Emma awoke to the urgent chittering of a late summer flock of serins in the walnut tree outside the window, and the heavyhearted realisation that the holiday was over. She lay still for a few moments, eyes only half open, watching the shifting patterns of early sunlight shimmer vaguely across the thick, ugly wallpaper. She wondered at the stereotypical Frenchness of the d\u00e9cor, considering for a second or two whether the newly refurbished apartment in this big, old house had been deliberately badly decorated, to retain the ubiquitous french holiday cottage ambience.<\/p>\n
Beyond the panelled, dark brown door that didn\u2019t quite shut, she could hear Shelly already laying claim to the hottest of the water tank\u2019s meagre daily ration, attempting to shower in the bath that had no curtain, in the cavernous bathroom that had no lock. She wished she had woken earlier. She was fed up with negotiating the slippery, grey wetness of the tiled floor, which reminded her of cheaper, supposedly less-comfortable camping holidays, where trying to dry feet, and place them neatly through tight jeans within the confines of a tiny, puddle-floored, hookless shower cubicle in the communal block had always offered an interesting challenge to her obsessive compulsions about cleanliness, dryness and modesty.<\/p>\n
She turned away from the sunlight and the getting-up sounds, and put her arm lightly across Peter\u2019s exposed back. It was going to be another hot day. He sighed. He moved. He stretched slowly, groaning, as he ironed out the night-grown stiffness in his spine. \u201cHappy Birthday my dear,\u201d he mumbled through his wine-stained mouth, still squashed against the flatness of his pillowless side of the bed, \u201ccoffee?\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the less-than-perfect trappings of the holiday apartment, and the somewhat irritating-after-a-couple-of-days humour of their friends, it had been a lovely week. The weather, for once, had been unremittingly glorious, with none of the summer downpours that had drenched some of the easy-going enjoyment out of previous biking holidays. She and Peter had already spent three vacations in and around this small oasis of a market town, and had fallen in love with it. During the last week, they had revelled in the opportunity to introduce their friends to its many secret delights, like proud parents showing off their gifted children\u2019s school work. And Joe and Shelly had been suitably impressed with the choice of holiday destination, and appropriately appreciative of the fact that they had been singled out to share the blessings of this jewel of a place, rather than any of Emma and Peter\u2019s other biking friends.<\/p>\n
But the week was over, and by ten thirty they would have to have cleaned up, packed and met with the owner for a last minute inventory check and the return, hopefully, of their damage deposit. Between them they had broken one mismatched wine glass, and snapped the back of an exceedingly worn plastic garden-chair, during one of many Merlot-soaked evenings of mellow conviviality on the star-lit roof terrace.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The morning passed in a disorganised blur. After some fairly rudimentary sweeping, cleaning and throwing away of half-used jars of jam and packs of crumb-infested butter, Emma began the painstaking task of fitting all their belongings and their holiday souvenirs into the two big, but not big enough bike panniers. That morning Peter had returned from a croissant-buying trip to the Saturday market with a surprise birthday gift, and now she was having to rearrange the packing configuration to accommodate an unusually-shaped, Ricard-emblazoned, glass water carafe.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou wanna be careful how you pack them panniers!\u201d commented Joe, in his stolid black-country accent. \u201cYou need to make sure they balance\u201d. He spoke with the patronising authority of a man who had been packing a Goldwing\u2019s capacious hard-luggage for many years of continental travel. Little did he realise that, before they began their outbound trip, Emma\u2019s obsessiveness had compelled her to stand on the bathroom scales holding each of the packed panniers in turn, and to repack them until they weighed within 200 grams of each other. She was taking too long now, trying to decide how to reorganize the original arrangement to take account of the extras they had acquired along the way, and the rapidly approaching deadline was making her irritable.<\/p>\n
She always hated this bit of a holiday. The packing beforehand had been an evocative pleasure, redolent with the heady euphoria of anticipation. But this hurried packing of dirty clothes, half-used bottles of sun cream and pointless souvenirs reeked of anticlimax, of the dreary return to the commonplace. And this time, even more than usual, Emma was dreading the inexorable return to work the following Tuesday.<\/p>\n
By ten fifty they had said their final au revoirs to the apartment owner, retrieved and divvied up the damage deposit, and were standing awkwardly, helmets in hand, sweating in their bike gear in the burgeoning heat and wishing each other safe trips home. Joe and Shelly were heading north, for a leisurely three day detour on their way to catch their ferry at Calais. She and Peter were heading back to Bilbao to catch the cruise ferry to Portsmouth the following afternoon. They needed to do quite a good distance before finding an overnight stop within a morning\u2019s travel of the port.<\/p>\n
Peter looked at his watch. \u201cAnyone fancy a last drink at the caf\u00e9 before we leave?\u201d<\/p>\n
Shelly looked sharply at Joe, who tugged uncomfortably at the crotch in his tight-fitting leathers and consulted his own watch. \u201cNah, best not. Best be on us way.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After one last round of clumsy hugs and handshakes, Joe slid his leg expertly across the vast expanse of the Goldwing seat and nodded at Shelly, who steadied herself against his hot shoulder before climbing gracelessly on to the back. They donned their matching helmets in unison, checked that their helmet-to-helmet intercoms were working properly, and flipped down their visors. Joe started up the engine and revved it hard a couple of times. Then, with a last solemn nod in Peter\u2019s direction he pulled effortlessly away, beeping his horn, with Shelly waving like a child from her cosy perch behind him, blowing helmet-dumb kisses back down the dusty, narrow street.<\/p>\n
When they had disappeared round the corner, Peter looked at Emma with raised eyebrows and nodded questioningly in the direction of the bar. \u201cWhy not!\u201d Emma responded. \u201cIt is my birthday, after all.\u201d With Emma holding both helmets, and balancing expertly on the pillion seat, Peter carefully manoeuvred his six-month-old Pan European through a wide u-turn, to rumble slowly down the road, and park at the side of the market square, just opposite the caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n
The Saturday market was bustling beneath the dappled canopy of the gigantic plane trees that edged the square. The intense sunlight imbued the scene with the quality of a high contrast TV screen, and the sharpness of the edges between the luminous light and the deep shadow cut into Emma\u2019s eyes, making her squint. She never wore sunglasses. They made her feel too distant from what was going on around her. The deep blue sky was high and impossibly far away, glimpsed in brilliant patches between the green umbrella of the trees and the sheltering walls of the tall buildings surrounding the square in a rose-tinted embrace. From her seat in the shade of the striped awning in front of the caf\u00e9, Emma could hear the muffled billow of human voices, surging in intermittent waves across the road between herself and the crowded market; each separate voice the sound of a single pebble rolling in the tide, part of an indistinguishable whole that ebbed and flowed in a hypnotic pulse of sound. She closed her eyes and saw the summer beach of her childhood, remembering those long lost times of careless freedom.<\/p>\n
Peter emerged from the cool dark of the bar\u2019s interior, carrying two small glasses of cold lager. They had spent enough time in this bar over the last week to feel at home and to stop behaving like tourists. Anyway, he had reasoned, they didn\u2019t really have enough time to sit and wait patiently for the lone, lethargic waiter to rouse himself from his bar-leaning reverie, to come and take their order.<\/p>\n
\u201cHappy Birthday,\u201d he said again. He placed the glasses on the wonky metal table, knocking one of the legs as he sat down, making a foamy ring appear at the base of each glass, as the spill trickled down the sides to form a small puddle.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you dearest,\u201d Emma replied. \u201cCheers!\u201d She lifted her slippery glass carefully and gestured with it towards Peter, who responded with his, so that their glasses chinked a little too loudly, causing the people at the nearby table to turn and look at them.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s to the end of another fine holiday, and the start of another fine year in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cForty Bloody Four,\u201d Emma wailed. \u201cI can\u2019t believe it. Where did all those years go, eh? How did I get to be so old?\u201d<\/p>\n
Peter tilted his head slightly to one side, and smiled softly, like an indulgent father. \u201cYou\u2019re not old\u201d, he said. \u201cYou\u2019re mature\u2026.like a vintage bottle of wine\u2026or a really good cheese.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, thanks a bunch\u2026so now you\u2019re saying I\u2019m stinky as well as old!\u201d Emma had never been able to take a compliment graciously. \u201cAnyway, Mr Sweet-Talk, where\u2019s my bloody birthday cake? How am I supposed to make a Birthday Wish, with no candles to blow out?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d have thought you were old enough not to need props for making wishes. Or maybe even mature enough to stop believing that birthday wishes come true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emma pushed her chair back, and gasped in mock horror. \u201cI\u2019m shocked! That\u2019s like saying you don\u2019t believe in fairies. And you know that every time someone says that, a fairy dies\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, yeah\u2026\u201d Peter chuckled, struggling with the sticky zip in the pocket of his bike jacket which was wedged like a headless scarecrow over the back of his chair. He pulled out a crumpled packet of Drum Light, and started to roll a cigarette.<\/p>\n
Emma pulled her chair back to the table, and reached for the tobacco. Finding only a couple of pinches of dusty discards, she slid the packet back across the table, making a mental note that they should call into the tabac before they left. She didn\u2019t really want a cigarette anyway; she\u2019d smoked too much last night, and her mouth still tasted sour and dry. It was just habit that made her want to have one every time Peter did.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She pushed her chair away from the table again, and leaned back to rest her head gently against the hot wall behind her. She thought about the journey ahead of them, and the preparation she needed to do before starting back at work in three days time. She had managed not to think about it at all during the adventure of their ride out here, or during the last fun-filled week with Joe and Shelly, but now the spectre of her first day back at work, in an aged grey portakabin at the back edge of a dreary grey college site, next to a polluting grey ring-road, trying to teach a subject she knew nothing about to an angsty bunch of streetwise, disaffected sixteen-year-olds, hung over her like a black, inescapable cloud of depression.<\/p>\n
If only she hadn\u2019t agreed to take it on. If only she had listened to that little voice inside herself that told her she couldn\u2019t do this; that this was a challenge too far. If only she could stay here in this land of dreams, where cares evaporated in the open blue sky, and worries wilted in the redeeming sunshine. Where the hazy, purple fortress of surrounding scrub-covered hills exuded a calm and safe tranquillity, and the very stones of the streets and buildings radiated a healthy pink glow of happiness.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re never too old to make a birthday wish,\u201d she proclaimed, wistfully.<\/p>\n
Peter laughed a good-natured acquiescence. \u201cHere you go then,\u201d he said, leaning towards her, with his white Bic lighter in his outstretched hand. \u201cBlow this out and make a wish.\u201d He flicked the wheel with his right thumb and held the flame in front of Emma\u2019s face. \u201cHappy Birthday,\u201d he said, for the third time that day.<\/p>\n
Emma looked at Peter and tried to decide if he was laughing at her, or with her. She looked at the flame, almost insignificant against the background of brilliant brightness behind it. She thought of the birthday cakes her father used to make her when she was a child. She thought of the considerably less elegant birthday cakes she had made for her own children, when they were young and easily impressed. She thought of a photograph of her son on his fourth birthday, blowing out the candles on his Snake Cake, cheeks puffed out and big with party-sweet breath, and solemn brown eyes big with belief.<\/p>\n
And she thought of her wish.<\/p>\n
She leaned forward, and closed her eyes to the glaring sunshine, and to the choking, leaden reality that lay waiting for her back in England. She inhaled deeply, sucking all her fears and hopes together into a tight little space in her heart, and held her breath.<\/p>\n
She made the wish.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She blew the flame slow and hard, with all the longing she could muster, and finally opened her eyes to the bright world of Peter\u2019s laughter. \u201cWell, that must have been a good wish! I don\u2019t think this thing will ever light again.\u201d He shook the lighter and flicked the wheel a few times more. It wouldn\u2019t light. \u201cWell, we need to get some more baccy anyway\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
They sat silently a few minutes more, soaking up the sun and the impressions of the summer scene surrounding them. The clock bell in the nearby church tower struck the half hour. Peter drained his glass, and picked up the empty tobacco packet and the dead lighter from the table. \u201cOh well\u2026\u201d he began.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, alright, I know, I know\u2026\u201d Emma petulantly interrupted his statement of the inevitable, and stood up with a sigh, reaching round to lift her stiff bike jacket awkwardly off the chair back.<\/p>\n
As they walked towards the tabac, Peter put his arm around Emma\u2019s slumped shoulders. \u201cNever mind m\u2019dear\u2026.\u201d he tried to console her, \u201c\u2026at least we\u2019ve still got the journey back to enjoy\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHmmm, I guess\u2026\u201d she conceded. But the journey, the ride itself, was a mixed thing for her. She loved the idea of being swept along on the back of the bike, watching the world go by, driving through undiscovered villages, and seeing panoramic vistas open up before her around each new bend in the road. But she couldn\u2019t ever entirely relax and enjoy it. She struggled with the lack of control that passenger-hood entailed, and couldn\u2019t help herself from looking over Peter\u2019s shoulder and making mental judgements about how to respond to the unfolding road ahead, even though she knew she could do nothing about it.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t help that she had passed her bike test four years earlier. She had her own bike at home, a sweet little 400cc grey import, with an extremely narrow seat which meant she could easily get her feet on the ground. But the process of learning had served to increase her awareness of the possible dangers of bike riding, rather than making her feel more confident, and any long bike journey was now an uneasy combination of excitement and fear; an interesting ordeal, best enjoyed in retrospect.<\/p>\n
She knew her children worried about her too, and thought it vaguely amusing that her teenage son was so frequently telling her to ride safely, and to text him to let him know she had arrived safely at her destination. It really should be the other way round.<\/p>\n
She also knew her children would try to ring her mobile at some point during the day to wish her a happy birthday, and that she wouldn\u2019t be able to answer it, while she was on the bike.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to ring my kids\u201d Emma said, as she and Peter stood aside from the door of the tabac to let a portly man with red, rheumy eyes and a black beret emerge, blinking like a mole in the glaring light. Peter looked at his watch again. \u201cI doubt they\u2019ll be out of bed yet. Why don\u2019t you wait till we stop for a break in an hour or so?\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He was right of course. It was Saturday, and at home it was only half past ten. Although they would be going round to their father\u2019s house for their customary weekend visit later in the day, they would have been up late last night with their friends, and having a slovenly teenage lie-in this morning. They wouldn\u2019t appreciate being disturbed, and the thought of the grumpy, monosyllabic grunts that would greet her cheery hello if she rang now, decided her. \u201cYeah\u2026ok. I\u2019ll leave it a while\u201d<\/p>\n
In the shop, Peter asked for a packet of tobacco in his almost perfect French, and from the tawdry display on the cracked counter, Emma picked a white lighter adorned with the name of the town in red, above a tiny gold-coloured representation of the river, spanned by a picturesque bridge. \u201cTacky\u2026but, well\u2026..you know?\u201d she shrugged in response to Peter\u2019s raised eyebrow. He shook his head slightly, and returned to sorting through his handful of foreign coins, intent on giving the shop-owner the exact amount.<\/p>\n
They returned to the bike, and while Peter manoeuvred it out of the cambered dip that pulled the front wheel into the gutter, Emma took one long, last, wistful look at the blissful tableau surrounding her, before pulling on her helmet and closing her ears and mind to the buzzing hum of the bewitching refuge she was about to leave behind.<\/p>\n
\n
Riding pillion was a skill that Emma worked at. She took pride in her ability to anticipate the changing speeds and leanings of the bike, and to blend into Peter\u2019s movements, so that he hardly noticed she was there. On her own bike, she was always wary of leaning too far, and her fear prevented her from ever really getting into the flow of the ride. But riding pillion was another matter altogether. Although she might sometimes doubt Peter\u2019s choice of speed or road position, she knew that a tense and fearful pillion was a dangerous thing. Her safest option was to be as physically relaxed as possible, whilst maintaining a grounded position on the back seat, so that she did not slide into him when he braked hard, or slide scarily backwards when he accelerated.<\/p>\n
Being on the bike together was the nearest she and Peter ever came to dancing. He led, and she followed simultaneously. They moved as one, rolling and gliding, changing pace and direction in concert. She maintained an intense level of alertness, anticipating the direction of the road ahead, and the way the bike would move over different surfaces. She thought Peter\u2019s thoughts, and knew how he would move next. But although her brain was tense with effort, she made her body soft and pliant, yielding to the forces of physics, obedient to the laws of natural motion. This combination of rigid strength and apparent fluidity of movement reminded her of the ballet lessons of her childhood. She strove to cultivate the art of being hard and seeming soft.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When they had at last cleared the stop-start streets of the town surrounds, the wind of speed picked up to cool their leather-boiled limbs, and the rhythm of the open road was theirs once again.The flow of the ride gradually took on an automatic quality, and Emma found herself slipping into that welcome zone, where her body reacted instinctively to what her eyes and centre of gravity perceived, whilst her mind began to wander over plains of imagination as wide as the vast landscape, stretching away from them in every direction.<\/p>\n
Peter had suggested that they should use an intercom so they could communicate during the journey, and although this would have allowed Emma the chance to tell him to slow down when she felt scared, or to let him know when she desperately needed a toilet stop, she had resisted the idea. One of the things she most loved about being on the bike was the silence.<\/p>\n
The wind noise across her helmet melted into the muffled roar of the engine, effectively blocking out any sudden changes in her aural climate, and the fact that she knew she could not be disturbed by unsolicited conversation brought her a sense of peaceful solitude, in which she was at liberty to think her own thoughts without distraction.<\/p>\n
Whilst a minimal part of her conscious mind kept track of the road and the weather, the route and the distances travelled, most of it was free to roam.<\/p>\n
She drank in the otherness of the warm world around her, and imagined what it would be like to live there. To have a home of her own in this holiday land, where the big skies smiled over miles of openness, and there was space to think and breathe. She looked at the sand-yellow houses with sea-blue shutters that they passed along the way, nestled in shady caves of tall dark cypresses, between rocky hillsides and endless green vineyards, and she saw herself hanging out the bed sheets to dry in the hot southerly breeze, with her sleepy dog eyeing lizards darting across the terracotta tiled terrace. She imagined the long, slow evening walks along the dusty tracks, breathing in the smell of wild thyme and rosemary, and trying to spot the lone cicada clicking resonantly in the solitary stone pine, standing black against the outlandishly vibrant sunset. She day-dreamed of warm nights sitting on a wooden bench, drinking cheap red wine under a black velvet sky speckled with silver holes, listening to the melancholy nightingale serenading his longed-for mate.<\/p>\n
But every joyful impulse inspired by the awesome beauty around her was counterposed by a sense of dread. Her happy imaginings were increasingly interrupted by thoughts of the long dreary year ahead. She tried to cheer herself by imagining the impending future in a series of positive scenarios. The guy she would be working with at the unit was entertaining in a sort of intense, anarchic way. He was a bit of a drama queen, with a tendency to hyperventilation and bouts of depression, but his heart was in the right place and he had a childish enthusiasm for the things he cared about that was contagious. They shared an overwhelming lack of respect for the managers of the service that employed them, and a common desire to provide a welcoming and fun place-to-be for the hurt and hateful teenagers that would resentfully end up there after they had been rejected by every other educational establishment in the city. There would be some good times, of course. But\u2026..<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But, that was where she had gone wrong. She had been carried away by her own myth. She had let herself believe that she was different. That she could succeed with these damaged youngsters where others had failed. She had imagined the glowing end-of-year results, with sullen kids achieving unexpected exam success, and metamorphosing into happy, pleasant young men and women, with hearts full of hope and heads full of optimism. When she volunteered cheerfully for the job that no one else in the team wanted, she had been soaring high on a flight of fancy. She did not think of the hours of planning, assessment and actual teaching that she would have to do. She did not think about the fact that she knew nothing about curriculum requirements, or even the matter of the subjects she would have to teach. She had forgotten how cruel teenagers can be when they sense weakness or incompetence. She had forgotten how hard she found it to be firm. She had forgotten how frightened she was of losing control.<\/p>\n
And to make things worse, she had chosen to deal with the problem in her customarily dysfunctional fashion – by burying her head in the six-week holiday sand. She had not faced up to her short-comings. She had done no planning to make things seem less daunting. And here she was, three days away from the start of the gruesome term ahead, with not one single idea for one lesson for one day, let alone a carefully planned-out scheme of work to see her through the first six weeks. She had always lived her life off the top of her head. She had winged it and got away with it. She had ad-libbed and carried it off. She was a fraud, taken in by her own fakery.<\/p>\n
\n
She started to feel nauseous. Returning stomach-churningly to the present, Emma noticed they were climbing steeply, sweeping round hairpin bends with a precipitous drop to her left, giving her an airplane view of town they had recently by-passed. Suddenly hit by a loss of confidence, Emma tensed up and lost the flow. As she gripped the grab-rail tightly and tried to shift her position a little to ease the pain creeping into her neck and shoulders, Peter sensed the change.<\/p>\n
At the same moment, they both spotted the welcome sign at the side of the road depicting a picnic bench under a tree. Two hundred metres later, Peter pulled off the winding road to a flat car park atop an unexpected rocky outcrop at the edge of the otherwise relentless ascent. The view was stunning. Hurriedly extricating themselves from their sweaty helmets and tight jackets, as the heat trebled in intensity with the lack of movement, they stretched extravagantly, and wandered over to the edge.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The town looked like a messy jumble of small white and red boxes that had fallen carelessly from the sky, and drifted into the valley below, collecting in the lowest parts next to the river, and bunching up against the steep sides of the gorge. Straight ahead, they could see across the top of the mountain on the other side of the valley, to the faded purple peaks of the Pyrenees, receding into the distance. A thick line of silver-edged darkness was bubbling up along the horizon, and a nearer white cumulus cloud cast a creeping black shadow over the sunlit valley below, like a giant bird of prey swooping across its hunting ground.<\/p>\n
Emma shivered, and took a few steps back, seized suddenly by a familiar sense of compulsion that seduced her with the thought of falling. She felt it whenever she looked down from a great height on an unprotected edge. The thought that she might – that she could – just go. Not jumping. Just falling. Dropping. Letting go of her tenuous grasp on this thing called reality. Letting go of her fears, her responsibilities, her attachments, her dreams. Just taking one step, and being gone. The thin air was pierced by a ghostly mewing call. She turned away from the edge and walked back towards the bike. “Better ring the offspring,” she called over her shoulder to Peter, who was staring into the sky, following the slow spiralling flight of a buzzard circling overhead. “Come away from the edge” she pleaded, feeling uneasy at the thought of him losing his balance while tilting his head further back to keep track of the bird.<\/p>\n
Emma fished her mobile out of the inside pocket of her jacket, and cursed as the breeze took hold of a small piece of paper that came out with it, whisking it up into an eddy and away over the edge. She tried to remember what the paper was. A scribbled phone number she thought, but she couldn’t recall whose, or why it was in that pocket. She shrugged, and let the thought fly away with the paper. She pressed the quick-dial key for her daughter’s mobile phone, and waited until it rang out and the answer machine kicked in before hanging up. Then, she pressed again, and this time left a message to say she hoped everything was fine; that the dog was behaving himself; that she wouldn’t be able to speak on the phone because she’d be on the bike all day; and that she’d ring again in the evening when they stopped at a hotel. She tried her son’s mobile too, with the same result, and decided to send him a text saying she was fine, she hoped he was having a nice Saturday, and she would ring later from the hotel. She hated it when she didn’t get to speak to her children. It always left her wondering. Wondering if they were ok, or if they had left their phone somewhere, or if they were deliberately not answering because they were busy doing something they thought she would disapprove of.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“No luck?” Peter asked, coming over to the bike and opening the top-box to get a can of coke. He gestured towards Emma with the can. “Want one?”<\/p>\n
“I’ll just have a sip or two of yours, if that’s ok. Otherwise I’ll be wanting to pee all afternoon.”<\/p>\n
Peter tugged at the ring-pull, and jumped back, holding the can at arm’s length, as the warm, shaken drink exploded in a whoosh of brown froth. “Shoulda seen that coming, I guess!” he laughed, offering the can to Emma for the first, fizzy mouthful. She took a couple of large swigs and wiped the top of the can with the palm of her hand, before passing it back.<\/p>\n
“Think I’d better just pop behind a bush before we get back on the bike,” she said, looking around for a suitably discrete location in which to relieve her bursting bladder. There wasn’t a lot of vegetation about – just one pine tree with a fairly thick trunk that might offer a little cover from the curious eyes of passing motorists. Emma looked across the empty car park, and considered the currently empty road. “Better be quick…” she said, running over to the tree, unzipping, and unpopping her thick leather bike jeans on the way. Men have it so easy, she thought, as she struggled to keep her balance, keep her jeans dry, and fully empty her bladder, whilst keeping a tense look-out for passers-by. A car pulled into the parking area, just as she emerged from the cover of the tree doing up her zip. “Good timing”, she laughed, pleased at having avoided embarrassment, and feeling happier about the prospect of continuing the journey with a more comfortable body.<\/p>\n
As they were preparing to get back on the bike, Peter nodded in the direction of the mountains. “Looks like we might get some rain,” he commented. The roads they had been travelling on so far had been bone dry and dusty, and the surrounding countryside was cracked and parched. Emma knew that a little rain on a dusty road was a recipe for treacherous slipperiness. She frowned, trying to dispel the uneasiness she had caught from the tone of Peter’s comment.<\/p>\n
“Fingers crossed” she said. “Let’s get going….maybe it won’t catch up with us.”<\/p>\n
\n
Back on the bike, Emma tried to recapture the sense of flow she had felt earlier in their journey, but she couldn’t shake the edginess that had crept up on her in the car park. She found herself repeatedly doing mental calculations to convert the kilometres on the road signs to miles, wishing away the distance they had left to travel that day. They should have left earlier, she thought. Now they would have to keep up a consistently high speed to get to a reasonable stopping place before dark. She really didn’t want to still be on the bike when daylight faded, but she was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the speed they were having to travel at, and she found herself looking forward to the enforced stops and slowness that passing through villages and towns entailed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As they headed through the northern foothills of the Pyrenees, the roads climbed higher and the clouds dropped lower. The bright sunshine gave way to a hazy greyness, and every now and then a few drops of rain splattered into her visor. At least it wasn’t so hot now, she thought, but the consolation was dwarfed by her growing discomfort. Her shoulders were really beginning to ache, and her neck was stiff from resisting the forces of acceleration and braking. The inside of her left knee felt sore from the friction of rubbing against the seam of her stiff jeans, and her right wrist was throbbing with the strain of being held in one position for too long. She tried to distract herself by thinking about something else. But the thing that kept popping into her mind was the dark that awaited her at the end of this long tunnel of a journey. She wanted to stop now, to stay here and make the dream of her holiday last a little longer. She didn’t want to go back to England and face the consequences of her ill-judged career decision.<\/p>\n
After what felt like an eternity, they arrived in Foix. It wasn’t as pretty as she had expected, but the castle, standing dark and proud on its rocky outcrop dominating the landscape, was impressive. It loomed above the town streets, surveying the activities of the people below with an air of disdain. Emma felt small and insignificant, and as if she was being watched. They stopped at the side of a wide street, in front of a row of touristy shops, bars and restaurants. This was a busy town, exuding the anonymity that comes with size. Peter decided to take their important documents out of the top-box before heading off along the row of cafes, to find an inexpensive but friendly place to get a coffee and something to eat.<\/p>\n
They went inside and sat opposite each other on the red padded bench seats, with their helmets next to them, in a little booth at the side of the long, high-ceilinged room. Lunch time was well over, and apart from four or five men exchanging gruff, thick-accented comments at the bar, only a few slow diners remained, finishing off their carafes of house wine and espressos. When the aproned waiter approached to take their order, Peter asked whether it was too late to get some food. “Pas de probl\u00e8me, Monsieur,” the waiter smiled broadly, producing a battered menu from his back pocket with a dramatic flourish. Relieved, Peter consulted the menu quickly and suggested that they share a pizza. “Fine by me,” said Emma, equally relieved at not having to spend time deliberating and choosing from a complex list of possibilities. As the waiter disappeared into the gloom at the rear of the room with their order, Peter opened up the road map, and Emma checked her phone. There was a text message from her daughter wishing her a happy birthday and a safe journey, and saying that she, her brother and the dog were all fine. She smiled to herself, her mood lightened by the knowledge that all was well with her children. She decided not to ring them at this point, knowing that phone conversations with her children often raised more concerns than they resolved. She would wait until they were settled in a hotel at the end of the day, when she could at least reassure her son that they had completed one of their two days\u2019 journey safely.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She leaned forward to look at the map Peter was studying. Even upside down, she could see that Foix was less than half the distance they needed to cover before stopping for the night. Her heart sank. It felt as if they had been on the road for ages, but in reality they had only been travelling for a little over three hours. “Only another two hundred or so kilometres to Pau,” Peter said, too cheerily. “And then we’ll have about two hundred and sixty to do tomorrow….but most of that will be on the motorway.”<\/p>\n
Emma hated being on motorways on the bike. They would be going faster, and there would be less variety in the journey. She would be stuck in one position, hunkered down trying to keep her head out of the wind-blast, and dreading the sudden changes in side wind that so often came with the overtaking of large flat-sided lorries. Peter studied the map intently. “I suppose we could stop somewhere nearer tonight, if we feel like it. We don’t have to be at the port till one thirty”. Emma thought that it would be great if they could just stop now. She was pleased to be off the bike and sitting inside on a comfortable seat. She was beginning to feel sleepy, and thought that after eating she would find it even harder to stir herself. She rested her head on her arms on the table and closed her eyes. A little nap would be so lovely.<\/p>\n
“Here comes grub!” Peter said, hurriedly trying to refold the outspread map, interrupting her doze with a fluster of flapping paper and curses. They ate the pizza in companionable silence, listening to the conversation going on between the men at the bar. Emma could only make out odd words and phrases, and concluded that they were talking about football, which amused and depressed her at the same time. The strong coffee and the cigarette after the food woke Emma up a little, and feeling full and a bit bored, she was ready to set off again. Now she just wanted to get on with it, and get to a hotel as soon as possible. “C’mon then…let’s hit the road Jack”.<\/p>\n
“Okay..okay…” Peter stood up, still squinting at the semi-folded map, awkwardly trying to look at the relevant bit, without opening it all the way out again. “Just checking the best route from here…” He left three twenty-franc notes on the dish with the bill, and mumbled a barely audible au revoir to the assembled group at the bar as they left. The men turned round and nodded, and the barman smiled broadly. “Merci monsieur-dame, et bonne route.”<\/p>\n
Out on the street, Emma noticed that the sky was looking more threatening, and back at the bike, they contemplated putting on their waterproofs. But even though the sun was hidden by rolling grey clouds, it was still hot and sticky. “It’ll probably only be a shower anyway”, Peter said. Emma had heard that many times before and wanted to respond with a ‘famous last words’ remark. But she knew it would result in a detailed explanation of the weather conditions, and of why this wouldn’t turn into a prolonged downpour, like the ones that had drenched them on many a previous bike trip. As they headed out of town, Emma craned her stiff neck for one last look at the castle, which seemed to be monitoring their departure with its eerie window-hole eyes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
They hit the rain twenty minutes later. The noise on the single-carriage road became loud with the splatter of water dropping onto metal, and tyre hiss on wet tarmac. The black surface shone white, reflecting the glare of headlights, and Emma’s visor misted up with clammy breath, so she had to crack it open to see. It felt as if the air had closed in around them and was pressing them into a small, deaf bubble, rumbling lonesomely along a winding road to nowhere. Peter slowed down, and when he caught up with an even slower car in front, he sat behind it, following its tail lights, rather than overtaking at the first opportunity, as he would normally have done. Emma remembered the first trip she made on her new bike, a week after passing her test. It was a cold November weekend, and they had travelled to South Wales to visit friends. On the way home, the wind was really strong, and just as it was getting dark, it had poured with rain. She had been terrified, and her hands in her wet gloves had become totally numb with cold. The colder she got, the slower she went, so that it took them two hours longer than it should have to get home.<\/p>\n
Emma reflected that she really wasn’t cut out for bike riding. She had made herself learn to ride out of contempt for the fearful, dull, middle-aged woman she felt she had become. The idea came to her on a family holiday, when she and Peter had taken her two and his three children for a motor-caravan trip around France. After two weeks of caretaking and humouring five argumentative and frequently bored children within the confines of the ever-shrinking motor-caravan, Emma felt her inner self seething and bubbling, on the verge of exploding with some sort of ‘What about me?’ gesture. She went on strike for an afternoon, refusing to do any cooking or washing or sorting-out of childish disputes, and steadfastly just sat and did nothing at all. But as she sat, she realised that the anger she was feeling was not about the children, or this holiday. It was about the fact that she was letting her life slip away, drifting into tedious mediocrity, where everything was safe, and normal and relentlessly ordinary.<\/p>\n
A few days later, at a different campsite on their route home, as they were yet again setting up their copious camping paraphernalia and preparing to make dinner for seven, the soporific hum of distant children\u2019s voices and the muffled clunking of plastic crockery on picnic tables was ruffled by the sonorous rumble of flock of motorcycles. Within half an hour, the bikers had unpacked their rucksacks, erected their small tents, and were sitting on the ground in a circle of good humour, swigging bottled beer and reminiscing about the best moments of their day’s journey. The following day, when they had stopped the motor-caravan for a hurried bit of lunch in a lay-by, another group of gleaming motorbikes came gliding along the smooth tarmac, swooping majestically around the bend in a pack, as if they owned the road. And that was when Emma, captivated by the glamour of the machines, and beguiled by the possibilities for a different life that they suggested, declared that she was going to have a motorbike.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Back in England, much to everyone’s surprise, she persisted with her crazy notion, and within a month she had bought a 125cc bike with lots of shiny chrome and wire wheels. Having never even ridden a bicycle, her first experience on the little motorbike, in a DIY store car park late one evening, dismantled her already shaky confidence. But having bought the bike, she was committed. She couldn’t back out. That was one of the reasons she insisted on buying the bike, rather than learning on a hired one. She knew she had to make herself do this, even though every rational cell in her brain, and every corpuscle in her fear-transfused blood was screaming at her that she couldn’t. The next February, after an initial weekend of failure-coloured embarrassment – an anxious forty-year-old woman, surrounded by the youthful competence of teenage boys who already knew everything there was to know about riding bikes – she passed her compulsory basic training. She started riding her bike to work. She hated and loved it in equal measure. The horror of her constant awareness of possible death around every corner was mitigated by the pleasure she took in her image of herself as an interesting woman on a motorbike; a woman that could hold her own in bar room conversations with men about V-twins, after-market exhausts and power-to-weight ratios. She failed her first two tests, and battled incessantly against the siren call of giving up. A call that didn’t stop when she passed her test on the third attempt. She still had so much to prove – to herself, as much as to anyone else. She had to prove that she could reinvent herself. She had to believe that she could live whatever life she chose. She had to do whatever it took to avoid settling for the easiness of the commonplace; for a life less than it could be.<\/p>\n
\n
They rode on slowly through the rain. Just as Peter had predicted, it didn’t last very long. The sudden downpour had filled the gutters with mountain run-off, and every now and then they swished through a sheet of water unrolling across the road, swirling oily rainbows into weed-filled ditches on the lower side. The air smelt of wet dust and pungent vegetation. The road sweated in the patchy afternoon sun, and parked cars and galvanised roofs steamed like washing drying in front of a fire. Just after they had passed through St Girons, Peter pulled into a lay-by, to look at the map again. He flicked down the side-stand, but remained astride the bike, balancing the half-open map the tank-bag, while Emma dismounted to stretch her legs and straighten her back. “Would you rather stay on the N roads, or go on the motorway?” Peter asked.<\/p>\n
Emma looked at the uncertain sky, trying to work out whether it was likely to rain again. She knew that motorway was probably the safer option. She thought it would also be quicker. But she would find the ride more tiring and even less enjoyable. “Hmmm….dunno. What d’you think?” she replied, unable, as usual, to make a decision.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“I think I’d rather stay on this road. It’s more interesting, and I don’t think it’ll make much time difference in the end.”<\/p>\n
Emma agreed, distractedly surveying the nearby verges, looking for a suitable hiding place in which to relieve her quick-filling bladder. Finding none, she concluded that she wasn’t too desperate yet, and could wait a bit before pressing Peter to find a suitable toilet stop.<\/p>\n
Peter refolded the map and stuffed it into the bulging tank-bag, and Emma carefully slid her wet boot between Peter and the top-box, to slide back on to the bike. She tapped Peter on the shoulder to let him know she was ready to go. Peter kicked up the side-stand, took a long look back down the empty road, and pulled out, smoothly notching up through the gears, as the heavy bike accelerated, gaining speed surprisingly quickly for such an apparently cumbersome machine.<\/p>\n
Twenty five kilometres further on, they rode past the big blue signs that beckoned them on to the motorway. The road they were on crossed over it twice, and Emma looked down at the straight lines of holiday traffic that they had shunned, smug in the knowledge that they had made the right choice.<\/p>\n
The weather was improving again, and the roads were beginning to dry out, with only some patchy dampness, and the occasional large puddle remaining. With only a hundred and twenty kilometres to go to their overnight destination, Emma\u2019s spirits lifted. They could even stop sooner, if they wanted to. Tarbes was only about seventy kilometres away. They could be there within the hour. Her mind raced on ahead, and she was already there in the small but comfortable hotel room, taking off her hot, sticky bike jeans, unpacking her wash bag and heading into the refreshing shower.<\/p>\n
Emma\u2019s mind wandered on. On through the pleasant evening in another unknown town, eating at a pretty restaurant overlooking the river, watching the sun set behind the mountains. But her errant mind refused to tarry there within that warm, assuaging image of happy solace.<\/p>\n
She thought about the journey the next morning. The inevitable stress of travel towards a timetabled deadline, that wouldn\u2019t pass until they were safe at the port, and checked-in, ready to board the ship that would take them home.<\/p>\n
Home to her children, who she suddenly missed with a stabbing ferocity. Home to the grey but familiar world of her everyday life. Home to the work she dreaded.<\/p>\n
With a sinking in her heart, Emma\u2019s awareness returned abruptly to the present. They were on yet another roundabout, circling the centre to reach the last exit. She leaned in line with Peter, looking over his left shoulder at the unusually lush grass growing on the well-tended island.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was not right. It was too close. They were leaning too far. The bike was too heavy for such a lean. They would touch the ground. They would come off. In the space of a second her mind had considered how much delay a service recovery and repair would add to their journey. Would they make it to a hotel in time? Perhaps it would be only minor damage \u2013 a bent gear lever, a broken mirror. Perhaps they could pick up the scraped bike, calm their adrenalin-drowned nerves, and carry on.<\/p>\n
But then, still holding on, she was looking at the right-hand side of the bike. The front wheel and the back wheel were too close together. Something was upside down.<\/p>\n
\n
She came to on her right side on the road. She was breathing very fast, and couldn\u2019t slow it down. The pieces of gravel on the road looked huge, so close to her face. Realising that she was lying in the middle of the road, Emma panicked and tried to get up. But her attempt at movement caused an avalanche of blinding pain to burst into her consciousness. She couldn\u2019t move. Her right arm and right leg were nothing but a mess of pain. And still she could not slow her breathing. She panted, as she had in childbirth, trying to slow down her racing heart by breathing fast, shallow breaths that didn\u2019t move her body.<\/p>\n
As clearer consciousness crept in alongside the pain, Emma considered her situation. Her head was ok. She could see, and she could hear. She knew she was in the road and more than anything she wanted not to be. She was terrified of being hit by a car.<\/p>\n
Peter\u2019s face appeared above hers. He carefully opened her scratched visor. He was not wearing his helmet. He looked white as a ghost, his worried face creased with fear. \u201cAre you alright?\u201d he asked, rather pointlessly. \u201cCan you get up?<\/p>\n
Emma was surprised at the calmness of her own voice. \u201cNo. I can\u2019t move. My head\u2019s alright though. Don\u2019t let anything hit me\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone\u2019s called an ambulance\u201d Peter tried to reassure her. \u201cThey\u2019ll be here soon. Where are the travel insurance documents?\u201d<\/p>\n
Emma\u2019s mind was clearing. \u201cIn the top-box,\u201d she said, \u201cwith the passports.\u201d<\/p>\n
She wondered who had called the ambulance. She wondered how time could be so weirdly distorted. She wondered where the bike was, and why she was here and not near the roundabout. She wondered why Peter kept asking her the same question over and over again. She wondered if maybe she was just being pathetic. She thought that if she put her mind to it, she would be able to roll over, and sit up, and maybe struggle to her feet. She needed to get out of the road.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But her next attempt to move brought the same excruciating deluge of overwhelming pain. Pain like she had never imagined possible. Unable to fight it, she gave in to it. She accepted that she was broken, and all she could do was stay where she was until someone came to fix her. To just keep breathing.<\/p>\n
She inhaled shallowly, sucking all her fears and hopes together into a soft little space in her heart, and tried not to hold her breath. She let go. And with the ceasing of the struggle, she found a calm place in which to become aware.<\/p>\n
\n
Emma awoke to the urgent wailing of the sapeurs-pompiers arriving at the side of the road, and the light-hearted realisation that she would not be going back to work for a very long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Emma awoke to the urgent chittering of a late summer flock of serins in the walnut tree outside the window, and the heavyhearted realisation that the holiday was over. She lay still for a few moments, eyes only half open, … Continue reading