Page 19 of Jenny James Is Not a Disaster
Luke flicks a switch on a small control panel by the door and says: “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Motorhome showers are not luxurious experiences. Help yourself to a cuppa; there are biscuits around somewhere as well... Coffee for me, black, no sugar!”
I nod and take the few steps over toward the kitchen area. Farther off to the other side is another door, which I assume isfor a bedroom, and next to it is the one Luke goes into, bowing his head slightly to fit.
I soon hear the sound of a shower and pause, kettle in hand. This is the closest I’ve been to a naked man for a very long time—Charlie doesn’t count, obviously. I find my mind wandering a little, imagining Luke there, water cascading over his broad shoulders. I blush ferociously and shake myself out of it—inappropriate to the max. I feel like I’m taking advantage of him somehow, even if it’s just mentally.
I make a lot of noise looking in cupboards, extricating mugs, opening the little fridge door, humming tunelessly as I do it. I am trying to drown out both the sound of the shower and my own thoughts. As soon as I’ve made the drinks, I head outside. I need some fresh air, and possibly to sign up to a dating app.
I mean, I’ve seen other people since Rob left—but nothing that ever amounted to anything. I was too busy, too wrapped up in Charlie, too distrustful, if I’m honest. Every time I met someone, I’d immediately start imagining how it would end before it even began and ultimately never got past a second date. The collateral damage never seemed worth the risk—I didn’t want to introduce any potential disruption into our lives. I could hide behind my son here and say it was all for him—but it was also for me. I’ve never felt quite robust enough to put myself in a position where I could be hurt again. Now, I have to accept, Charlie is grown up. He will be heading off to start the next phase of his life shortly, and I will no longer be able to use him as a human shield. I am only thirty-six—other women are having their first child at my age, never mind behaving like an old maid. I barely know Luke, and I’ve already imagined him naked—maybe my body is telling me something.
I decide my body is stupid and that I won’t listen to it, at least not right now. I settle down on the steps of the motorhome, Betty at my feet, and sip my coffee. It is bright and sunny today, but not quite as skin-meltingly hot, and it is pleasant to sit out, looking across the fields to the sea beyond. I block out the ugly bit in between, the outlines of the dumpster and the tarp—I need to focus on the future, not get sucked into a black hole of what might have been. My old life is gone, and I need to accept that.
That would be a neat trick if I could pull it off, but, of course, I can’t completely manage it. I keep picturing my strawberry plants, mashed and battered, and the pretty terra-cotta pots full of begonias. They are small things, tiny fractions of what I have lost, but somehow they seem to symbolize it all: the comfort and the calm and the sense of nurture that I felt in my old home have been snatched away from me, and I feel stripped bare. I need to move forward, to make a plan, to embrace change, to have faith in my own abilities—I have done tougher things than this before. But still—I miss my garden. I hate the thought of the living things I’d grown and cared for being destroyed.
I am surprised out of my reverie by a noise to my left. I look along, and a chair emerges from the side of the motorhome. It is surreal, seeing its folded-up legs emerge, like a Salvador Dali painting.
“Here you go!” shouts Luke. “Grab this!”
I do as he says and take the camping chair in my hands. I stare inside and realize that one of the cupboards in there opens up so you can pass things through the side of the van. Ingenious. Is there no end to the mind-boggling efficiency of these crazy inventions?
I set up the chair, and Luke joins me. His hair is glistening, and his white T-shirt is clinging to him where he is still damp. He smells fresh and citrusy.
“So,” he says once we are settled, “how can I help? You said you wanted to pick my brains about something? I hope it’s not something too hard, or the pickings will be mighty slim...”
“Yes. Right. Well, I’m getting laid off, or moving to Kidderminster, not sure yet, but I’m leaning toward the first.”
His eyes widen in surprise, but he takes a sip of his drink before he replies.
“You’ve not had the best of weeks, have you?” he eventually says, shaking his head sadly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be too nice to me,” I say quickly, “or I might cry. And no, not the best of weeks—but, in all honesty, probably not the worst, either. Anyway, I am adopting ‘onward and upward’ as my new life motto...”
“You have a life motto?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“No. What was your old one?”
“Um... okay, I was lying. I didn’t have one before, and if I did, it’d probably be something like ‘duck and cover.’ But ‘onward and upward’ feels better for now. So, as you may have noticed, my home recently fell off a cliff. I am living in a hotel with free Wi-Fi. I have no job and nowhere else to move to. Charlie is off to uni this year, and everything feels very up in the air. Which, now I come to think of it, could also be my life motto, but it doesn’t feel as positive...”
He listens and nods, seeming to understand my need to ramble at this stage.
“So. I don’t have much money, but I’ll be getting a redundancy payment. It won’t be enough to buy a house, and until I get a new job, I wouldn’t be able to do anything grown-up like get a mortgage or probably even rent somewhere nice or whatever. Anyway, I was thinking about you, and this place, and the wayyou live, and wondering if it could work for me as well. I was wondering if I could use the money to buy something like this.”
“Okay. Well, what kind of money are we talking here?” I am oddly relieved that he isn’t laughing in my face and telling me I’m stupid but appears to be taking me seriously. I fill him in on how much money I might have to spend, and he frowns, gazing off into the distance for a few moments.
“Well, that wouldn’t be enough to buy one of these. In the motorhome world, this is the big bad beast—it sleeps six, has all mod cons, pretty much top of the range. It wasn’t cheap.”
“Oh...,” I murmur, feeling the disappointment settle over me. It’s like all my hope has been smothered by a blanket of reality. It was undoubtedly a stupid idea anyway. I have a never-ending supply of those.
“But,” he continues, seeing my expression, “you could probably get a smaller one, an older model. People trade up all the time; there are always motorhomes for sale. It just wouldn’t be a deluxe version. It all depends on how many compromises you’re willing to make, and how much space you could live in. It’d be you and Charlie, right?”
“At least to start with. Then maybe just me. I don’t really know. Charlie will be going off to uni, and I always knew things would change—but this has accelerated everything. Maybe I’m just looking for something different. For some kind of sign of how the rest of my life will look.”
“And you think it might look... mobile?”
“I don’t know! I mean, I expected the empty nest thing—it’s just that now I don’t even have the nest. Which sort of leaves me with just ‘empty,’ which isn’t a nice feeling. You seem so content, and... well, I haven’t thought it through properly, and I am beginning to suspect I was clutching at straws... I just don’tlike the idea of renting another place, which won’t be as nice as the one we had, and getting another boring job. I’ve done a boring job for years, and it allowed me to support Charlie and give us some security, and it was fine. But the prospect of doing it all over again just makes me feel...”
“Trapped? Stuck? Cornered?”
