Escape

Camilla’s face was animated, her voice excited, her words tumbled out, it was as if she were a four year old. The excitement was palpable, a great release after two and a half years of living with a lump, of living a dull life dictated by my endless health problems and now she was going to be free. Before these tough thirty months, she’d had to do up this house pulled apart by a builder who’d fled with Covid. That lockdown’s trebling prices ate all our hard earned savings as we made this house habitable added more poignancy to her release. At last she could walk from all this.

I watched her plan her escape, plot her way across the map, discuss with her friend the minutiae of the journey. Both of them were enjoying every minute of this planning and I was delighted for them, particularly for Camilla. Poor thing, it is just what she needs. To get away, to not have to think about this pit we have been in, a pit we’ve tried so hard to make the most of, but which is testing us on so many levels.

And now she can walk from this house, drive across France, swim in the Med., relax, enjoy a holiday at last. With her best and oldest friend, her best woman at our wedding. What fun they’ll have for three weeks.

I feel nothing but delight. I’m too tired to consider going. We had a short break three hours drive from here and it did me in. The thought of travelling to France is exhausting. Not that the insurance is possible - it’d cost more per week than their trip. No, I’m best staying in this house we call our own now, the shops are two hundred metres down the road, my bed is cosy, the garden is enough. France can wait until I recover, if I ever do.