Page 20 of A Spell of Midlife Mayhem

‘We apologise profusely,’ the help desk clerk explained. ‘Luggage rarely goes astray. Of course, we will reunite you with it at the earliest convenience.’

Yeah, right. Your earliest convenience, you mean.

I wandered from the help desk and found a bustling airport café, where I bought a coffee and sat with my bag on my knees. Hordes of people rushed past in endless streams in all directions. How many millions of people live in London? A lot of them seemed to be in Heathrow Airport at the moment. And this was only one of the five terminals.

The humdrum of hundreds of people talking at once mixed with announcements over the loudspeaker. Dozens of scents wafted by in a kaleidoscope of smells, making my nose wrinkle as one replaced another.

My eyelids drooped. Thirty hours of travel with only snatches of light sleep on the plane wasn’t good for me. How on earth did the aircrew manage? I shrugged. Maybe they were used to it.

I sipped my coffee. With luck, it would help to keep me awake until I got to Aunt Ruth’s house. She was still in the hospital, but she had arranged for someone to be there to let me in. I appreciated that. Now I just had to get there.

This was the start of the next phase of my life. As tired as I was, my optimism hadn’t dimmed now that I’d left all my problems behind. Terry. A manipulating colleague. A crappy job. Money woes.

The nervous apprehension both scared and excited me.

Before all that, I needed rest. But first I had to get to Aunt Ruth’s house in Kingston upon Thames, in Surrey.

I pored over a colourful map I’d picked up of the subway—which they call the tube in London—but I couldn’t make sense of it. Kingston didn’t appear to be on it, anyway. I pulled out my phone. The charge was almost gone. It wasn’t any help. I’d forgotten to download offline maps before I left.

After finishing my drink, I made my way back to the airline help desk.

The clerk eyed me over his rimless glasses and fiddled with his dark red tie. ‘Your luggage hasn’t been located yet, madam, but we are working very hard to find it, I assure you.’

‘Okay. Can you tell me how to get to Kingston upon Thames by train, please? I can’t afford a taxi.’ I pointed to my aunt’s address on a piece of paper. ‘This is where I need to go.’

‘First time in London, is it?’

‘Yes.’

He looked up something on his computer and wrote a series of instructions for me before handing it over. ‘If you go by train, you’ll need to change. Lucky that you aren’t encumbered with bulky luggage.’ One corner of his lip curled upwards slightly. ‘Take the Piccadilly Line underground to Earl’s Court, change there and take the District Line south to Wimbledon, and change there for a mainline train to Kingston. You can buy a single ticket for the entire journey.’

That matched the instructions he’d written, but there was more. ‘What’s the “X26” written here?’

‘If you want to go by bus, that one goes directly to Kingston from here and takes an hour.’ He tilted his head. ‘You asked me about the trains, but this is the quicker route. About an hour.’

I thanked him and trudged off.

***

AUNT RUTH’S HOUSE WAS a ten-minute walk from where the bus stopped in Kingston. It wasn’t hard to find, but I gasped when I walked through the gate in the tall hedge and it came into view.

The house had to be the oldest dwelling I’d ever seen. It must have been around for centuries, at least two or three. The wood was weathered and grey. Large bay windows upstairs and downstairs decorated the front of the house, but the shutters had long ago lost their colour. The roof was a patchwork of crooked and cracked slate tiles. It wore the pattern of a thousand storms, yet suggested that the next gale might blow them off.

The lawn and garden were well kept. Who was maintaining them since Aunt Ruth had her accident? A small pond lay at one edge of the garden with a sprinkling of pottery gnomes on its outer edge.

Something about the property, and not only the sloping roof, made it appear crooked. Yes! The far side was bent or warped several degrees from bottom to top. I guessed the floors wouldn’t be level inside. I’d read that was common in old English houses. Yet they somehow remained standing.

Of course, they didn’t have to deal with the terrible earthquakes we’d had in Christchurch. One of those would have turned this house into matchsticks.

I strode up the path and knocked on the front door.

A man in his late thirties or early forties opened it and grinned. He had a neat appearance, with tidy, light brown hair and a short, trim beard. He wore a loose buttoned shirt, tan trousers and slip-on shoes that could have been mistaken for slippers. But his casual appearance did nothing to hide his athletic body.

‘You must be Heather Nicholls, right?’ he asked.

I snapped my eyes up from his exposed muscled chest. ‘That’s me. And you are?’

‘I’m Raven. I’m a boarder with your aunt Ruth. Come on in and put your feet up. Do you want anything to eat or drink? Or do you want me to show you straight to your room so you can freshen up?’

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