Page 28 of I’m Dreaming of a New York Christmas

‘We have… momentarily lost our bearings. The last time I checked, we’re in a rectangular patch of man-made parkland in the middle of one of the world’s busiest cities. If we walk far enough in one direction we’re guaranteed to hit civilisation. Mum, are you okay?’

Mum was breathing heavily while crouched down, still looking for fake coffee beans.

‘Hmm? Yes, of course. As soon as I’ve found some pods, we’ll just walk continuously in one direction and see whereabouts in the city we end up. What an adventure!’

‘Adventure’. That word had done a huge amount of heavy lifting in the thirty years I’d been alive. Like the time we’d driven to the New Forest to go camping but Mum forgot to pack the tent and had insisted we all sleep in the car instead: ‘adventure!’ Or when I’d switched secondary schools in Year 9 after a horrible group of girls had spent two years saying awful stuff about my family until I’d started to dread school so much I could barely step outside the house: ‘adventure!’ The mad dash to A&E one New Year’s Eve because Anneka had to have her stomach pumped after too much sambuca: ‘adventure!’

I took a shaky breath and crouched down on the ground a few metres away from Mum and began gently scraping away the top layer of dry leaves and twigs. I had no idea what I was looking for, but figured that an extra pair of eyes looking for these damn pods would mean this ordeal would be over with sooner than if I descended into panic mode.

I was more exhausted than I’d ever been in my life. I was also hungry – the calories of the McGriddle having been well and truly used up by what had fast become an ambitious winter hike without a map. The temperature seemed to be plummeting by the minute. And Mum was still shivering. Regardless of whether we were ‘lost’ according to the official dictionary definition, we needed to get indoors, stat.

After about ten minutes of haphazard searching, my fingers landed on what looked like a large mangetout pod that had been left in a cupboard for too long and turned brown. I held it up.

‘Mum?’ I called.

She scampered over – very nearly on all fours like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings when he’s hunting for fish. She took the pod from my palm and inspected it tenderly as if it were indeed Gollum’s precious ring.

‘Yes! You found one, Flo-wo! Where was it?’

I pointed to a shrub. ‘Just under there.’

She cleared away some more debris and found a whole pile of pods. ‘Result! Well done, love! Look, Anneka – we’ve hit the jackpot!’

Her obvious pride in my discovery made me feel stupidly warm inside. ‘Words of affirmation’ had never been Mum’s love language, although it was undoubtedly mine, so when I was on the receiving end of them from her it felt extra-special.

Anneka jumped down from the boulder and slapped me on the back. ‘Nice one, sis. I vote we find somewhere that sells hot food. Who’s in?’

My hand shot up, followed by Mum’s, which – for some reason – was now clutching a staff-like fallen branch.

‘Unanimous! Right, then, I saw steam rising from that direction.’ Anneka pointed to her right, which could have been north, south, east, west – or any of the directional denominations in between. ‘I guess it could have been smoke. Either way, it suggests signs of life might be closer than we thought.’

Mum shoved her collection of pods in her denim jacket pockets, raised her staff and pointed it in the same direction as Anneka’s outstretched arm and cried, ‘To the perimeter!’

Mum’s branch pounded the earth in time with each of her footsteps until we were marching as one. An unexpected yet unmistakable feeling of happiness washed over me. Our Central Park escapade had been a little adventurous and, for once, had produced the goods. More importantly: refreshments, radiators and rest were finally within reach.

Chapter 8

‘Twenty thousand steps! And the day isn’t even over!’ As ever, Mum’s ancient pedometer – that she kept on a shoelace tied around her neck – had been tracking our progress via the medium of paces. Twenty thousand steps was probably more than I usually walked in a week, let alone in a few hours. That’s correct: it was two hours later and we were still bloody walking. The search for ‘hot food’ had ended when we’d encountered a hot-dog stand at the nearest park exit – somehow only a few blocks south from where we’d entered Central Park what felt like days ago. We’d devoured a couple each, along with a few bottles of Mountain Dew between us.

As far as Mum and Anneka had been concerned, this was sufficient sustenance for their next adventure: their hunt for a ‘proper American bar’.

‘I saw a promising one back near our hotel,’ Anneka had recalled.

‘Great, let’s get a cab there,’ I’d said, resigning myself to the fact that, for the time being, a soft-ish seat in the back of a moving vehicle was my best chance of physical and mental recovery.

‘No! Let’s walk!’ I should have expected this response from Mum, but it’d still felt as if someone had pelted me with a soggy sponge. Once more, I’d wished I’d been born with even a tenth of the energy that they both possessed. Whoever my dad was, he had a lot to answer for.

‘Are you sure?’ Anneka had asked Mum, her forehead creasing ever so slightly.

‘Of course! We might even find somewhere better on the way!’

‘Don’t either of you need a wee?’ I’d said, my own bladder throbbing.

‘Not me,’ Mum had replied. ‘I went back there in the bushes while we were hunting for those pods.’

‘Mum!’

‘What?! It was my first wild wee in New York; can’t you just be happy for me for once?’ Mum had snorted, causing her and Anneka to double over with laughter. My own mouth hadn’t been able to resist a few twitches.