The Backpacking Housewife: The Next Adventure

‘Mum!’ And my heart leaps as if it’s been shocked back to life by a defibrillator.

Then I’m standing in front of Josh, my darling eldest son, who looks even taller and more handsome than I can ever recall. I throw myself into his arms before noticing he’s with someone; a pretty young woman with big dark eyes and long brown hair.

‘Mum, this is Zoey, my fiancée.’

I embrace Zoey and kiss her cheek and say how pleased I am to meet her.

‘Hello, Mrs Anderson. Wow—you are so suntanned!’ said Zoey, who was staring at me as if I’d just arrived from another planet and she’d never seen anyone quite like me before.

‘Oh, please, call me Lori.’

‘We’ve brought you a warm coat, Mum. We guessed you’d be getting off the plane in summer clothes!’ Josh was now helping me take off my small backpack, so that he could wrap a padded jacket around my shoulders, to save me from freezing to death.

‘Oh thank you! I feel so ridiculously underdressed. Oh, that feels lovely and warm!’

It smelled of a young person’s scent: light and fruity and fresh.

‘And thank you, Zoey. I assume this is your coat?’

‘Yes, but I have others, so you can keep it for as long as you need.’

Then I saw her looking down in sympathy at my stone-cold blue-tinged toes.

And I could tell she was wishing that she’d also brought me some socks and boots.

I turned to Josh for an update on my mother’s condition.

‘How is your Gran? Can we go straight to the hospital to see her?’

When I saw Josh and Zoey exchange uncomfortable glances my heart dropped like a stone.

Tears filled my eyes and I was now shaking so much I could hear my teeth rattling.

Clearly, I’d arrived too late and she was gone. I’ll never see her or speak to her or hug her ever again. There would be no joyful reunions here or in the Caribbean. I’d never be able to tell her about all my adventures and the people I’d met over the past year.

There is no time left in which to celebrate or to tell her how much I’ve missed her.

None of that was ever going to happen now. I was too damned late.

I let out a sob of grief and felt a great stab of sorrow and guilt rip through my breaking heart.

I’ve been so heartless and selfish in abandoning my family when they’d needed me here.

What had I been thinking? Taking off without a care or a thought for my loved ones?

I’d behaved appallingly. I’d thought of only myself, when one year ago I’d grabbed my handbag and my passport and ran from the house to get as far away as possible, thinking of nothing but leaving behind my adulterous husband and treacherous best friend. When, what I’d really done, is to selfishly abandon my whole family. I’d ran away and left my kids and my mother to deal with the aftermath of what happened that day and then to face the mess of divorce without me here. What must my kids think of me now?

Selfish? Indulgent? Weak?

For a whole year I’ve been travelling all over the world looking for purpose and happiness when that purpose and happiness was right here all the time – with my family. I hadn’t really needed to travel great distances or pray in golden temples or take guidance from monks in saffron robes or find ways to make a difference in the world. I’d already made a difference. I might not be a wife anymore, or a housewife, but I was still a daughter and a mother.

The full impact of this realisation and the consequences – that I’d never see my lovely mum ever again – was more than I thought I could take. I just stood there with tears streaming down my face. ‘Oh, Josh! I’m s-s-s-so very sorry!’

‘Mum. No. It’s not what you think!’ Josh responded rapidly to my deathly reaction. ‘Gran’s fine. In fact, she’s just been discharged from hospital. We feel badly now, for telling you over the phone that she’d had a heart attack, when actually it just turned out to be bad indigestion.’

I stood speechless and in shock with my mouth open for what seemed like an age.

I’m relieved, of course, that my poor mother isn’t dead or on death’s door, but part of me is now also somewhat annoyed. I’ve just flown half way around the world in a terrible state of panic. I’d left Ethan in a very bad situation and I’d practically given myself a coronary in my rush to get to the airport and onto a flight immediately after getting Josh’s phone call.

I hadn’t stopped to think. I’d just reacted.

And I suppose that’s exactly what I did this time last year too.

My instinct to run has by fate and circumstance brought me right back here.

And now the gruelling flight is over, and the awful panic dispersed and the weight lifted from my shoulders, I feel like I’ve just woken up from a nightmare and with a terrible hangover.

Maybe I’m suffering some kind of post-traumatic stress?

‘Come on, let’s get you out of here before you freeze to death,’ said Josh, rattling car keys.

We walked briskly outside of the terminal and crossed a dark wet and busy road filled with the noise of screeching taxis and the roar of busses and the clatter of people dragging enormous suitcases or pushing precarious piles of luggage on stiff wheeled trollies. Josh fed a parking ticket machine with notes and coins. When I saw how much it had cost him to park the car, I searched for my purse, before realising I didn’t have any money in Sterling to offer him.

‘Oh, can we stop at an ATM? I had meant to go and swap my dollars for pounds.’

‘No problem. I’ve got it. We can sort that out later, mum.’

I slid into the back seat of the car and soon we were driving away from the airport. It was the morning rush-hour and I peered out of the window at the foreboding sight of shiny slate grey streets and a background of darkness. It’s as if I’ve been transported from a world of technicolour into a one of monochrome. It was raining hard. I watched Josh’s head move from side to side in sync with the windscreen wipers as he negotiated the heavy traffic, checked the rear-view mirror, changed lanes and twiddled with the air con all at the same time.

‘We’ll soon have you warm, Mum,’ he said, setting the dial to red and the blower to full.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself by staring down at the goose bumps standing to attention on my bare knees and wondered if I’d ever feel warm again.

It had been thirty-six degrees C when I’d left Grand Cayman.

It was, of course, the middle of winter in the UK, so what could I expect?

But had it always been this awfully dark and dreary looking?

‘We’ll go straight over to Gran’s.’ Josh said. ‘She’s got the spare bedroom ready for you. She’s looking forward to having you stay with her until you get yourself sorted.’

I bit down on my lower lip and realised I was a homeless burden until I ‘get myself sorted’.

Sorted with what? My own place? I suppose that all depended on how long I stay.

And then I realise that I’m already contemplating leaving when I’ve only just arrived.

In the same front room of the small terraced house where I’d been born forty-eight years ago, my mum was sitting in her armchair with a cup of tea and a shortbread biscuit when we arrived. The house was warm, the TV was blaring, and she was watching Good Morning.

Her face broke into an immediate expression of joy when she saw me, and she leapt to her slipper-shod feet without any hesitation. ‘Lorraine! You’ve come home!’

‘How are you, Mum? You gave us all quite a scare.’ I said, hugging her tightly.

She ignored my comment and insisted on pouring me a cup of tea to warm me up.

Then she fussed over us and force fed us cakes and biscuits. When I asked how she was feeling, she replied that she was ‘feeling much better now’ but wouldn’t look me in the eye.

Then my younger son, Lucas, arrived and it felt so wonderful to be in the same room as both my sons again. I’d missed them so much that I didn’t want to stop hugging them. I found myself stroking their shirt sleeves and touching their faces and ruffling their hair. Checking they were real. And of course, it was lovely to meet and chat to Zoey, and admire the engagement ring she was wearing. Even though it made me emotional and tearful on two counts. I was full of joy for them both, but I couldn’t help but to be reminded of Ethan and the ring he’d offered me.

I wiped my tears and blew my nose and pulled myself together.

Zoey is a lovely girl and, although we’ve only just met, I immediately approved of her.

I see the way Josh looks at her and it’s clear that he loves her and that she loves him.

That’s good enough for me.

Oh goodness—my boy has become a grown man in my absence.

After an hour or so, Lucas and Josh and Zoey, said they had to get on as they had previously made plans for the day. It was a Saturday, so Mum insisted that they all come back again tomorrow, for Sunday lunch. Just knowing that I’d be seeing them the next day to catch up more on their lives made seeing them all leave a little easier. Then, once they’d gone, Mum insisted that she and I go upstairs to sort through her wardrobe to find me something warm to wear. I was incredibly tired. I just wanted to take a bath and have a good long sleep. But I knew that if I gave in to the jet-lag now, then I was likely to be wide awake in the middle of the night.

I followed my mum up her narrow and carpeted staircase, thinking that despite the generous gesture, I really didn’t want to wear any of her clothes. But I was hardly in a position to refuse.

She emptied the content of her entire wardrobe onto her bed and made me try things on.

Her trousers were all two inches too short on me. Her dresses were too wide. At least we were the same size in shoes. In the end, I chose a matching brown wool sweater and skirt ensemble and some one hundred denier tights and a pair of sturdy tan brogues. Teamed with Zoey’s jacket, I felt like a twenty-years-older version of myself, trying too hard to look trendy.

Once suitably clothed, Mum said we needed to ‘pop out to the shops’ to buy some more teabags and enough food for tomorrow’s family lunch. I stifled another yawn and checked my phone, wondering if I had any messages, only to find the battery was totally flat.

I put it on charge while we went out to the shops in mum’s old car.

Mum drove us and it was a terrifying experience. I’d felt safer in a tuk-tuk on the streets of Bangkok or hacking my way through the jungles of Borneo or fleeing pirates in the South China Sea than being in the passenger seat of my mother’s little car. Had she always been this bad a driver or had this only happened over the past year? She seemed to have lost all her road sense and also her sense of direction. The route to town was incredibly busy and the traffic was stopping and starting at every roundabout and set of traffic lights. It was now early-afternoon, but it was quite dark – twilight at best – and it was still raining heavily. The roads were so wet that they reflected every passing car’s headlights and my tired eyes felt dazzled. Mum chatted non-stop the whole time that it took us to get to the shopping mall, animating her laughter and conversation by waving her arms around her head, instead of holding onto the steering wheel and focussing on the road.

I sat rigid with fear in the passenger seat as we ran a set of red traffic lights and narrowly missed being hit by a lorry. The irate lorry driver had the nerve to stick his fingers up at me, while mum seemed oblivious to any other traffic on the road and drove around the roundabout twice because she’d missed the turn off onto the by-pass.

Eventually, after battling with an automatic ticket machine and a barrier at the entrance to the underground car park, we arrived at the shopping mall and found a space to park. I wearily followed mum’s hurried steps inside, where thanks to a blast of hot air from a blower over the entrance door, it was warmer and more comfortable.

There were already Christmas garlands decking the shopping aisles and a huge Christmas tree, fully decorated with lots of twinkly lights, stood in the main square. It looked quite wonderous. I stood staring at the tree for a moment, feeling surprisingly emotional and suddenly extremely grateful for being back here. It was all such a wonderful relief.

I turned to my mum and hugged her warmly and wiped a tear from my eye.

She hugged me too, laughing at my unexpected show of affection. Then she suggested that while she went into the supermarket, I should go off and buy myself some new winter clothes.

I agreed it was a good idea and we said we’d meet up with each other again in the square.

I know this mall very well. I know its lanes and avenues like Ethan must know the waters of the Caribbean. I must have walked through here many hundreds, if not thousands of times, as a housewife. I used to come here several times a week to do all my shopping.

Yet today, it doesn’t feel at all familiar to me in the same way it once did.

I really don’t understand it because all the shops that were here before are all still here.

Yet, it’s like I’m having a déjà vu experience and attributing it to another lifetime.

It feels surreal to me. I’m noticing things that I’ve never noticed before. I see how incredibly pale and pallid and stressed people look as they rush around and pass me, pushing loaded shopping trolleys, prams and pushchairs, dragging screaming toddlers, all while chatting incessantly into their mobile phones or to each other. There are so many droning voices being punctuated by piercing high pitched shrieks and background music and other sounds that it has all become a buzzing white noise to my ears. It’s bouncing off the steel and glass and cold white tiles that clad the walls and floor of the shopping mall.

It feels quite suffocating and all consuming.

After spending so much time in the third world, where people have so little by comparison, everything here suddenly seems so abundant and glossy and extravagant. Shop windows are full of unpractical stuff that no one really needs but will buy because its Christmas. People proudly carry a clutch of bags showing off that they’ve been and bought the big brands.

Clothing. Shoes. Cosmetics. It’s all so excessive.

But I’ve never noticed it before. Not that I used to be any different. I used to do it too.

I once felt it was important to have the designer handbag, the new coat, the right shoes for every occasion, and a new dress because I couldn’t possibly be seen out in the same one twice.

Not to maintain modesty or to keep warm but to impress and keep up appearances.

A child, of maybe ten years of age, ran into me without an apology. He’d almost knocked me off my feet but without a care he yelled and swore at me as if it had been my fault we’d collided. I noticed how well dressed he was in an expensive premier league football shirt and training shoes. The same branded trainers that I know my son Lucas loves to wear.

For some reason, I was reminded of something that happened to me not too long ago when I’d been shopping for fresh fruit on a street on one of the lesser known of the Caribbean islands.

The shops on the street were just wooden tables, some made from old doors, piled high with a selection of locally grown fruits or they were simply a battered looking wheelbarrow that was filled with ripe bananas fresh from a nearby tree. A young boy, again around ten years old, had spotted me doing my shopping that day and was soon running alongside me to beg to be allowed to carry my shopping bag. I guess that with my western looks and my blonde hair, I’d been an easy target for his attentions.

‘Let me help you, lady. Let me carry your heavy bags today?’ he pleaded so politely.

I’d been immediately charmed by his smile and his entrepreneurial spirit and so I let him carry my bag containing a few mangos, a couple of pineapples, a hand of bananas, knowing that I’d be soon asked for a dollar in return. The day was scorching. Blisteringly hot. And, as we walked along side by side, with the sun beating down on our heads and heating up the hot hard dry sand base that formed the street, I could feel the heat burning through the rubber soles of my flip-flops. Yet, I noticed this boy wore no shoes. I asked him ‘where are your shoes?’

And he simply smiled at me and shrugged and then shook his head.

And that too had made me stop and reflect on how in the western world we have so much.

A thought that I suppose simply wouldn’t have ever crossed my mind before I’d travelled.

Of course, we confuse the price of material things with the price of happiness, don’t we?

It’s only by stepping out of the material mindset that we can appreciate that confusion.

But I do need some new clothes today. I need some practical clothes to keep me warm.

So I head across the mall to a shop where I know I’m likely to be able to pick up what I need for a reasonable price. It’s a charity shop where I used to work several mornings a week as a volunteer. Where, for many years, I’d worked with the same group of women who I called my closest friends. One of them, Sally, had been my very best friend in the world.

I used to confide in her. We’d had a laugh together. And a cry, sometimes, too.

But I didn’t want to see Sally today. Not yet. Not now.

Not dressed in my mum’s clothes and looking red-eyed and exhausted.

I know that’s incredibly vain of me, but I’ll freely admit to being a proud woman.

In Buddhism, pride and vanity are considered poisons, as they are part of a selfish ego.

No doubt, here in this small suburban town, where everyone knows everyone and everyone else’s business, I will bump into Sally soon enough. But, by then, I hoped I’d be more up for the challenge. More prepared. Because, if I was being honest, the thought of seeing Sally again filled me with anxiety and dread and a great dollop of despair.

What would we say to each other after what had happened and after all this time?

It’s not as if the past year has changed what I saw or diminished what she was doing with my husband in our marital bed on the day I came home unexpectedly early. If anything, it has amplified it. It’s like that horrific moment has being preserved – frozen in time – until it can be properly addressed and Sally and I face both the consequences and each other in real time.

Yet seeing Sally used to fill me with joy. She was my best friend.

More than that, she was like the sister that I’d never had and always wished for.

I suppose that’s what made this whole thing worse. Even more heartbreaking.

Why couldn’t Charles have had an affair with his secretary instead?

Why did it have to be the woman whom I’d allowed to become my soul sister?

I suppose it was for all the same reasons that I’d once loved her too. Sally was an attractive and sophisticated woman. She was great company and she was always upbeat and fun. She never seemed to run out of interesting things to say or exciting things for us to do together.

When Sally decided to lose weight and get fit, we joined the gym together. When she needed new clothes and makeup, we went shopping together. When she decided to learn French, we signed up for evening classes. We confided in each other completely and talked for hours over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine in each other’s kitchens. We confessed our most intimate secrets. I now cringed at the thought of telling her that Charles and I rarely had sex.

When I reached the charity shop, I see another co-worker and friend at the counter and so I go inside. I walk along the sale rail and pick out a couple of sweaters, a pair of jeans and a warm coat, a thick wool scarf and then head over to the till. When Taryn sees me, her eyes light up and she gasps in surprise. ‘Lorraine! You’re back! And, oh my gosh, you look fantastic!’

‘Yeah, I just got back today. I need a few things to wear. How are you?’

‘I’m fine. Just the same as ever. You know how it is. Nothing ever changes here.’

I nod my agreement as she rings up my purchases and I hand over my bank card.

‘We’re still short staffed, if you want your old job back, it’s yours!’ she said, while bagging my new-to-me things and putting me right on the spot with her immediate job offer.

I panicked a little and shrugged. ‘Oh, erm—I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

‘Sally doesn’t work here anymore. Just in case you were wondering. None of us liked what she did to you. Taking your husband. Moving into your house. If that helps?’

‘Maybe—’ I said, feeling a little flustered and trying to think of what to say in response and failing miserably. My jet lag was suddenly making me dizzy and giving me a headache.

‘Let me think about it and I’ll call you. Thanks, Taryn.’

I walked away not feeling as pleased as I might but feeling slightly horrified.

How easy it might be to slip straight back into my old life here?

Not all of it. Not back to being a housewife or a best friend. But the rest of it.

In many ways, being back here so abruptly, it feels like the past year has only been a dream.

That heading straight for the airport and arriving in Bangkok, then exploring Thailand, island hopping down the Andaman Sea all the way down to Malaysia; then having to convince Josh and Lucas – after they’d flown all the way out to Kuala Lumpur to bring me back – that I was still relatively sane and wanted to continue to travel, had only happened in my imagination.

But it did happen and because of it I knew I wasn’t the same person anymore.

I wasn’t Lorraine Anderson, housewife. I’d become someone else entirely.

I was now Lori Anderson, a world explorer.

I’d crossed continents and sailed the oceans and seen the most amazing things.

Yet nothing here in this town seemed to have changed at all.

And there was undoubtably something strange and disconcerting about that fact.

I thought back to yesterday, when I’d been on a beautiful Caribbean tropical island, swimming naked in an emerald green lagoon fed by a waterfall, with a tiny butterfly sitting on my hand. The symbolism hadn’t escaped me. In the same way that a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, I felt that I too, in travelling, had emerged from a cocoon and found my wings.

And then, of course, I’d met and fallen in love with Ethan.

At a time when I never thought I’d ever find love again.

Whom I’d left reeling and alone in Grand Cayman.

Who still deserved an answer to the question he’d asked me on the beach yesterday.

Had it really only been yesterday?

Chapter 5

I woke the next morning with an anxious jolt and in surprise at finding myself back in my old bedroom at my mother’s house in London. I’d been dreaming about being onboard The Freedom of the Ocean and so that’s exactly where I’d expected to wake up – in our cabin and in our small bed – with Ethan beside me. The creaking sound I’d heard in my sleep wasn’t caused by the ropes and the sway of the boat as I’d thought but by a tree in my mum’s garden.

I’d woken expecting Ethan’s big warm body to be stretched out next to mine, his long and tanned legs in a tangle with the sheet that had covered us in the chill of night. The sheet that would always end up discarded as soon as the sun had risen over the line of the horizon, sending pale pink shimmers of light through the small porthole above our heads followed by an intense yellow blinding light that quickly heated up our little cabin, until we lay splayed out and soaked with perspiration in our nakedness.

Then in our drowsy state, we would reach out to each other without opening our heavy-eyes and we would rouse each other with a tender touch, a sweeping finger, a tentative kiss from drowsy lips on hot sensitive skin. Then our breathing would quicken, and our tender touches would become something more urgent, and without a word uttered we would welcome this brand new day and greet each other, with a celebration of our lovemaking.