‘I know.’ Mum smiles some more and then reaches over and squeezes my hand. ‘I’msopleased for you. Finally some good luck.’
‘Yes, but I…’ On top of the extremely short notice aspect and the lions, I’m now thinking about the specific plans I had for the next few days. I was supposed to be going to a party at Jenna and Pranav’s on New Year’s Eve. And after moving back here from Australia after Jed and I split up, and being lucky enough to land a one-academic-year maternity-cover teaching job, I was planning to do some extra lesson prep during the remainder of the school holidays so that this term will be a bit less hectic than last.
Mum shakes her head. ‘I know that you’re going to feel guilty about winning and as though you should give such an amazing prize to someone else, but honestly, youdeserveit.’
I can’t say anything about switching the dates. Mum’s too excited for me. I don’t want to upset her. Jenna and Pranav will understand.
‘It makes me very happy to think that you’ll be going on it in our place,’ Mum says. ‘A short and sweet trip. It will be spectacular. You know what your father was like. He didn’t like to go away for too long and leave his garden, but when he did, he liked to do an amazing trip.’
There is only one thing I can say.
‘I can’t wait,’ I tell her.
* * *
I’m so mind-blown by the whole ‘I’m going on a safari in four days’ time’ thing, and we’re so busy with Christmas Day and my adorable twin nephews’ excitement and keeping my mum occupied and not thinking too much about Dad, that it isn’t until after breakfast on Boxing Day that it suddenly occurs to me while Mum and I are out for a walk round the fields on the hills above our village, wellied-up because it’s been sleeting, that she hadtwosafari tickets and she didn’t want the admin of asking for a refund.
‘Is someone else going on the safari?’ I ask.
‘Yes. It’s a group of twelve people.’
I’m opening my mouth to ask who else won the raffle when she points to a frozen spider’s web and says, ‘Oh look. That’s so beautiful.’
And then we start talking about the delicate beauty of webs in general and then move on to silkworms, and I decide not to drag the conversation back to the raffle and the trip. Maybe Mum knows who won the other ticket, maybe she doesn’t, but it really doesn’t matter. Actually, if she knew that someone I knew had won it, she’d have mentioned it, so she can’t know. So it will be eleven strangers plus me, which will be a good thing. I’ve been making myself do new stuff following the divorce and it’s been good for me.
I’ll enjoy it.
2
DOMINIC
I’m struggling to believe my eyes.
Flavia James is sitting on a bench about ten metres away from me in the departure area of Heathrow Terminal Five eating sushi and reading something on her phone.
Given that the raffle in which I won this trip took place at her mum’s house, it would be quite a coincidence if she were here at the exact same time as me and not going to the exact same place.
I wind back to when my mother told me I’d won the prize.
I wasn’t particularly keen to accept it because it was incredibly short notice and I had other plans, both work and personal. Mumbeggedme to go because it was a trip that the recently bereaved Sofia James had been planning to go on with her late husband, and she’d donated it for the raffle in the expectation that whoever won it would be delighted. Mum was very worried that she’d be upset if we told her that I didn’t want to go.
I obviously didn’t want to upset Sofia and I do have some work flexibility, plus the New Year’s Eve party I was planning to go to in London was a big one and I’m sure I won’t be missed, so I called Sofia and thanked her profusely for donating the prize and told her that I was extremely excited to be going. And Iamexcited to be visiting South Africa: while my work and holidays have taken me around the world, I’ve never been to Cape Town before.
Flavia, though. I was not expecting to be doing the trip with her.
I’msurethat during our conversation my mother told me that the other person who’d won it was a distant cousin of someone in the village who’d been staying with them over Christmas. And Sofia didn’t mention anything about Flavia when we spoke.
I presume that the original winner couldn’t do it and that Flavia was free and fancied a safari.
Which feels very unfortunate. I have a very strong gut instinct that I don’t want to do this trip with her.
Rationally, though, I really don’t know why. There’s no good reason for me to have such a strong reaction to her presence. I have a lot of exes, and I can perfectly happily be in the same room as them (well, some of them). And she isn’t even an actual ex. We just had a one-night stand once.
To be fair, at the time it didn’tfeellike a one-night thing. It felt a lot bigger than that. It felt – to my young and naïve self – like the beginnings oflove. Except I was leaving for a new job in New York very soon afterwards.
I asked Flavia to go for dinner a few days later so that I could explain to her that I was leaving. We met for dinner in a pub and ended up doing a quiz together (neither of us was keen but the quizmaster wouldn’t take no for an answer). We came last and won a wooden spoon, which felt like a very apt metaphor for the whole Flavia experience – I felt like I’d fallen in love with her and then been forced to give her up. I actually contemplated asking her to come with me to New York before realising how very stupid – and indeed inappropriate – that would have been: she’d only just started her first job three months before, and we were both just so young.
I saw her a second time, on my return from New York three years later. On a trip to Robert Dyas to buy baking utensils (I’d promised to make a birthday cake for my mother), I saw a whole rack of wooden spoons, which reminded me of Flavia. I’d been thinking of her a lot and wondering whether I should contact her, and took the spoons as a sign (I’d have takenanythingas a sign), and immediately texted her to ask if she’d like to meet up.
