Chapter 20
20
KELLY CLARKSON EAT YOUR HEART OUT
Becca
‘I don’t think Niamh is going to the Fire Starter ceremony,’ Laura says, as I sit on the bed pulling on a pair of thick woollen socks.
She has been locked in the bathroom for the better part of forty-five minutes and it’s not long until we have to leave to make our way to the meeting house.
I’ve tried talking to her. I’ve tried apologising. I didn’t know that we were going to have to hand our phones over. It’s hardly ideal for me either. I’ve just called Adam, Saul and my mother to let them know I’ll be out of range for the next two days and they are not to worry if they don’t hear from me. I’ve given them all the phone number of the glamping site for use in an emergency, which I’ve had to stress to Saul does not include any minor electrical appliances going on the blink, or his requirement to be reminded of what he got from Santa in 2011.
I didn’t phone Conal. I don’t think we’re at the stage where I can presume he’d be worried about getting in touch with me and I don’t want to come across as super needy. Even though being super needy is a big part of who I am as a person. I popped him a quick text instead, telling him I’ll talk to him when I get back on Sunday. I added two kisses to the end. It seemed appropriate.
Laura has informed her nearest and dearest, and while she was initially a bit put out by the notion of handing over her phone, or ‘my precious’ as she refers to it, she is now embracing it wholeheartedly.
‘I think it’s actually a really good idea. We’ve all messed up our ability to concentrate and focus thanks to these mini-computers in our hands. Our foremothers didn’t have iPhones and they still made shit happen. It can’t be easy to unleash our inner goddesses while we’re wondering about the latest trend on TikTok,’ she says.
The bathroom door opens.
‘Fucking TikTok,’ Niamh says, walking back into the room. It’s obvious she’s been crying.
Immediately I stand up and move to give her a hug.
‘Don’t,’ she says, and it’s very much not in a ‘don’t hug me because I will just cry again’ way. It’s very much in a ‘if you touch me, I will cut you’ way. Niamh is in full-on scary Niamh mode. It’s not seen often, but when it arrives it is brutal and unforgiving.
I take a step back.
‘We’re just getting ready to go up to the meeting house,’ Laura says. I can hear the fear in her voice.
‘I’ve a headache. I’m not going,’ Niamh says as she walks to the bed and climbs in, fully clothed.
I suppose I could offer her a coffee, or some paracetamol, but I have a feeling the reply I get won’t be the nicest. So I stay quiet. I don’t remind her that this is my work and her actions might reflect badly on me. I know I’m already in the bad books.
‘I’m not handing my phone over,’ she says, petulantly, and pulls the duvet up over her head.
Laura and I look at each other, aware that things have definitely slipped into the Very Bad Place.
‘That’s okay,’ I say, worried I sound too chipper. Or not chipper enough. ‘Rest up. Enjoy the peace and quiet.’
There’s a muffled grunt of a response and I’m certainly not brave enough to push it any further, so I just finish getting ready in silence, as does Laura. Occasionally we look at each other, raising our eyebrows in a silent ‘do you think she’s okay?’ gesture. The truth is that neither of us really knows.
* * *
Walking to the meeting house with Laura, I try and pull myself out of the doldrums that now seem to hang over us.
‘She’d had quite a bit to drink,’ Laura says, trying to reassure me. ‘I think she probably just needs to sleep it off. And I can understand her not wanting to hand over her phone – not with Jodie being pregnant. She probably needs her mum more than ever now.’
‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘But she does have Paul and Adam to help her and it’s only two days.’
‘It’s not the same though. No shade to Adam, but he doesn’t know what it feels like to be pregnant. With the best will in the world, he can’t understand the clusterfuck of hormones running through her body right now.’
‘I suppose,’ I say, still feeling a little over-protective of Adam. ‘But still, the ceremony down on the beach would be the perfect way to clear her head.’
‘True, but I think it’s very clear she has made her mind up, Becs. So we just have to make the most of it, just us two. Let’s get our spirits lifted – this is your big chance! Your magazine feature! We’re going to embrace the ever-loving shit out of it!’ Laura has injected extra energy and enthusiasm into her voice – so much so that I can’t help but smile. She’s absolutely right, of course. This is my big chance and I can’t let Niamh’s sour mood, or anything else, stop me from embracing it fully.
What, I think, would sixteen-year-old Becki (with an i) think of what we are doing just now?
Would she think we are off our rockers or would she be impressed that on a random Friday night in January, we are sitting around a campfire on a beach marvelling at just how clear the night sky is, and how bright the stars?
Chances are she might think we’re boring. At her age, I held the belief that really living would come in the form of mad nights out – doing the things forbidden to me then. Really living would surely be throwing back drink after drink, dancing on tables and singing until my throat hurt. It would be walking home in my bare feet – my soles burning from hours in painfully high heels. It would be finding someone to snog before the lights came back up in the club and maybe exchanging phone numbers – for landlines, on scraps of paper.
At her age, I thought really living meant having to live big – to travel, to experience new cultures, to take risks, to experiment, to be a bit wild. I’ve spent a long time regretting that I never fulfilled that brief. Or certainly not enough of it to count. I bypassed my wild era for my sensible and settled era, and something deep inside me has felt disappointed by that. I didn’t so much at the time. At the time I probably felt annoyingly smug that while others were still out getting wrecked each weekend I was falling into a cosy, but ultimately unsatisfying, relationship with Simon. They were sharing houses with their mates and having parties at the weekend. I was sharing with Simon and having dinner parties with him, Laura and her then boyfriend – now husband – Aidan. Aidan and Simon were more joined at the hip than Laura and me, which caused its own share of problems when my marriage went south.
But still, I’d congratulated myself on getting on the property ladder early, avoiding the worst of the early twenties hangovers and having my personal life all sussed.
It was only when my twenties started to roll into my thirties – and I was under the cosh of motherhood and mortgage payments – that I started to wonder if I’d done the right thing after all.
Increasingly, I’ve been sure that when my time comes, I will look back on my life and, while I’ll never regret being there for my parents, and being a mother to my boys, I will wonder where I was in all that. Where was the me who did things for me and not for others? Who did things I really wanted rather than things I thought were sensible? Where was the wild child I was still sure existed on some tiny level inside me?
When that day comes, I’ve wondered if I’ll hear the voice of sixteen-year-old me outlining my crazy ambitions and I will realise I failed her. And myself.
Until I found the time capsule and the letter that girl wrote me – the letter that has given me a giant kick up the bum. It’s given me the courage to start trying to find that version of myself.
So sitting on this beach right now, surrounded by the noise of the waves rushing to shore, the chatter of female voices and a guitar being strummed as someone with an angelic voice sings a cover of ‘Stay (I Missed You)’ by Lisa Loeb, I get the tiniest flicker of a feeling that I haven’t failed me at all.
Closing my eyes, I breathe in all the sensations around me as they combine with the crackle and hiss of the bonfire.
I do what Peggy suggested at the start of this session and I focus on each of my senses in turn. I marvel at the contrast between the cold of the night air and the warmth of the fire. The taste of the rich, smooth hot chocolate. The gorgeous, heady smells of smoke and salt in the air. The twinkle of the stars against a midnight-blue sky, the red and orange of the flames licking at the darkness around us. All the sounds – the music and the laughter – and the rush of wind whipping around my face, and it all feels so very perfect.
I feel at peace, I realise, with a bit of a start. It’s been such a long time since I felt anything close to this that I almost don’t recognise it. It has been forever since my mind stopped racing and the conflicting voices in my head stopped talking over each other with their big to-do lists and their loud self-deprecation.
Closing my eyes, I start to sing along, as do many of the other women – each of us lost in a memory of the women we were when we first heard it. When life was so much simpler in many ways, but nowhere near as rich. It’s a huge deal that I’m singing. One that most of the women around me couldn’t possibly understand. I have not been gifted in that department and always felt too self-conscious to open my mouth to sing in front of others. Alone in my shower or my car is a different story, of course. I’m a one-woman Kelly Clarkson tribute act. But among these women, in this wonderful space, I find myself automatically comfortable enough to sing along too.
I feel Laura rest her head on my shoulder. I remember that Kitty loved this song so very much. She’d join in singing when we played it over and over again in her front room. Dropping a kiss on my friend’s head, I know I don’t need to say anything. I know we are both thinking of her incredible, strong and resilient mother.