CHAPTER 24
It was down to the Eden Centre, then, where Jacky got suitable boots as well as, on Mary’s insistence, a better jacket and some waterproof overtrousers.

“But it’s Summer”

“But it’s the Lakes and the Highlands. It rains”

We stood and watched Jacky as she worked through the boot choice, and I quietly asked Mary, “And what does this friend of yours know about me?”

“Fran? Not sure. She knew about, well, Harry”

“So what are you going to say?”

“I’m not sure, but there is one thing I do know, and that is the Arabian Nights thing. Genie’s going back in bottles. I’m getting there, I think, love. Belgium helped”

“What? Nine percent ABV beer?”

“No. Seeing you around men. I mean, men you didn’t know. When you and Jacky shared that bit about being approached, and I was so out of the loop, but you two were like Sybil Fawlty, all ‘Ooh, I know’ and that. Seriously, that genie. The neighbours know, your work knows, you bloody well showed me how all your cycling mates already knew. My friends are going to find out, one way or another, so I need to control it. Then there’s September”

“As in new school year?”

“Exactly, and that’s going to be a double, or maybe triple whammy. Colleagues, parents, kids. It’s almost certain one or more of that lot has seen us out and about, though god knows who they think Jacky is. Anyway, she’s heading this way”

“Going for these, I think. Feel right on my feet. How much walking we doing?”

Mary looked hard at me, then back at our friend.

“You’re the one that asked about Ben Nevis”

“Fair point. Ewe grabbing a coffee?”

I nodded.

“Sitting at a table, though, not on a bench. And I want cake”

“You will get fat, Ellie”

“Not if Jacky’s dragging us up mountains, love”

We found a table outdoors once again, so it wasn’t quite bench and Stella territory, and started to plan.

“If you get us up to somewhere near the NEC, I’ll take over through the OSD. Change again at Hilton Park, then I’ll take it from Kendal to Cockermouth”

“I hate the OSD”

“We both do, love, but I do far more driving than you do”

Jacky was holding a hand up, so we stared at her, as was expected.

“Please Misses, but what the heck are all those initials?”

I let Mary explain, as she was the teacher, after all.

“The National Exhibition Centre is a horrible place next to Birmingham Airport, but it’s simple driving to there. The next bit is onto the M6 motorway, which has special problems. It goes through part of the city, so it gets used as an urban route, not just as a throughway. Traffic comes on and off, so at every junction there can be a queue, some of them miles long, and there’s a lot of junctions. They actually built a relief road, a parallel motorway, which would have helped, but they made it a toll road, so nobody uses it. Now, the road is elevated on pillars for a lot of the way, so it’s made up of lots of sections, and they wear out, so your car is going bump-bump-bump all the time.

“South of here is a town called Slough, which had the distinction of being named in a poem by the poet laureate, John Betjeman, who said, ‘Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough. Ellie and me thought of Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, so we call that bit of road ‘The OSD’, for ‘The Other Slough, of Despond’. It’s pig ugly as well. Hilton Park is a set of services, a rest area, just as the motorway loses a lot of the traffic and the driving is less likely to remove your will to live”

“Heck, are you two well-suited!”

I gave Mary’s hand a squeeze.

“We’re reminding ourselves of that, Jacky, bit by bit”

“Well, don’t stop, ey?”

A day later, Mary brought me her laptop.

“Fran replied, love”

“Oh? What had you said?”

“Just that you’d changed a bit. She says it’s a four bed place, and the kids are away at some outdoor camo thing, so they have room”

“Did she ask what you meant about me?”

“No, love. She… Fran told me what was going on”

“What the fuck? Sorry, but?”

“Turns out that Richard, her husband, likes a certain activity, and no, put that look away. I mean cycling. He’s in the same loop as your friends at York”

“Bloody hell. How do you feel about that?”

“Me? A mixture. I’m relieved I didn’t have to spell things out, which I find awkward, and also relieved that we’re not going to be turning up with you in a skirt shouting ‘Surprise!’. But I feel cheated, somehow. Got this big news, and all I get is ‘Yeah? We’ve heard. Moving on…’. I mean, she wasn’t like that, but it’s still oddly deflating. She did ask one question, though, and that was whether we still share a bed. I’ve taken liberties, anyway: sent her a pic of the three of us in Bath”

“Has she replied?”

“Yes. She simply said that we looked happy, all of us, and just asked me if we were, indeed, okay. I said we were. Was that okay?”

I pulled her down to sit next to me, and she set the laptop on the side table before cuddling in.

“We are okay, Ellie. I really believe that. It’s just that this reminds me that there are going to be people who aren’t like that. I mean, I came across enough of them on that ‘trans widows’ hellsite. I just want you to be safe. I bloody nearly lost you; never again”

What’s brought this on, love?”

“Seeing you clearly, that’s what, and fretting about work”

“You okay with this trip?”

“Jacky’s trip of a lifetime, Ellie. We can give her that much”

“What if it pisses down all the time?”

“Then it’ll be authentic Scottish Braveheart rain”

“Braveheart wasn’t authentic”

“Neither was Highlander, but the rain will be”

“Fair point, that woman”

“I’m the teacher in this house, so remember that. Oh, and I’ve booked the car in for a service tomorrow, just to be on the safe side”

Three days later, and we were on our way, and for the first time in ages I had some of my old clothing with me, but as they were essential outdoor things like a hiking jacket, boots and gaiters, it didn’t really matter. I got us as far as Bickenhill and the NEC, the traffic already bad, and looped the roundabout to park up outside the National Motorcycle Museum so Mary and I could swap seats. The next bit was as shitty as ever, and after a while Jacky’s attempts to cheer us up fell silent as The OSD had its usual effect, right up until the awful queues where the M6 and M5 merge.

Finally, finally, into Hilton Park and a cuppa as we prepared to swap seats once more. I took ten minutes to walk across the bridge and back, so as to loosen my legs, and then we were back onto the motorway. The next bit was a long one, but Mary was covering the hard bits, so I could pull my weight on the longer steady stuff.

Jacky was asleep before too long, and when I looked to my left, so was Mary. Ah well. I filled my time with imagining walking routes we might do, what Jacky needed to say but didn’t yet realise, as two other women snored and burbled beside and behind me.

‘Other women’. Thoughts like that came far more easily to me as I emerged, and reality turned more and more into how I had always perceived it to be. I was a woman. Always had been, in my mind, but out in the world I had always had nothing but reminders of the deep abyss that kept me away from my real life. Here I was, in a skirt and loose blouse, with properly fitted underwear, thank god, and two other women in my care.

Go up to the waterslide, then, and walk out into the high valley that carried the Water of Nevis, perhaps towards Meall a’Bhuiridh, perhaps Luibeilt, and…

Shit. That was Manchester and Preston gone, and Lancaster nearly there. Bloody zen roads were for cycling, not motorway driving. It seemed to take longer to get from Lancaster to the Kendal exit than it had taken from Birmingham to Lancaster, but I finally arrived at the exit for the A590 and pulled into a layby, mainly because a hand-painted sign said ‘’Tea Coffee Food’. Finally, I could turn the engine off again.

There were a number of odd noises from my companions, including Mary’s, “Where are we?”

“On the Kendal road, love. Need a stretch, and saw the sign”

“Burger van?”

“Burger van. With tea and coffee as well”

Jacky mumbled, “You had me at ‘coffee’, or was it ‘burger’? Doesn’t matter. Need to wake up”

I chivvied them out of the car, and we went to see what was on offer.

“What can I get you ladies?”

Mary looked at a yawning Jacky.

“I think that’ll be two coffees. Tea or coffee, Ellie?”

“Tea, please. What’s good?”

“Sandwich and roll list is there, but it’s all local farm produce. Proper Cumberland sausages, made by a mate, for starters”

Sod it. I’d walk the lard off. Each of us went for a sausage and egg roll, which we ate standing up to keep the legs stretched, and when the last of the greasy treats were gone, along with our drinks, we walked back towards the car. Mary put a hand to Jacky’s shoulder.

“Stay awake for now, woman. This is going to be a rather slow quick look at the Lake District”

“Slow quick?”

“Not a proper tour, so quick, and probably choked with traffic, especially around Ambleside, so slow. Shall we? Keys please, love