Chapter 7 #3
It could have been my sleep-deprived imagination, but I swore Anneka was clutching me more tightly than usual. Perhaps she was more jetlagged than she was letting on after all.
‘We’re lost,’ I said, my arms folded for warmth as much as for emphasis.
‘We are not lost,’ Anneka insisted. The fact that she happened to be saying the words while standing on tiptoes atop a boulder, trying to peek out over the thick canopy of bushes in search of signs of life, wasn’t helping her case.
For the last forty-five minutes or so, we’d been wandering around aimlessly, Mum so determined to find some ‘Kentucky coffeetree pods’ that her freegan Facebook group were obsessed with that we’d lost track of the official foraging tour.
In that time, the sun had also been swallowed up by ominous-looking clouds, my phone had run out of battery, Anneka’s phone still had no signal and Mum’s phone was so basic it didn’t even run Google Maps. It barely ran WhatsApp.
‘How would you summarise this situation, then?’ I asked Anneka, my mind not able to prevent visions of a rescue helicopter and the world’s most embarrassing press conference. In fairness, Mum and Anneka would probably welcome both those scenarios.
‘We have… momentarily lost our bearings. The last time I checked, we’re in a rectangular patch of man-made parkland in the middle of one of the world’s busiest cities. If we walk far enough in one direction we’re guaranteed to hit civilisation. Mum, are you okay?’
Mum was breathing heavily while crouched down, still looking for fake coffee beans.
‘Hmm? Yes, of course. As soon as I’ve found some pods, we’ll just walk continuously in one direction and see whereabouts in the city we end up. What an adventure!’
‘Adventure’. That word had done a huge amount of heavy lifting in the thirty years I’d been alive.
Like the time we’d driven to the New Forest to go camping but Mum forgot to pack the tent and had insisted we all sleep in the car instead: ‘adventure!’ Or when I’d switched secondary schools in Year 9 after a horrible group of girls had spent two years saying awful stuff about my family until I’d started to dread school so much I could barely step outside the house: ‘adventure!’ The mad dash to A&E one New Year’s Eve because Anneka had to have her stomach pumped after too much sambuca: ‘adventure!’
I took a shaky breath and crouched down on the ground a few metres away from Mum and began gently scraping away the top layer of dry leaves and twigs.
I had no idea what I was looking for, but figured that an extra pair of eyes looking for these damn pods would mean this ordeal would be over with sooner than if I descended into panic mode.
I was more exhausted than I’d ever been in my life.
I was also hungry – the calories of the McGriddle having been well and truly used up by what had fast become an ambitious winter hike without a map.
The temperature seemed to be plummeting by the minute.
And Mum was still shivering. Regardless of whether we were ‘lost’ according to the official dictionary definition, we needed to get indoors, stat.
After about ten minutes of haphazard searching, my fingers landed on what looked like a large mangetout pod that had been left in a cupboard for too long and turned brown. I held it up.
‘Mum?’ I called.
She scampered over – very nearly on all fours like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings when he’s hunting for fish. She took the pod from my palm and inspected it tenderly as if it were indeed Gollum’s precious ring.
‘Yes! You found one, Flo-wo! Where was it?’
I pointed to a shrub. ‘Just under there.’
She cleared away some more debris and found a whole pile of pods. ‘Result! Well done, love! Look, Anneka – we’ve hit the jackpot!’
Her obvious pride in my discovery made me feel stupidly warm inside. ‘Words of affirmation’ had never been Mum’s love language, although it was undoubtedly mine, so when I was on the receiving end of them from her it felt extra-special.
Anneka jumped down from the boulder and slapped me on the back. ‘Nice one, sis. I vote we find somewhere that sells hot food. Who’s in?’
My hand shot up, followed by Mum’s, which – for some reason – was now clutching a staff-like fallen branch.
‘Unanimous! Right, then, I saw steam rising from that direction.’ Anneka pointed to her right, which could have been north, south, east, west – or any of the directional denominations in between.
‘I guess it could have been smoke. Either way, it suggests signs of life might be closer than we thought.’
Mum shoved her collection of pods in her denim jacket pockets, raised her staff and pointed it in the same direction as Anneka’s outstretched arm and cried, ‘To the perimeter!’
Mum’s branch pounded the earth in time with each of her footsteps until we were marching as one.
An unexpected yet unmistakable feeling of happiness washed over me.
Our Central Park escapade had been a little adventurous and, for once, had produced the goods.
More importantly: refreshments, radiators and rest were finally within reach.