The Backpacking Housewife. Janice Horton

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?