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  Chapter 3 – Susan -Holiday Alone – Day 1

  She pushed back into her airline seat and stretched. There was something delightful in finally being airborne and on her way. She felt like a kitten, unwinding her body into the warm sunshine, after having drunk a bowl of warm milk. The gin and tonics in the departure lounge were also helping to create this euphoric feeling.

  Now she felt like she was really on a holiday and going to a fantastic, exciting, unknown new place—all by herself. There was something about doing it all on her own that was especially important to Susan. It was like a growing up ritual. But why was she thinking about growing up? She was twenty-four and had not lived at home, until recently, in more than two years.

  Anne, Susan’s best friend, had offered to juggle her own holidays and come along too, but she knew that Anne already had her heart set on going to Greece with her boyfriend, James. Susan had insisted that Anne not change her plans. She wanted to do this trip by herself.

  For four years it was as if Susan’s life had been taken over by Edward, her former boyfriend. They’d met in first year university; they had done history and archaeology together. They had just clicked; he the languid, tousled blond man with the slightly posh accent—as if he had gone to Eton; and she, the well read and exuberant daughter of professional working parents.

  Edward’s father was a stockbroker in financial London and he had followed his family’s business flair with an Arts-Commerce Degree, focused on Commerce, with some psychology, history and archaeology thrown in.

  Susan had studied Science, focusing on medical technology, but with an Arts anthropology and archaeology sideline. It was something to do with her fascination with early human history and civilisations and the way these societies had adapted to diseases and environmental catastrophes. She remembered, as a child, being fascinated by the Attenborough-Leakey stories of ‘Out of Africa’ and how the early humans moved across and colonised the world.

  Really, she would have loved to go to Africa, perhaps Kenya or South Africa. But she had decided, with the stories of crime and violence, this was a step too far for a single woman’s first solo trip abroad. She didn’t want to give her Mum and Dad that sort of worry.

  So Susan had turned to Australia, a country that held an almost equal fascination for her. The strange animals, the 50,000 years of aboriginal history, plus the Barrier Reef, diving, rainforests, and all those fabulous New Years pictures of Sydney Harbour Bridge, alive with fireworks.

  And she knew it was a safe place to go. The people all spoke English—they had mostly come from her home country—and she liked the laid back laconic humour of the Aussies who frequented London pubs. It felt right. Sure there was the occasional story of backpacker murders and things like that. But she knew she was too smart for getting suckered like that.

  Susan let her mind drift back to the last few months: she and Edward, living together, in their small north London flat, half an hour from her work. After university it seemed like the right thing to do, so they just did it. While they never really talked about it, it seemed like their life would go on linked together—in due course marriage, children and a settled life.

  She had thought she loved that image, but then, deep inside, there had always been a slight restless streak in her. Perhaps it was that Edward was a bit of a snob. He didn’t like it when friends called him Ted or Eddie. Also, while he was very attractive, she did not think he was very manly. Edward was quick-witted with clever words. He was smart around money, with impeccable taste. But he was not very adventurous, not wanting to experience life beyond the normal bounds. At first it really did feel good together; nights in pubs, dinners with good wine and food, talk of success in their investments, trips to Europe and enjoying the good things of London. And their sex life had been great for the first year they lived together, lots of it and wild.

  But then, as they each started to forge their careers—she as a medical technologist in a large hospital and then in a commercial testing lab; and he as a rising business man who looked likely to follow his father’s stockbroking career—they seemed to drift apart. They were often both working late, and while there was still sex, plenty of it, there was less real tender lovemaking. And there were the growing niggles that came from friends and families with different interests. However, she hadn’t thought there was a major problem.

  One day Susan noticed a slip of paper lying on the bedroom floor. It seemed to have fallen out of his wallet. On it was written “Eva” and a mobile phone number. It was not a name he had ever mentioned before. It seemed a bit odd. There were also times when there seemed to be a strange perfume smell about him. But he worked in an office with lots of women, so she supposed that was to be expected.

  What really pissed her off though was that he was such a good liar. She had asked him the next day who Eva was. Without batting an eyelid he told her a story about a girl in another group who he had worked with on a couple business deals, how he had needed her number to hand in their final stage negotiations. It all sounded totally innocent.

  But then Susan met the real Eva. She was lying on her back, in their double bed, with Edward’s naked body on top of her, moaning as Edward said her name in passionate grunts.

  Susan had stood, open mouthed, too stunned to say anything. Then, finally, Eva’s eyes turned her way and she gave a little scream. There were no introductions but the identity was obvious.

  Edward had climbed off her, silent, looking almost proud of his erect member. Eva at least had the good grace to look embarrassed, trying to cover her blond bimbo dolly face and small, full-breasted body. After a few seconds of stunned silence, Susan turned, closed the door and walked out of the flat.

  That was the last time she had seen him. The next day, when Susan knew he was at work, she went to the flat and collected all her things. She left a one-line note on the table, “Don’t ever come near me again.”

  Then she went to the bank, closed their joint account and cancelled their combined credit cards. She bought a new mobile phone, with a new number, and changed all her web logins and passwords. That was that; life together finished.

  Susan hadn’t gone into details with her parents; she’d just said that they’d split up. Her parents accepted her back with a minimum of fuss. She took her old room, which was now the spare. She found all her old soft toys in the cupboard and re-installed them in their favourite places—best of all was her big soft teddy who, from her earliest memory, sat on her pillow. When Susan had left home she’d forgotten and neglected him; now he seemed to give her a genuine welcome home each day.

  Mum and Dad were busy with their own lives. Mum was a senior lecturer in the medical school at Reading University, where her brother, Tim, was a student. Her Dad was a top level public servant to the government, in No 10, with a daily city trip on the fast train to Paddington, or sometimes, for big occasions, a chauffeur. However, despite his high role, he preferred ordinary things: a train to work, a beer at the pub, and the great outdoors.

  Some of her best childhood memories were going hunting or fishing with him in Scotland where her cousins lived on a farm in the Highlands. They would make a summer trip for a couple weeks, as well as going at other odd times throughout the year.

  Her father particularly loved to take her with him in the autumn, when the leaves were golden. They would head off, his gun in hand, hunting pheasants, grouse, rabbits and sometimes deer.

  They would walk for miles across the high heather, plunging into glens, dark and mysterious. Sometimes they made a big fire out of turf and almost-dry branches, which smoked then burned brightly, while they roasted rabbit and ate it with their hands.

  These were warm memories. Now he was like a rock; he didn’t say much, but was in her corner. With Mum and Tim she would talk about ordinary life, but Dad was just there.

  Edward made a few attempts to contact her, but Susan told her parents she wouldn’t take his calls and that she didn’t want to see him.
r />   One day Edward came to the door with a bunch of roses.

  She heard her father say, “Lad, are you a bit thick? Can’t you tell she doesn’t want to see you?”

  Some smart arsed reply came back.

  Then, “If you come again I will wipe that smile of yer pretty boy face.”

  After Dad had closed the door, Susan hugged him fiercely. His normal mild manner was creased in a scowl and he muttered, “Fucking wanker. Good riddance,” before he returned the hug. She knew then that he had never really thought that Edward deserved her, but had refrained from saying so.

  After this she got one letter from Edward. She burned it, unopened, and that was that. So much for a relationship that had consumed over four years of her life.

  With Edward gone, her life felt very hollowed out, but she buried herself in her work and gradually started to re-connect with old friends. Three months after the break-up, Susan was looking at a couple mags, one with pictures of an African safari and one with sparkling photos of the Great Barrier Reef.

  That was it, that night after several hours of Googling she had plans made. Next day she booked her holidays and flights. Now, a further three months on, she was on her way, four glorious weeks in Australia: first the reef, then Sydney, and lastly the outback.

  Susan felt, deep down, that this was something she had waited to do all her life and, that when she came back, she would have really grown up and have left those bad memories behind.

  The one thing that she had really missed in the last few months though was sex. Susan felt like she wanted to meet a real man. Perhaps she would meet an Aussie bloke, someone rough and tough from the outback and this part of her would come alive again.

  She stretched out again, ran her hands through her thick black hair, feeling herself purring like a kitten, all warm inside at the thought.