I wandered over to the bookshelf which had given away my love of travel, running my hand across the book spines. Australia, Thailand, Colorado, Cuba . . . So many places, so many memories. Most years, somewhere different. Had I spoken the truth when I’d said those days were over? Yes, I thought so. At least for now. All that travel had been a hunger for discovery—not only about places but also about myself. For years, I’d been searching for something. I still was, I supposed. It was just that now I was searching closer to home.
My hand came to rest on a guidebook to Belize. I pulled it out. The cover image was of a woman swimming in crystal-clear water with a palm-tree-festooned island on the horizon. I smiled, opening the book to read the inscription. For Beth. Happy holidays! Smithy.
Smithy. God, it had been a long time since I’d thought about him. He was the one who’d first given me the travel bug. Without Smithy, I might never have travelled to all those other countries. Where was he now? The last time I’d mentioned him to Mark, he’d said they’d lost touch. Which was sad, since they’d been such good friends at university. But probably inevitable given the circumstances. Poor Smithy.
20
I was meant to be driving myself to uni on my first day—the car Richard had picked out for me was parked on the forecourt, taking up precious space. A red Mini, which Mark immediately nicknamed the Ladybird. But I’d failed my driving test, so for now, I couldn’t drive it.
“Mark can give you a lift in, can’t you, Mark?” suggested Sylvia.
“’Course I can,” said Mark.
So it was all settled.
I hadn’t deliberately applied to the same university as Mark. It just happened to be the closest university to Sylvia and Richard’s where I could study veterinary nursing. I could have studied somewhere else in the country, but I didn’t want to. Why would I when I knew I wanted to settle down in London eventually? At least, that’s what I told myself.
I was excited to be starting my course and pleased to be free of the petty rules and regulations of school. And now here I was, getting into Mark’s Vauxhall Astra for the thirty-minute journey to my future.
Despite the fact that we lived in the same house, Mark and I rarely spent any time alone together. We kept different hours—Mark often out late with his uni friends or round at a girlfriend’s house. Rosie and I had been knuckling down to get through our final school exams all year, so after we’d finished them, we spent most of the long summer lolling about idly in hammocks strung between trees at the bottom of the garden.
But Rosie had started a new job at the end of August, so the day I started university, she’d already left the house in her smart office clothes. As Mark drove away from the house, I had the sense that nothing was ever going to be the same again. Having experienced more than my fair share of change and upheaval in my life, I suppose it wasn’t surprising I felt suddenly scared and overwhelmed. Certainly, I could have done with Rosie’s moral support.
Mark somehow seemed to sense how I felt. Or maybe it was just blindingly obvious.
“It will be all right, you know,” he said. “For about five minutes, everything will seem a bit strange, but then you’ll make friends and you’ll be fine.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so. Your driving test too. Don’t worry about that. You’re bound to pass next time. Anybody can clip a kerb when they’re reversing. I do it all the time.”
I knew Mark would have ribbed Rosie something rotten if she’d been the one to clip a kerb during her driving test, and yet here he was, being really nice to me. Sylvia must have had a word with him. But I wished she hadn’t, because I wasn’t sure what to say to this nice, reassuring Mark. Teasing Mark—the Mark I was used to—would have been much easier to deal with.
Silence fell—the kind of total silence you get when you wake up one winter morning and it’s been snowing. A blanket of silence where nothing feels the same as usual.
Mark switched the radio on. The sound of Bryan Adams singing a song from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves filled the car.
He groaned. “I can’t believe this is still number one,” he said, switching the radio off.
“Rosie and I loved that film,” I said.
“Only because you’ve both got a crush on Kevin Costner,” Mark retorted. “No idea why. He didn’t even try to do a proper accent.”
“You’re only jealous because he’s such a heartthrob,” I said.
“Jealous? Of that blow-dry fanatic? I’m surprised he even did all that high-action stuff when it could have messed up his hair.”
I grinned. Good. We were back in familiar territory.
Mark was right. I did make friends quickly with the people on my course. We were the same age, all crazy about animals and their welfare, sharing the same frustrations and successes. It was easy. I was happy. I even passed my driving test the second time around, as Mark had predicted. I still saw him after I started driving myself to uni, though. He and his friends hung out in the same cafeteria and student bar as we did, and sometimes my friends and I joined them, or they joined us. And that’s how I met Smithy.
My course was a practical one—half my time was taken up by academic study, but for the other half I was based at various veterinary practices to gain hands-on experience. The first time I witnessed an animal death as part of my work—a much-loved cat we had tried and failed to save on the operating table after a road traffic accident—I came home feeling tearful. The cat’s owners, including five-year-old twin girls, had been waiting for news in the waiting room. I hadn’t had to break the bad news to them myself, but I had witnessed their heartbreak, and it had cut me to the quick.
When I got home and realised Mark had a few friends round, I tried to sneak upstairs without anybody seeing me. But Sylvia’s distress radar was fully active, and after I’d told her what was wrong and received a sympathetic hug, I was urged to join everyone in the kitchen for pizza. Everyone sympathised with me, and Smithy tried to distract me with talk of a trip he was planning on taking to Belize in the summer.
“There’s a coral reef, so we’re hoping to do some snorkelling. And we’re going on a boat trip to try to see a manatee.”
“What’s a manatee?” I asked, never having heard of one.
“It’s a sort of sea cow,” he said. “They have flippers and a flat tail. They’ve become quite rare now, but I really hope we see one.”
“It sounds like a wonderful trip.”
“Why don’t you see if there are any places left, if you like the sound of it?” Smithy surprised me by saying. “Mind you, it’s quite expensive. I can only afford it because my parents gave me some money for my twenty-first birthday to top up my savings.”
Money wasn’t really an issue for me. At the age of eighteen, I’d inherited the money left to me by my parents, as well as some money from Aunt Tilda. I was going to use it to buy a flat in London, but it wouldn’t hurt to spend a bit of it for a holiday.
“What about the friend you’re going with? Won’t he mind if I tag along?”
“Kevin?” said Smithy. “He won’t mind.”