation; not yet.

‘She isn’t there, Eth— Mrs Bincham,’ Tom whispers, his embarrassment as obvious as the acne on his chin.

‘Mmm. Well, maybe you’re right, Thomas, maybe she’s gone. Better just check the hall again then, eh?’

Harri breathes a sigh of relief as the voices disappear and the door closes.

Ethel Bincham was the cleaner at Sun Lovers International Travel. At least, that’s what it said on her contract. However, with eyesight as bad as hers, coupled with her penchant for long chats with the staff, and George’s unwillingness to let her go after her many years of more or less faithful service, cleaning was not exactly top of her list of priorities. She prided herself on her ability to listen and fancied herself almost a surrogate mother, provider of pure Black Country wisdom and nothing less than a soothsayer for the assembled workers each Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, seven o’clock till nine. In days of yore, every village would have its local wise woman, a source of mystical wisdom, cures for all ills and an understanding ear in time of need; now, the fortunate residents of Stone Yardley had Mrs Bincham.

‘Would you run the Hoover round this evening before Mrs B comes in?’ George often asked Harri on a Tuesday afternoon (knowing full well that she would be the last person out of the office and probably the first in next morning).

The irony of the request was never lost on Tom. ‘Doesn’t that kind of defeat the object of having a cleaner?’

George couldn’t really argue with this reasoning, but knew that his initial lack of courage to let Ethel go when he realised she could hardly see the office, let alone the dust, had inevitably made a rod for his own back.

The morning after her late-night bout of ill-judged spontaneity, Harri arrived at work to find Ethel attempting to water the artificial aspidistra in the window.

‘It’s looking a bit peaky,’ Ethel informed her cheerily, ‘and no wonder – it’s bone dry!’

‘It’s artificial,’ Harri began, but Mrs Bincham was having none of it.

‘No, it’s an aspidistra, Harriet,’ she corrected, tutting loudly. ‘You youngsters don’t know anything about plants these days.’

Harri gave up and retreated to her desk. She switched her computer on and began to leaf through the morning post, most of which seemed to consist of stationery catalogues nobody could remember requesting and offers of business loans from banks she’d never heard of. As she worked, she was aware of Mrs Bincham surveying her carefully, although exactly how much Ethel could see was anyone’s guess.

Harri picked up a pile of new brochures and walked over to the display units, wistfully gazing at each cover as she restocked the shelves: azure harbours with dazzling white yachts and jade-green waves lapping against white sand beaches, as smug couples stalked possessively along the shore. A sharp razorcut of longing sliced through Harri’s heart at their blissful expressions. If only she could step into the pictures and leave everything far behind . . .

‘Thought you might need this,’ Ethel’s raspy voice said right by her ear, bringing her sharply back to reality. Harri jumped and almost knocked the mug of super-strong tea from Mrs Bincham’s hands as she did so.

‘Oh! I’m sorry, Mrs B, I was miles away.’

‘I could see that,’ Ethel replied as Harri accepted the mug. ‘Where was it this time, eh?’

Harri looked sheepish. ‘Grenada.’

‘Don’t they do Coronation Street?’ Ethel asked.

Harri stifled a giggle. ‘Um, no, that’s—’

‘No matter,’ Ethel cut in, rummaging in her tartan shopping trolley and producing a large off-white Tupperware box that looked at least a hundred years old. ‘I’ve been baking again.’

‘Oh . . . you really shouldn’t have . . .’

‘Tsk, nonsense, I love it! My Geoff says I missed my calling in life – should have been a baker, he reckons. Mind you, he also used to fancy Margaret Thatcher, so what does that tell you? Now, clap your chops round one of these.’

Harri peered dubiously into the fusty plastic-scented depths of the box and selected an overly browned, crunchy square of something. ‘Thanks,’ she replied, hoping she sounded convincing.

Ethel’s face was a picture of gleeful anticipation. ‘Well, go on then,’ she urged.

Harri took a bite. ‘It’s – um – different,’ she ventured, uncertain whether the odd concoction of tastes was pleasant or not. ‘What is it?’

Ethel’s wrinkled cheeks flushed with pride and she patted her recently set blue-rinsed curls. ‘My own recipe,’ she grinned. ‘I love Bakewell tart, see, and my Geoff’s partial to Chocolate Crispy cakes – big kid that he is – so, I thought, why not combine the two? Proper bostin’ stuff, that.’

Harri swallowed and reached for her tea. ‘So this is . . . ?’

‘Chocolate Crispy Bakewells!’ Ethel proudly announced. ‘Remarkable, eh?’

Harri couldn’t argue with that. ‘Absolutely.’

‘Ta.’ Ethel’s smile morphed into solemnity. ‘Now, are you going to tell me what’s up?’

‘I’m fine, Mrs B, just a bit tired, that’s all.’

Ethel’s eyes may have been lacking in physical performance but her perception was as sharp as ever. ‘Don’t give me that, Harriet. “Just tired” my backside. I know a troubled soul when I see one.’ She parked her ample behind on the edge of Harri’s desk and motioned for her to sit down. ‘Now, why don’t you just tell your Auntie Eth all about it, eh?’

In truth, Harri didn’t quite know what to say. She was tired: her whole body ached from only an hour’s sleep the night before and her eye sockets felt as if she’d been punched repeatedly in the face by a crazed boxer. Added to which, telltale shivers in her bones were heralding the unwanted onslaught of a cold following her late-night soaking by the postbox.

All night long she had wrangled with her thoughts, her mind abuzz with worry upon worry as she cursed her spontaneity, finally succumbing to sleep curled up on her sofa under a travel rug (which, like its owner, had never actually travelled much further than her armchair).

Harri wasn’t sure Mrs Bincham would understand (after all, this was the woman who thought an aphrodisiac was a flower, and the giant Egyptian statues in the Valley of the Kings were known as sphincters), but she found herself trying to explain it all anyway. Ethel listened calmly, nodding sagely every now and again as she munched a square of Chocolate Crispy Bakewell, her dentures clicking rhythmically as Harri recounted the events of the past few weeks.

‘I don’t know, Mrs B. Part of me still believes this could work for Alex, but since I actually posted the letter I can’t shake the thought of what might happen if it doesn’t. There’s nothing I can do about it either way now: I just have to get on with it, I suppose.’

‘I completely get you, chick. It’s very simple, really: you’ve got the Big F at work here.’

Given her current sleep-deprived mind, Harri blocked out the many possibilities appearing before her and asked the obvious question. ‘The Big F?’

Mrs Bincham peered carefully over her right and left shoulders as if checking for unwanted spies. ‘Fate, Harriet. You’ve trusted the situation to fate so’s you’re no longer in control. It’s only natural you should be a bit jumpy while you’re waiting to see what’s in store for you. I mean, anything could happen next – good or bad.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so, chick. I’ve a feeling about this. My mother always said I was psycho, you know. Swore it blind till the day she popped off. “Your gran was a psycho, your Auntie Lav was a psycho and now the Gift’s passed to you, our Eth,” she used to say to me.’

‘Don’t you mean “psychic” . . . ?’

‘Now, I’ve never held much with all that mumbo-jumbo rubbish, to tell the truth. But every now and again I get my feeling and I have to say, stuff happens, like.’

Although Mrs Bincham was smiling, Harri didn’t exactly feel reassured. ‘So what do I do now?’

Mrs Bincham’s grin broadened. ‘Nothing you can do, our kid. Just got to sit it out, I s’pose. So you have another bit of Chocolate Crispy Bakewell while you’re waiting and I’m sure that’ll take your mind off it, eh?’

Harri surrendered to the inevitable and reached into the Tupperware box.

She should have been used to the Big F by now – although she had never really thought about it in that way before. She had become accustomed to the strange mix of joys and sorrows that twisted and twirled her from one event to the next, often unannounced. It was just life.

She remembered her grandma once saying: ‘Life is like a wild pony – you can never tame it. But if you grab its mane and hold on with all your might, it will be the most thrilling ride you’ll ever have.’ Grandma Langton had lived in a tiny cottage on the edge of Dartmoor, where Harri and her parents would visit during the summer holidays. As a little girl, Harri had liked nothing better than to hold tightly on to Grandma’s hand as they battled against the elements to climb the hill behind the cottage and gaze out across the windswept moor to where the wild ponies grazed. Even as a small child, she’d appreciated and envied the beautiful creatures’ freedom, walking and cantering wherever they pleased. The thought of jumping on one of their backs and taking off across the wildly undulating moor towards distant hills was at once impossibly exciting and ridiculously scary, but Harri longed to be as carefree as they appeared to be. As for Grandma, her own ‘thrilling ride’ had come to an abrupt halt when Harri was eleven – life throwing her from its back for the last time.

Life, or fate – or whatever you chose to call it – had certainly taken Harri for more than one breathless ride over her twenty-eight years – although it had to be said that most had been brutally scary rather than exhilarating. Losing one parent to cancer was bad enough; losing both was cruel in the extreme, not least because her mother’s malignant tumour was diagnosed while her father was enduring his last weeks of life. As Dad lay on the sofa in the family home, too weak to move, but still somehow able to smile and joke (which he accomplished with aplomb right up until he finally succumbed to unconsciousness), Mum made two sets of funeral arrangements – one for him, one for her – sitting at the kitchen table making copious lists for Harri ‘for when the time arrives’.

Dad’s cancer had taken him slowly, a long-drawn-out process over nearly six years, which crumpled the once strong and vital six-foot-three former rugby player into a pitiful heap of skin and bone arranged painfully across the old Dralon settee in the living room. In contrast, Mum’s illness took hold at lightning speed: five and a half months from the diagnosis to her funeral at St Mary’s, Stone Yardley’s parish church. Five months after burying her husband, Mum went to join him and Harri was alone in the world. Of course, she had friends. Viv and Stella rallied round, cooking meals (Viv) and getting her out of the house to go shopping or for walks (Stella), whilst Auntie Rosemary came to stay for three months, helping Harri to put the family home on the market and, eventually, find the tiny, ivy-covered cottage that was to become her own, bought with the money left to her by her parents.

Her father’s illness meant that holidays were spent near to home or at least a major hospital: the Lake District was about the furthest they dared travel and this was only because they had family living in Kendal, should an emergency arise. Towards the end, Langton family holidays became more like sofa transfers: Dad carefully transported from home in their old red Volvo to a different living room three hours away – the only difference being the mountain views from the window.

When Harri met Rob, just over a year later, she found herself returning to the Lake District for summer holidays. Rob viewed camping as ‘the purest form of holidaying’. Understanding Rob’s long-held passion for all things outdoors was part and parcel of loving him, as far as Harri was concerned. His father had been a scout master for years so Rob and his brother, Mark, spent weekends and holidays under canvas from an early age. When his father died five years ago, following the pursuits he had learned from him took on a whole new significance for Rob. It was almost as if being outdoors brought him closer to his father’s memory. Watching him pitch a tent, knot guy ropes and make a fire was strangely comforting for Harri – Rob’s capability and protectiveness made her feel safe.

‘If he’s so fond of camping, why don’t you go to one of these new glamping sites, with yurts and wood-burning stoves?’ Stella suggested during one of their many coffee-shop outings. ‘Or do it somewhere warm, like France?’

‘It just wouldn’t be his sort of thing,’ Harri replied, stirring her cappuccino with a wooden stirrer. ‘And actually, that’s OK.

It’s just part of who he is – like me with my travel book addiction. I don’t feel I have to like everything he likes and neither does he with me. We’re settled and secure enough with each other to be able to have different interests. When we go camping it’s like he feels he’s fending for us, I think. It’s that whole “protective caveman” instinct.’

Stella’s eyes lit up. ‘I have to admit, it’s quite sexy when guys get like that – all rugged and strong.’

‘Oh yes. I have no complaints there,’ Harri agreed as they clinked coffee cups in a mutual toast.

‘So I bet your beloved likes that Ray Mears bloke, doesn’t he?’

Oh, yes. To say Rob worshipped at the well-worn survival boots of Ray would be putting it mildly. When his father was alive, Rob had taken him on several of Mr Mears’ bushcraft weekends – something Harri was hugely relieved she hadn’t been invited on. Camping in the great outdoors was one thing; eating bugs and making shelters out of twigs and tarpaulin was definitely above and beyond the call of duty.

So, whilst Rob would indulge in copies of Survival Monthly or his extensive collection of Ray Mears DVDs, Harri knew she could always escape into the welcoming pages of Condé Nast Traveller and Lonely Planet magazine – and, of course, her favourite books on Venice and the Veneto.

For as long as she could remember, Harri’s imagination had been her sanctuary; she could escape into its endless possibil ities whenever she wanted to get away. As a little girl she would dream herself cycling past tulip fields in Holland, or twirling round an opulent Viennese ballroom in a beautiful gown to the swirling strains of Strauss; in her teens she would rollerskate along the promenade at Miami Beach, or spot multi-hued parrots in Brazilian rainforests; by the time she reached her twenties, she would be backpacking across Australia, bridge-swinging in New Zealand’s South Island, or riding galloping horses through the tide along Mexican beaches.

But Venice had always towered head and shoulders above the rest of her dreams. Its colour, opulence and uniqueness captured her heart and fired her imagination – her parents’ own dyed-in-the-wool romanticism alive and well, and coursing through her own veins.

When her parents were resting, or she just needed five minutes to herself, escaping was as easy as closing her eyes or opening a travel magazine. For a few moments, she could go wherever her heart desired. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t actually jump on a plane and visit these places; it was enough to imagine herself there. Where others would choose chick-lit, crime thrillers or historical drama to provide their escape, Harri chose a travel book. No matter where it was, as long as she could learn something new about the world, Harri eagerly consumed its contents, each new glimmering scrap of information adding to the growing travel library in her mind.

Fuelled by her daydreams, Harri’s longing to travel grew stronger as the years passed. The true extent of her desire to see the world was something she confessed to nobody but Ron Howard, the large ginger and white cat that had appeared in her front garden one December morning as a small, shivering kitten and stayed with Harri ever since. Harri had never considered herself a cat person, yet there was something she understood immediately about the tiny stray trying to shelter under the birdbath from the fast-falling snow. He was like her: adrift in a new, unfamiliar place, seeking refuge from the winter cold. Harri had not long moved into her cottage and was still feeling a stranger in her own home, surrounded by someone else’s curtains, carpets and paint colours. From the moment he made his impromptu arrival in Harri’s life, Ron Howard was a soul mate. Unlike Rob, Stella or anyone else, he didn’t mind watching awful foreign soap operas like Santa Barbara, or endless travel documentaries on cable. He liked nothing better than to curl up on Harri’s lap, purring or snoring loudly through hours of other people’s experiences. There was something uniquely comforting about a creature that required nothing more than food and fuss; no expectations, no conditions, no arguments – simply feed me and love me.

In many ways, Ron Howard was particularly un-catlike. He liked to play fetch with his toys or bits of screwed-up paper; he rushed to the front door whenever someone new appeared; he loved to have his tummy rubbed and never once thought to use the opportunity to sink his considerable claws into the unsuspecting tickler’s forearm; and he never, ever tucked his tail in – leading to many occasions where it was accidentally tripped over or stamped on. Washing, too, was something he took a long time to acquire the necessary skills for: Harri frequently had to wipe his nose and forehead after he had been eating his food, as it never seemed to occur to him to wash there. Auntie Rosemary once joked that he’d obviously left his mother before she could teach him all of these cat essentials. Harri was simply thankful he had turned up – the other stuff just made him who he was. Most importantly, he was a good listener. Well, as good a listener as a cat can ever be, snoring, purring and occasionally farting contentedly while Harri poured out her heart to him. Did Ron Howard understand? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was there when she needed him.