One evening in early August, while she was mashing the potatoes for dinner, Connie McColl decided to leave home. Looking out of her window at the newly planted, pocket handkerchief-sized garden, she knew she had to go. Connie hesitated, considering the implications of this momentous idea, and then wondered whether or not she should add a dollop of cream to the potatoes, remembering her husband Roger’s diet. But – sod that – she added it anyway. And, all the time, while she was mashing and smashing, exciting thoughts kept whirling around in her head. Of course, she’d considered this before during her long, long marriage – well, what woman hadn’t? And, like most other women, she’d never acted on impulse, until now.
Because yesterday had been the final straw. It was twenty-three years ago, to the day, and no one had remembered Ben. No one. Except Wendy, her dear friend who used to live next door and who sent the card: ‘Thinking of you’. But not a word from Roger; no bunch of flowers, nothing. Nothing at all. Not even from the children. That was the catalyst. The trigger. The reason for her resolve. Well, that and Roger’s remark that morning.
‘I don’t know what you find to do all day,’ he’d said. ‘This place is brand new – must look after itself.’
Since they’d moved into this wretched modern bungalow she’d papered it, painted it, curtained it, and planted the virgin flowerbeds, not to mention taking care of the daily cooking, cleaning, shopping, and the rest. Oh, and babysitting the grandchildren for at least three whole days a week and, not least, ferrying Roger home at all hours of the day and night from the bar at the golf club, because it wouldn’t do at all if he should lose his licence. Well, very shortly he was going to find out for himself exactly what she did do all day.
‘You’re knocking seven bells out of that saucepan!’ Roger snapped, as he meandered into the kitchen, refolding his Daily Telegraph. ‘I hope you haven’t put cream in that. And have you seen my reading glasses anywhere?’
He was always losing something; if it wasn’t his glasses it was his car keys or his wallet, and it was probably only a matter of time before he lost his marbles. Or she lost hers.
Connie continued spooning the creamy mash into the old blue Denby dish. It had been a wedding present; forty-one years she’d been spooning stuff into that dish. There was a small crack on the underside where it wasn’t particularly noticeable. Rather like my marriage, really, she thought.
‘No, I haven’t seen your glasses,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you should be wearing them on a chain round your neck.’ That was guaranteed to irritate him, but she said it anyway.
‘That’s what women do,’ he said, right on cue. Forget that, then.
Roger wasn’t a bad man, just a bit boring, predictable, dull; most likely she was too, so it was probably high time they both had some space.
He sniffed. When had he started that irritating habit, sniffing for no good reason? Had he always sniffed? She remembered the early days of their marriage and how proud she’d been of her handsome husband. It was a long time ago of course, but she had no recollection of him sniffing then. Connie would love not to be constantly irked. Perhaps it really was she who was losing her marbles? She couldn’t work out what, if anything, was wrong with their marriage – only that she now needed that space, away from the routine domestic chores, perhaps in order to re-evaluate her life and appreciate her husband again. And, at sixty-six years of age, how many more chances would she ever have to do anything so radical?
Not that there was anything dramatically wrong with her life; unlike her best friend Sue. Every time she lunched with Sue, Connie listened to her continuous bleating about her errant husband. Connie never bleated about Roger, but then again she didn’t really have an errant husband. Instead, Connie McColl – dutiful wife, mother, grandmother, babysitter, chauffeur and great listener – had become more or less invisible. At times she was surprised to find herself still there in the mirror; a bored, jaded-looking woman staring sadly back at herself, having lost sight of who she was. Where had the once vivacious Connie gone? When had she gone? Was it too late to find her again? It was time to find out. A ‘voyage of self-discovery’, wasn’t that what they called it? If she didn’t set sail now, she never would.
‘Diana rang while you were out,’ Roger mumbled at dinner later, through a mouthful of boeuf bourguignon (à la Delia). ‘She’s got an assignment in Malawi – I think she said Malawi – for the Sunday Times travel section, so she won’t be down to see us for a couple of weeks.’
Well, there’s a surprise, thought Connie. Diana, their eldest, was always so busy jetting around, sorting out holidays for the uninitiated. Lovely life she’s got, with not a care in the world. And any minute now Roger will say it’s high time she settled down.
Roger sniffed. ‘When is that girl ever going to meet someone and settle down?’
That girl is forty years old, Connie thought. ‘Di doesn’t need anybody.’ She topped up her wine glass, the contents of which seemed to have disappeared somewhat rapidly. ‘She values her independence.’ And so she should – if she’d got a grain of common sense.
Roger glanced at her over the top of his glasses. ‘You’re knocking it back a bit tonight.’
Connie realised it was necessary to make plans quickly, and carry them out before she changed her mind. Her old green car would need to be checked over and filled up with petrol because she certainly wouldn’t want to stop until she was a very long way from her life in Sussex. And a long way from Roger. She thought her daughter Di might understand. Lou certainly wouldn’t and her son Nick would just worry about her safety. And what about Roger? She supposed Roger might still love her but, during the last twenty years or so, she couldn’t recall him mentioning the fact; not in the way that he openly admitted to loving his golf, his gin and his Audi. Connie couldn’t remember either when she’d last told him that she loved him. Did she still love him? She wasn’t sure any more, her senses having become dulled and numbed over the years. Perhaps she’d become dull too? If so, it was high time to set off on an adventure, to go on a journey to who-knows-where, and to recharge her batteries.
The next day, with Roger safely at the golf club, Connie looked through her wardrobe and considered what to pack. She’d need T-shirts and jumpers and jeans. Perhaps a dress or a skirt or something. It all had to fit into her pull-along holiday suitcase, the one that Ryanair had charged an arm and a leg for putting in the hold last summer. And she’d need an overnight bag with toiletries, make-up and changes of underwear. Perhaps she’d take the folding garden chair too – why not? It was lying there, unused, unloved and faded, on the drive, waiting to be taken to the tip. She consulted the list she’d made earlier. Connie found lists to be a great comfort, even if half the time she lost them or forgot to take them with her. Then she picked up her phone and tapped Nick’s number.
‘Hi, darling. Dad’s at golf, as usual, and I need my tyre pressures checked. Can I pop round?’
But, really, what she needed was an excuse to see him before she left.
Later, when he’d finished, Nick said, ‘Your tyres are OK at the moment, Mum, but watch that front offside one because the tread’s getting a bit thin. You should really replace it before you go too far. Mind you, you should be thinking about replacing the car as well, never mind the tyre. Why don’t you just sell it, Mum? It must be worth quite a bit to someone prepared to do it up; old Escorts like this have become classics. It’s got to be worth five hundred or even as much as a thousand to someone looking for a project. Anyway, why the sudden concern? Are you planning a shopping trip up to town or something?’
‘I might just check out the sales,’ Connie said, which was a possibility of course, so she didn’t feel too guilty about lying.
‘Good, good. Well, have you time for a cup of coffee? I think Tess wanted to ask you a favour.’
I’ll bet, thought Connie, making her way into their large state-of-the-art kitchen.
As Tess created blasts of steam, along with much hissing and gurgling from the Italian coffee machine, she asked, ‘Any chance you could have the boys next Friday, Connie?’
No chance whatsoever, Connie thought, and then, for the first time, she felt a little sad. She loved her grandsons Thomas and Josh, and she’d miss them. However, she’d made her plans and she intended to stick to them. And it wasn’t as if she was going away forever.
‘I’ll have to come back to you on that,’ she said, knowing that refusing now would only cause suspicion and, besides, she hadn’t got a plausible excuse ready.
Tess looked quite thunderstruck, very nearly scalding herself. ‘Why, what would you be doing?’
What could I possibly be doing? Having a life of my own? Doing all the things I’ve forgotten how to do.
‘I have some plans,’ Connie replied.
Shocked silence. She saw Nick and Tess exchange looks.
‘OK, Mum,’ said Nick, ever the peacemaker, ‘just let us know when you can.’
She glanced back as she drove away. Nick was probably her favourite of her children. She knew she wasn’t supposed to have a favourite, but there it was. And she so loved those two little boys. Why are we women always so plagued with guilt for one reason or another? She decided there and then that guilt was not to be part of her adventure. An adventure! That’s exactly what it was going to be.
‘Just to remind you,’ Roger said later with a sniff, ‘the golf tournament’s tomorrow, so I’ll be gone most of the day and I expect we’ll end up in the bar – either celebrating or commiserating. So I won’t take the car. You can drop me off in the Audi and then I’ll give you a ring when I want picking up.’ Standard practice this, usually around midnight, year after year, golf tournament after golf tournament, nights on her own in front of the telly. She saw more of Stephen Fry than her own husband. Maybe if he just said, ‘Would you mind coming to pick me up later, darling?’ then I wouldn’t mind so much, she thought. But he didn’t and I do mind. You’ll just have to get a taxi or walk, or stagger, more like, knowing the amounts of alcohol likely to be consumed. She suppressed a giggle.
‘What’s so funny? Damn, that’s the phone! Who’s ringing up this late in the evening? I’ve got to sort out my clubs, so can you answer that?’
Connie sighed as she picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Mum, it’s Lou. You weren’t in bed, were you?’
‘Not quite. What’s the problem, Lou?’ She refrained from adding ‘this time’.
The problem was, as usual, that Lou, her youngest, wasn’t getting any sleep because little Charlotte was bawling all night and every night, and Andy, her husband, had moved into the spare room along with his ear-plugs.
‘It’ll pass,’ Connie said wearily.
She didn’t sleep well either. Now they had single beds it didn’t matter to Roger that she’d tossed and turned most of the night. Was she mad? And where the hell was she going? Would her old car break down? Would she break down, turn around and head straight back home again?
Still sleepless at 6 a.m., Connie surveyed a bedroom she didn’t much like, a plastic window she didn’t like at all, and a husband she didn’t care for that much either. But was any of that a good enough reason to take off? As the sun rose in the sky, she felt that sense of resolution again and was determined to give up dithering as well as feeling guilty.
She got out of bed, tiptoed across the room and looked in the mirror. She didn’t look too bad a specimen for her age – tall, reasonably slim (thanks to several seasons at Weight Watchers), not too wrinkly and nicely highlighted and lowlighted hair (thanks to Stacey at Fringe Benefits). She could surely pass for a little younger than her sixty-six years, but sixty-six she was, so it was imperative to get moving before she became too old and lethargic to contemplate any adventure of this magnitude.
‘I told you, didn’t I, that it’s liable to be quite a late session tonight?’ Roger reminded her, smacking his lips as he scraped the muesli bowl at breakfast that morning. Organic muesli of course, because Roger had become very fussy about what he ate recently, all of which seemed to cost twice as much as the normal stuff. He was about to find out for himself the cost of these indulgences.
‘Yes, dear.’ Connie spread Marmite on her toast.
‘So don’t worry about saving me any supper.’
‘I won’t.’
Later they arrived at the golf club in Roger’s Audi.
‘Have a nice day, dear.’ He sniffed, leaned over towards the driving seat and pecked her dutifully on the cheek. ‘See you later.’
Unlikely, she thought. And there was that question again: did she love him at all any more? She wasn’t sure. Often it was difficult to tell. But she didn’t feel the slightest sadness as she studied his rear view heading towards the club house. And she certainly did plan to have a nice day.
She’d already filled up with petrol. ‘Special promotion on Mars bars,’ the cashier had announced cheerfully. ‘Two for the price of one!’ And Connie had driven off the garage forecourt with a full tank and a glove compartment stuffed with chocolate, which might be invaluable on the journey. Then she wondered if she should perhaps think of buying a tent, because just how often would she be able to pay for accommodation? She had some money in her own bank account, and her pension was paid in monthly but she wasn’t at all sure it would be enough. But she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
After she’d written a note to Roger (and positioned it beside the kettle) and sent the same email to everyone else, she loaded up her old green Ford Escort, whose name was Kermit. He was a trusty friend. OK, so he was old. So was she, but so what? She had every intention of adding several hundred – or even thousand – more miles to his clock, despite what Nick had said. Connie even slipped her passport and Kermit’s papers into the glove compartment, just in case. But could she face weeks, or even months, of driving on the right? There was a time, of course, when – carefree and confident – she’d taken her turn at the wheel as they headed off through France and Spain and Italy, when the children were small and life was fun; when even Roger was fun! Well, sort of. Then there was that time at Disney World when she’d driven miles and miles through Florida trying to find a restaurant that served alligator. ‘We’ve got to find somewhere that’s got ’gator!’ the kids had yelled. And they had, eventually. As the cliché warned, it tasted just like chicken.
Connie wasn’t ruling anything out because, if the weather at home was forecast to be lousy, she would definitely be heading towards le continent. She’d withdrawn eight hundred pounds from the hole in the wall at the supermarket, but how long would that last? She might even have to find a job eventually. A job! Was anyone employing sixty-six-year-olds these days?
It was a beautiful morning and Sussex sparkled in the early sun, so it wasn’t quite as imperative to seek the Mediterranean as she’d first anticipated, and the forecast seemed good. After she’d dropped Roger at the golf club, she’d come home to finish loading Kermit and tidy up the house. Duty-bound to the end, she’d even unloaded the dishwasher.
She hadn’t time to find a new home for all the junk that resided in her boot, so she just dumped in her case, bags and loose clothes, and stuck the garden chair on top. Nobody, as far as she could make out, had seen her preparing to leave. For a few minutes she stopped and thought about the enormity of what she was about to do. Should she go through with it? She consoled herself by deciding that she didn’t have to be away for long and, if she got homesick, she could turn round and come right back. But once she got into the car and left the cul-de-sac behind, she began to experience a long-lost sense of freedom – and the thrill of being naughty. Yes, naughtiness.
It was easier than she expected to leave. At least poor Paddy wasn’t around any more. There was no way she could have left her beloved old Labrador and she certainly couldn’t have contemplated taking him and his leaky bladder along with her, so that final trip to the vet a few months ago was probably a blessing in many ways. And it wasn’t even as if she loved the bungalow either, because she didn’t, not like she’d loved their old house. She’d wept when they (Roger) decided to downsize. She didn’t like retirement bungalows at all, although she knew it was the sensible option now that it was just Roger and her, heading for an arthritis-filled, telly-watching dotage – and it was a very nice, spacious bungalow, as Roger (and everyone) endlessly pointed out. But she still didn’t like it. She didn’t much like sleeping on the ground floor either. However, there was no disputing that it was sensible, and everything now had to be so bloody sensible: sensible bungalow, sensible manageable garden, nice, sensible, elderly neighbours in their little cul-de-sac. (What would they think of her now?!) Bugger that – she’d give up being sensible straight away. That, too! She was shedding ‘sensible’ along with the guilt and the dithering.
Nevertheless, she did feel a little guilty at not having contacted Sue, with whom she had so often discussed the minutiae of daily family life. Sue, who’d been threatening to take herself off and ‘leave them all to it’ for years, but was still there with her womanising husband. And now here was Connie actually doing it!
Connie felt a surge of excitement when she arrived at the T-junction. Now, left to the Channel port and le continent? Or right to middle England and all points north? She stopped and looked both ways, and then decided there was definitely less traffic heading north. A Royal Mail van had appeared behind her, a youngster at the wheel tooting impatiently. Even from this distance she could see ‘typical-bloody-woman-doesn’t-know-where-she’s-going’ written all over his spotty face. She turned right, after first giving him a two-finger salute. She hadn’t done anything quite so rude since she was in school and she was relieved to see that he’d turned in the opposite direction. What had she been thinking?
The road ahead stretched long and straight, and dappled with sunshine. Connie was on her way.
As she meandered along minor roads, the countryside had never looked lovelier; there it was in full-blown summer perfection to be enjoyed and not bypassed at silly speeds sandwiched between huge trucks on one side and reps in company cars, for the most part, on the other. Roger spent most of his life in the middle lane (well, of course; he had been an accountant) whereas Connie preferred the fast lane, but allowing for the fact that both she and Kermit were getting on a bit and she was in no particular hurry, there seemed little point in motorway driving. Anyway, she’d already got three points on her licence (that day shopping with Sue in Brighton) so she needed to take care.
As she drove, her feelings ranged from exhilaration that she’d actually done it, that she’d finally had the courage to up and leave, to fear of the unknown. Where was she going, for God’s sake? It struck her that she hadn’t had to make such a big decision in a very long time. Roger invariably planned their holidays, every route, every night-stop; it was easier to go along with it. He was, after all, very efficient.
Perhaps she and Sue should just have gone off somewhere for a week? Moaned about their marriages, eaten too much, drunk too much, then headed home again. Isn’t that what bored women did? (To be greeted with a disinterested ‘Nice time, dear?’)
No, this had to be a solitary journey. Because there was only one person – Connie McColl – who could decide on exactly what she was feeling and exactly what she was going to do about it. She wasn’t sixteen, though, she was sixty-six and, judging by the way her stomach was churning, she’d probably felt more confident at sixteen.
Then she saw the sign: Oxford! Oxford, where she’d first lost her heart and her virginity many, many years previously. The city occupied a special place in her heart, although she’d mostly viewed its dreaming spires from Dominic’s musty attic bedroom, where she’d viewed them, and him, from some interesting angles. Really, sex had never been quite so good since and she’d done a fair bit of research – before she’d married Roger, of course.
Smiling to herself, she took the Oxford exit seconds before Ken Bruce informed his Radio 2 listeners of the road works, heavy traffic and long delays likely for all vehicles heading into the city from the south and the west. Too late she was aware of the panorama of red brake lights in the sea of traffic ahead. Half an hour later, having inched forward for less than a quarter of a mile, she began to wonder at the wisdom of her decision to visit this city. There she was, hemmed in on all sides, with no means of escape. She’d even become matey, in a shoulder-shrugging, eye-rolling sort of way, with a young woman in a silver Renault crawling alongside, and felt quite bereft when the Renault’s lane moved forward and hers didn’t. Silly things got to you when you were bored rigid. In need of soothing, she switched to Classic FM where they were in the middle of the ‘Radetzky March’, complete with hand-clapping. Not today, thanks, she thought, and switched back to Ken, who was about to go home. Only hope you don’t live in Oxford, Ken, she thought.
By the time she got to the city centre it was mid-afternoon, and she was hot and exhausted and beginning to panic about finding accommodation. And then she saw it – the Randolph! She’d gone there, once only, with Dominic for afternoon tea. ‘Do you suppose we’ll ever be able to stay in places like this one day?’ she’d murmured through her scone. ‘I fully intend to,’ he’d replied, and doubtless he had. She recollected he’d been studying law – or was it medicine? Well, it might have taken her nearly fifty years but she too was going to stay here tonight. And why not? she thought.
Having finally parked and given her payment details at the reception desk, she realised precisely why not. She’d be lucky if her money lasted a few days at this rate. This had to be a one-off.
Strolling in the afternoon sunshine, Connie found Oxford had changed a little; the atmosphere seemed mor. . .
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