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AWOL.COM/Alice Edwards’ Travel Blog
6 July – 9.45 a.m.
Someone is going to need to explain to me how this is ‘winter’ in Australia. I’m sweating my balls off.
Axx
5 Comments · 76AWOLs · 135 Super Likes
COMMENTS:
Kirpa Saul
|Nothing like a Brit abroad for moaning about lovely weather.
Hollie Baker
|Lol, lol! You don’thave balls!! Do you??
Karen Gill
|Meanwhile, it’s July in the UK and three degrees Celsius.
Alice Edwards
Replying to Karen Gill
|I miss three degrees. I miss wearing socks.
Hannah Edwards
|haha u will get used 2 it! sooo happy ur here.
I have barely slept.
And I feel better than I have in years.
Mum and I stayed up all night,talking. Not about The Bad Stuff, but about our lives, about who we are now, and the things we have missed. I wanted so much for her toknowme, to know everything about me. I told her all the stupid inane stuff about my life without her: what time I get up in the morning; what I have for breakfast; how my favourite shoes are too small for me but how I still wear them because they have a pineappleembroidered on the front. I told her about the work I’d been doing for the dodgy politician – and how I’d ruined it all with my drunken thirtiethlife-crisis text. I left nothing out. I even told her how my last dentist appointment went (only one filling but I made a huge fuss).
It was like I’d been storing everything up for her, holding it ready for this reunion. She listened, enrapturedfor hours, firing questions when I left out any detail, asking what the weather was like on any one day I was describing so she could better picture it. She didn’t let go of my hand the whole time.
And we talked about her, too. I’m finally able to talk about Steven without wincing and we did talk about him. A lot. Mum told me about the move over here. How things have still been difficult theselast few years, but that he has been slowly getting better. He had managed to cut down on the drinking; he was not disappearing on benders so much. He was more loving, he was shouting less, he was going to meetings. He was more grateful for Mum’s love. Maybe he was softening with old age, or maybe the fresh start in a new country had finally shaken him free of something. Not altogether of course– he was still drinking every day – but what they had between them was on its way to being something almost like a life. But then of course, just as hope was beginning to flower, the stroke happened. For Mum, that has been the hardest part of all this. Just when she thought she might get her Steven back – after twenty years ofslow-burn devastation – this new kind of devastation happened.
But she is hopeful. And she is also very used to being a carer. So she will beOKif and when he comes home. And I get it. I understand. Life is not black and white.
We finally crashed out together on the sofa at about 5 a.m., and I woke up with a dry mouth, feeling like I had the worst hangover ever. But also feeling great.
I didn’t want to leave Mum this morning, and she was onthe verge of calling in sick to her work as a receptionist at a local school, but I said no.
I had to go see Mark.
He’s here, staying at a nearby hotel. I don’t know if Hannah’s told him I’m here, too, but I have to go see him. I need to make up with him and make sure we’reOK. Our fight has been hanging over me for weeks, following me around Thailand like a bad smell. We’ve never gonethis long without talking and it all seems so silly and pointless now. Of course he was right, I needed to forgive Mum, but I also had to get there – here – on my own. We both knew I was coming here eventually, but I had to do it slowly. I had to figure it out for myself.
Hannah gave me the hotel address with Mark’s room number, and – standing outside yet another door, feeling the samenerves in my belly as I knock – I almost burst out laughing.
Mark opens up immediately, and doesn’t look surprised to see me.
