Don’t do it. Don’t let her see you break.
‘I’m worried about you; you are having a good time, aren’t you?’
She forced back the tears.
‘I think it’s going to take me some time to adjust, that’s all.’
‘And you know what the good thing about that is?’
‘What?’
‘If anyone can adapt to difficult situations, it’s you. Nobody deals with that stuff better than Olivia Jackson.’ Kate punched the air in triumph.
‘Yeah … maybe.’
Olivia wrangled her self-pity back in the box where it lived and tried her best to muster a convincing smile. ‘Anyway, I have loads to see and do tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll be too distracted by all the wonderful tourist attractions to feel homesick.’
‘You’ll be what t-t-tomo-rr-ow?’ Kate’s voice began to cut out again.
‘Distracted,’ Olivia repeated loudly.
‘W-w-hat?’ The screen jarred once more. ‘You’ve f-fro-fr-frozen.’
‘For God’s sake. This stupid room.’ Olivia sprang up from the bed and began to wave the phone optimistically in the air. ‘Can you hear me now?’
‘O-liv-ia.’ Kate’s voice was getting harder and harder to understand. ‘I-t’s t-too crack-crackly.’
All at once, the screen went black and the call disconnected.
‘I hate this. Ihatethis.’
Olivia threw herself on top of her bed and closed her eyes. She’d only been in the country for a day and already she felt exhausted.
Probably because you haven’t eaten since the plane.
Right on cue, her stomach gave an almighty growl. She peered down at her scraped legs and grazed hands; there was no way she was going to risk venturing outside to find food. It was a bloody deathtrap out there, and she’d muchrather stay cooped up in her miserable hotel room than put herself at the mercy of the Delhi nightlife.
‘In that case …’ She began rifling through her bag and pulled out three squashed granola bars. ‘Emergency cereal bars it is!’
She took a bite and felt the dry grains stick to the roof of her mouth. She was a world away from her old life; her, usually, clean, organized flat with its fridge full of nutritious, safe food and Brita filtered water.
‘Tomorrow is another day’ – she held her crumbling bar aloft – ‘and hopefully a much better one.’
Olivia
As it turned out, two hours’ sleep and two cereal bars for dinner did nothing to help Olivia’s mood the next day. When it wasn’t the pack of dogs howling outside her window keeping her awake, it was the continuous spluttering from her air conditioning unit. That, along with the jetlag, the relentless honking of horns and the revving of car engines, had made for a very restless night. When her alarm sounded that morning, the urge to bury her head into the pillow and ignore the rest of the world was strong. However, the list of things she had to do that day was reason enough for her to drag herself up and into the basic excuse of a bathroom. Plus, the less time spent between those bed sheets, the better for her and her open wounds.
A measly dribble of a shower and a shoddy granola bar breakfast later, Olivia found herself at her first tourist stop of the day, the Red Fort. A gigantic, rust-coloured structure, it housed multiple different and equally incredible buildings in its grounds. If one had the luxury of time, the entire site could easily take the full day to absorb, but Olivia had two hours at best to make the most of it. She raced around,snapping pictures on her phone of every possible thing she thought Kate would want to see, barely pausing to take in the views herself before moving on to the next. For some reason, despite it only being mid-morning, the heat felt stronger than it did yesterday. The sun’s fiery gaze seemed to sap her of any ounce of energy her diet of cereal bars may have afforded her, so that by the time she had finished her whistle-stop tour, she felt exhausted.
‘Miss!’ a frenetic man called to her, as she walked down the street in search of an available tuk-tuk. ‘It’s too hot to walk around – come in the shade and have a nice, cool drink, huh? Maybe some food?’ He gestured vigorously towards the inside of his crowded-looking restaurant.
The prospect of a cold Coca-Cola and a big plate of delicious food was tempting. But as Olivia’s stomach groaned in longing, she had to remind herself that temporary hunger was better than food poisoning from a dodgy masala any day of the week.
‘No, thank you, I’m just looking for a tuk-tuk.’
‘Where do you want to go?’ the man continued. ‘With this traffic, most places are quicker to walk to.’
Olivia eyed him with suspicion. Back home, it was rare you got a look of acknowledgement from people you passed in the street, let alone friendly help and support. Here, however, it seemed commonplace; it was a sentiment Olivia was still trying to get used to.
