Chapter 1
MARTHA
I poured water into each of the house plants that lined my kitchen windowsill and glanced down to the street below.
I ran a cloth across my perfectly clean worktop and looked at my watch.
I opened and closed the door of my empty dishwasher then picked my phone up to check for non-existent messages.
Erin was late and I was getting twitchy.
It would take my granddaughter fifteen minutes to walk to my flat in Shoreditch from the station and Erin had already messaged to say which train she was on. She was officially ten minutes late now.
I walked over to the large window behind my dining room table, the one that had swung the sale of this flat.
The amount of light that came through the floor-to-ceiling window made apartment living so much more palatable.
I just hadn’t been sure when I was viewing it ten years ago, but now it was as much home as any of the houses I had lived in during my life.
It helped that the walls were lined with my beloved books and ornaments, my plants and pieces of art.
There was a space above the oak sideboard where I hung family photos but recently, I had begun to wonder if it was becoming a bit of a shrine to my daughter, Clare.
Erin once told me that the colourful cushions and throws on my sofas and the huge boho, patchwork rug that took up most of the living room floor, gave me an air of the unconventional, but she looked bemused as she’d said it, as if she couldn’t quite place her slightly staid grandmother in that arena.
‘It’s not a film set,’ I had said indignantly. ‘I did choose and buy all of this, you know.’
I glanced out to see if Erin had walked around the back of the property, past the shops, and that was when I heard the buzz of the intercom.
‘It’s me, Nana,’ Erin said when I answered and I released a long breath as I let my granddaughter in.
The reason for the delay, it turned out, had been a bouquet of flowers that Erin had stopped to buy, and I spent a while arranging them in a vase as she told me all about the shipment of hand-painted compact mirrors that had arrived that morning.
Her tone was as flat as my interest and to my shame, I sighed.
I’d had much higher hopes for my granddaughter than the giftshop she worked in.
Yes, it was in the pretty town of Henley where she lived but it couldn’t possibly fulfil her, could it?
Erin chose easy options and didn’t push herself.
Of course, I wouldn’t say this to her. The very last thing I wanted to do was to alienate myself from my only and much-beloved grandchild.
And since we had lost Clare – Erin’s mother – just fourteen months ago, I bent myself backwards to say and do the right thing.
Erin was carrying a world of pain; she just didn’t recognise it yet.
‘Oh, you have post,’ Erin said, handing over a large envelope from her bag. Erin always checked my post-box in the hallway before she came up.
The letter, when I slid it out, was like a sharp slap across the face. My eyes moved over the words from the recognisable logo at the top of the page to the personal message written to me below.
‘My goodness,’ I said when I finished reading and sat down heavily on one of my dining chairs. ‘That’s a huge blast from my past.’
‘What is it?’ Erin asked me in almost a whisper. ‘Not bad news?’
‘No, darling,’ I said, quickly gathering myself together. ‘Not bad at all, just an incredibly unexpected invitation.’
I handed the letter to Erin and walked over to the kitchen to put the kettle on, although this sort of bombshell surely required something much stronger than Earl Grey.
Erin began reading out loud and I retraced my steps to listen.
‘“Dear Martha, we hope this letter finds you well.”
‘I hate that opening,’ Erin said, interrupting herself. ‘I always want to respond with a no, actually, it finds me pissed off and utterly miserable.’
She stopped to glance at me, shrugged and continued.
‘“It’s been fifty years since you raced in our inaugural Trip of a Lifetime? TV show.
A lot has happened during that half-century and we at Arcade TV have moved with those times, bringing cutting edge television shows to our audience.
You may be aware that after a hiatus during the eighties and nineties, we were back with a similar format in the early noughties.
After another break we feel now is the time to resurrect the Trip of a Lifetime? and what could be more perfect than to have all of the original contestants race again for the half-century special series.
‘“We are well aware that you all have fifty years on your younger selves and while we are sure you must be very fit and healthy – we certainly hope so – we propose you race with a friend, a family member or companion.
‘“What do you say, Martha? Are you with us?
‘“So far we have managed to track down three of you five originals but we will endeavour to have a full house before filming begins in May.
‘“You will find a passcode at the bottom of this letter and if you go to the website listed, you can use it to access the original recording of your Trip of a Lifetime? from our archives.
‘“If it helps to sway your decision, we would like to tell you that the prize money reflects that half-century and is ￡50,000 for the first contestants over the finish line.
‘“We so look forward to hearing from you, Martha.
‘“With very best wishes, Sharon Sawyer, Executive Producer, Arcade TV.”’
Erin looked down at me, her eyes wide, a look of disbelief on her face.
‘Are you going to do it, Nana?’ she asked me.
‘No, of course I’m not,’ I said quickly – perhaps a little too quickly.
‘Why not? You should. It’s fifty grand!’
‘That first race was… well, it was a lot. I’m not sure I would want to put myself through that again. I’m seventy years old now. I was only twenty when I raced before.’
‘You never really told me about it. I mean, I know you were in that first race but I’ve never seen the original. You didn’t win it, did you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I did pretty well for a while, but another contestant tripped me up on the last leg.’
‘What, literally?’
‘No, he… Harrison… well, he tricked me and I missed the train.’
‘What a bastard,’ she said, and I smiled at her solidarity.
‘Quite.’
I hadn’t thought about this in a while. It always left a sour taste in my mouth. To think that Harrison could have done that to me after the wonderful time we had spent together… and this was exactly why I didn’t think about it. It made me feel a bit angry and hurt – probably most of all, hurt.
I got back up to make the tea and left Erin rereading the letter.
‘I really do think you should do it,’ she said. ‘You’ve always been so daring; I admire that. You put me to shame with your endeavours: doing the three-peak challenge, wild swimming, that time you got that group at work to run the half-marathon.’
She sighed as I handed her the mug. These were all things I’d done years ago, mostly while I was still working at the building society.
We both knew that I had limited my world over the last couple of years.
This flat, my local shops and one book group once a month were my challenges now.
Not really challenges at all. I had arthritis in my knee and used that as the perfect excuse to be comfortable at home.
‘Hamish says I’m not adventurous at all,’ Erin said despondently.
Hamish, the boyfriend that I wasn’t at all keen on. So, that sigh wasn’t directed at me then; it was at herself.
‘I wouldn’t believe everything that man has to say.’
‘Why? Do you think I’m adventurous?’ she asked, and I nearly laughed.
Erin played it safe, all the time. To be fair to her, she had always been a cautious child and completely opposite to her fear-loving mother.
Clare had been the adventurous one in the family.
Her father always said, If she could have been born on a unicycle, she would have, which made me wince at the very thought, but he wasn’t wrong.
That girl came out cartwheeling and didn’t stop until her cancer diagnosis forty-three years later.
Motherhood had made me careful but Clare’s spirited call to arms in every aspect of her life eventually rubbed off on me and I began to live a little less vigilantly. I became that twenty-year-old girl again for a while, the one that said yes to the trip of a lifetime.
Erin was born when Clare was only eighteen but she embraced motherhood in the same way she embraced every other aspect of her life. She considered being a young mother as an opportunity, certainly when Erin was a young child, perhaps less so as she got older and reached her teens.
I wanted to be a grandmother Erin could be proud of and I think I have been.
But even I have to recognise I have given up a bit recently.
How can I scoff at Erin’s question when I’m not at all adventurous now.
I have limited my world and I wouldn’t admit it, but Erin’s lack of bravery sometimes comforts me a little. I wouldn’t want to lose her too.
‘I think you are very careful,’ I said. ‘And there is nothing wrong with that.’
She looked at me doubtfully and I felt a tug of shame. I should be encouraging Erin, not wrapping her in a safety net. Clare would be appalled.
‘Well,’ she said, placing the letter on the table, ‘I think you should, at least, go and watch the old series. I’m going to.’
She made a note of the passcode and the website on her phone and then drank her tea.