nod my agreement as she rings up my purchases and I hand over my bank card.
‘We’re still short staffed, if you want your old job back, it’s yours!’ she said, while bagging my new-to-me things and putting me right on the spot with her immediate job offer.
I panicked a little and shrugged. ‘Oh, erm—I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’
‘Sally doesn’t work here anymore. Just in case you were wondering. None of us liked what she did to you. Taking your husband. Moving into your house. If that helps?’
‘Maybe—’ I said, feeling a little flustered and trying to think of what to say in response and failing miserably. My jet lag was suddenly making me dizzy and giving me a headache.
‘Let me think about it and I’ll call you. Thanks, Taryn.’
I walked away not feeling as pleased as I might but feeling slightly horrified.
How easy it might be to slip straight back into my old life here?
Not all of it. Not back to being a housewife or a best friend. But the rest of it.
In many ways, being back here so abruptly, it feels like the past year has only been a dream.
That heading straight for the airport and arriving in Bangkok, then exploring Thailand, island hopping down the Andaman Sea all the way down to Malaysia; then having to convince Josh and Lucas – after they’d flown all the way out to Kuala Lumpur to bring me back – that I was still relatively sane and wanted to continue to travel, had only happened in my imagination.
But it did happen and because of it I knew I wasn’t the same person anymore.
I wasn’t Lorraine Anderson, housewife. I’d become someone else entirely.
I was now Lori Anderson, a world explorer.
I’d crossed continents and sailed the oceans and seen the most amazing things.
Yet nothing here in this town seemed to have changed at all.
And there was undoubtably something strange and disconcerting about that fact.
I thought back to yesterday, when I’d been on a beautiful Caribbean tropical island, swimming naked in an emerald green lagoon fed by a waterfall, with a tiny butterfly sitting on my hand. The symbolism hadn’t escaped me. In the same way that a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, I felt that I too, in travelling, had emerged from a cocoon and found my wings.
And then, of course, I’d met and fallen in love with Ethan.
At a time when I never thought I’d ever find love again.
Whom I’d left reeling and alone in Grand Cayman.
Who still deserved an answer to the question he’d asked me on the beach yesterday.
Had it really only been yesterday?
I woke the next morning with an anxious jolt and in surprise at finding myself back in my old bedroom at my mother’s house in London. I’d been dreaming about being onboard The Freedom of the Ocean and so that’s exactly where I’d expected to wake up – in our cabin and in our small bed – with Ethan beside me. The creaking sound I’d heard in my sleep wasn’t caused by the ropes and the sway of the boat as I’d thought but by a tree in my mum’s garden.
I’d woken expecting Ethan’s big warm body to be stretched out next to mine, his long and tanned legs in a tangle with the sheet that had covered us in the chill of night. The sheet that would always end up discarded as soon as the sun had risen over the line of the horizon, sending pale pink shimmers of light through the small porthole above our heads followed by an intense yellow blinding light that quickly heated up our little cabin, until we lay splayed out and soaked with perspiration in our nakedness.
Then in our drowsy state, we would reach out to each other without opening our heavy-eyes and we would rouse each other with a tender touch, a sweeping finger, a tentative kiss from drowsy lips on hot sensitive skin. Then our breathing would quicken, and our tender touches would become something more urgent, and without a word uttered we would welcome this brand new day and greet each other, with a celebration of our lovemaking.
Realising I was quite alone and that the room was chilly and dark, I quickly grasped the reality of my new situation. My mind flitted over all that had happened over the last forty-eight hours. The island. Ethan’s brother. The news. The panic. The flight. Being back home.
I snuggled back under the duvet and sank into the warm comfortable mattress and let my head lay heavy on the soft pillow. A feeling of peace and relaxation and acceptance washed over me. I heaved a great sigh of relief that my mother’s heart attack had been a false alarm.
I found myself smiling until my smile became a ridiculously happy grin in knowing that my mum was perfectly all right and it was just a few weeks until Christmas and I was back here with my family. Just like I’d wanted. After all the pining and moping, and all the missing and the wishing that I’d done over the past few months, I really should be making the most of every precious minute with my family. I really should be making up for all the time I’d been away.
So, with a lightness of heart, I grabbed my phone from its charger on the bedside table to find that because I’d turned the sound down to sleep blissfully uninterrupted, I’d missed four calls from Ethan. On the last attempt, he’d left me a voice message, saying how relieved he was to hear that my mum was okay. He’d also said that he was missing me and that he still regretted not travelling back with me to the UK. I played the message twice over to listen to his deep and smooth and oh so sexy voice with his gorgeous Scottish lilt. I knew I could listen to him talk forever because his voice melted my heart and soothed my soul.
And I was missing him too. I was missing him so much that it hurt.
So much that my heart was heavy again and my thoughts conflicted and confused.
Arrrgghhhh! Was it even possible for me to ever feel completely contented with life?
What did Buddha say about contentment? That it is the ‘greatest wealth’.
I tried to call Ethan back but to my disappointment I got his automated answer again.
And that was the problem in having an entire ocean between us and being on two different time zones. I left him another message saying I’d just slept off my jet lag. That I was fine and I was looking forward to spending the day with my family. That I would try to call him again later if he didn’t call me first. And that I loved him.
Then I realised I could smell cooked bacon wafting upstairs from the kitchen.
Oh my goodness – I smell British bacon! Big fat rashers of lean and meaty goodness.
For a while now, I’ve been a vegetarian. It’s a personal choice but it’s one that fits in with my new beliefs and my life as a conservationist. I do feel passionately about animal welfare and greenhouse gas emissions and global warming and so not eating meat seems ethical to me.
In joining The Freedom of the Ocean, I had been correct in assuming that everyone else onboard would also be vegetarian. What I hadn’t expected, however, was that marine biologists generally don’t eat fish either and so are mostly vegan. I had happily and perhaps naively considered that living on ship, surrounded by water and therefore a bounty of seafood, would have meant me having to find a zillion different ways to serve fish for dinner.
It makes perfect sense to me now of course that people who protect and study fish don’t actually eat them. But I must admit (although certainly not publicly) that I love eating seafood.
So, I was quite gutted – pun intended – by the dietary restrictions and also in having to find a zillion different ways to serve tofu. Ethan, who like most men will happily eat anything he’s given on a plate, would if pressed