In which I reach the end of the road
CANDID, CONFESSIONAL, CONTROVERSIAL
I set off at 5am. Not unusual for workaholic me. I have left the collies with Nic, and am driving to Exmoor. A distance of 530km.
I can feel Gracie’s presence on my back seat, so I’m not alone. She rode pillion for 15 years, as she could never be left on her own: far too chewy. Her pointy-nosed presence is tangible, as though there is a two-bar electric fire in the back. I drove the very same journey, only in reverse, in 2012: five cats in the front, four collies in the back, several sheep and five horses in a box. I’d sold my farm (50 acres! Dear god, I now inhabit a postage stamp) to buy my sister a cottage. I didn’t quite have the £275k asking price but, as luck would have it, I had not long driven through a flood, writing off my BMW, and the insurance money covered the last few grand of the deposit. The Yorkshire Dales was a new start, though I had to rent for a year (£200,000!) as I wasn’t allowed to have two mortgages just then. It was a gamble that I’d be able to earn enough. One I ultimately lost.
I am driving to see my one remaining sister, whom I presume still lives in the cottage, though I really have no idea. When I was made bankrupt, it was signed over to her, though I was denied details. I tried emailing, got no response. I texted her son, was ghosted. It’s not that I want closure, or to be back in touch. We’ve not spoken since I invited her to stay in a Georgian Airbnb
I’d rented for our niece’s wedding in Edinburgh in 2017 and was curtly told she wasn’t coming. But I’m puzzled. Why no funeral details for the sister in Australia who died just before Christmas? What exactly have I done wrong, other than empty my bank account?
It’s still dark, and before I join the A1, I pause at a roundabout to swill coffee. I creep on to the motorway. I used to be a confident driver. But after everything that happened, now suffering from complex PTSD, even the simplest task for me is filled with doom.
After a few minutes, I realise a police car is behind me, flashing its lights. They must think I’m Rachel, driving Ross’s Porsche. I pull over. Two policemen get out of their car. I wind down a window. ‘Can you step out of the vehicle?’ I do as I am told. ‘We noticed you stopped for a long time at the roundabout, and you have been driving very slowly.’
‘I stopped to sip coffee. I’m driving slowly as I’m nervous.’
‘Have you been drinking?’
Me: ‘It’s 5.30 in the morning!’ They tell me I have to take a Breathalyser test. Oh Jesus Christ. This will be all over The Sun tomorrow morning. I had a glass of wine last night and went to bed at 10pm. But I have a very low BMI. Does that make it worse?
Luckily, I pass, and they tell me to go on my way.
The only method I have been using to cheer myself up over the past few years has been to think, well, at least I’m not dead, like my contemporaries Prince and Michael Jackson. Two of my sisters, the nice ones, are dead. It isn’t, I realise now, a very high bar. When I lived with this Somerset sister, in my farmhouse – though you wouldn’t think it given the draconian rules she imposed (‘Liz put the cat fork in the WRONG SINK!’) – the only way I coped was to hide a bottle of white wine in my bedroom wardrobe. I would sup from it secretly to blot out the terrible hole I had dug for myself using largesse as a shovel.
I wonder if it’s genetic, this alcohol thing. Both my sisters’ deaths were hurried along by it. I still have nightmares every night about what happened. In my dreams we are back, living together. I think my current extreme level of OCD was caused by her rages. After a bath, I have to scrub it clean, then completely fill it with cold water to wash away any residue. I boil tea towels. I line my fridge with paper towels. If anyone wearing shoes threatens to enter, I summon an exorcist.
It’s ruined my life, this mania for order, the hospital corners. I remember every spring, instead of joy at birdsong, my sister would power wash every terracotta pot in the garden.
I get as far as Wetherby service station and, shaking, turn my car around.
I realise a police car is behind me, flashing its lights. I pull over