Chapter 2
I slipped off my low-heeled sandals and took the young waitress’s hand, doing my best not to crush it with a death grip, as I made my way down the steps into the warm water and gently sloshed towards the table.
Wading through a hotel’s ankle-deep water feature was certainly not where I’d thought I’d be having dinner on my fiftieth birthday.
Then again, the past few decades had turned out very different from the plan I’d originally made for myself, so why should this be anything new?
‘Isn’t this great, Mum?’ Sasha said, laughing as she followed me into the water, panning her camera around as she did so.
Unlike me, my daughter didn’t have a fistful of maxi dress in her hand.
But unlike her, I didn’t have young, toned and tanned legs, hence the maxi dress rather than the mini.
Neither did I have her grace of a gazelle, or confidence of youth.
‘Here we are, ma’am.’ The young girl smiled and waited as we hopped up onto the bar chairs around our table. ‘Is this fine?’
‘Perfect, thanks.’
‘Here are the drinks menus. I will be back shortly with the food ones, or you can choose anything from the fresh grill here.’ She indicated a space to our right where several open-air barbecues were being attended to by a number of white-hatted chefs.
Before the waitress could turn away, and without consulting the drinks menu, Sasha placed our order. ‘We’ll have a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, please. It’s my mum’s…’ She wavered and caught my look. ‘…birthday!’ she finished, wisely, without the addition of a specific number.
‘Sasha,’ I said quietly.
‘You deserve it, Mum. No arguments.’
The waitress nodded with a wide smile and sloshed back off to fetch our order, the bottoms of her rolled-up uniform trousers catching the odd splash as she did so.
‘Isn’t this fun?’ Sasha asked, moving her toes back and forth in the water.
‘It’s certainly different,’ I replied.
When Sasha had seen the board earlier in the hotel advertising ‘Dinner on the Water’, she’d immediately said we had to do it.
I would have been happy, and felt more at ease, with the hotel’s actual restaurant but my daughter had always been one for trying new things, being spontaneous and doing her best to live life to the fullest. She reminded me of myself in that way.
At least, a version of me that had once existed a long time ago but was now little more than a hazy and faded memory.
These days, as demonstrated by my hesitancy in both the restaurant choice and the champagne, I erred more towards reservation and consideration in my decisions.
Part of that came with becoming a mum – something, although unplanned at that particular point in time – that I wouldn’t change for all the tea in Tesco’s.
The rest of it though? Who knew? But that other girl, the one who’d had all the plans, all the exciting adventures whizzing through her brain, the one who’d jump on the next train just to see where it went, she had faded into the distance when I’d boarded that plane home to England from Paris all those years ago.