“Okay. So I am going to call the rails Frank. And the water tank thingummy is Moby Dick. And the cupboard under my bed is Susan.”
“Susan?” they both say.
“Yes. It felt like a Susan to me. I’m still waiting for the rest of the cupboards to tell me their names...”
“My bed is called Conan the Barbarian,” Charlie chips in, getting into the spirit of things.
Luke frowns, and I wonder if he is having second thoughts. Maybe we’re just too mad for him—he’ll be chucking us out at the next junction and leaving us in his dust.
“I think you’re onto something,” he says slowly. “In fact, it feels remiss that I’ve never done this before. I think that from this moment on, the toilet will be known as the Mona Lisa.”
“Oh. How cultured,” I reply. “What about the shower room?”
“Give the shower room a name? That would just be silly... So, where to?” he says with a smile.
Charlie holds up his hand, a bit like he is in school, and says: “I’ve got an idea about that!”
“Go for it, love,” I reply, genuinely warmed by the sight of his enthusiasm.
“Okay—well... you know how when it’s Christmas, Mum, and we watch a film together every night from Christmas Eve Eve through to Boxing Day Boxing Day?”
“The twenty-third to the twenty-seventh,” I clarify for Luke’s sake. Funny how families develop their own language after time, isn’t it?
Charlie continues: “Well, why don’t we do what we normally do then?”
“Write the names of films down on bits of paper and put them in a Santa hat?” I say, frowning. A little slug of sadness tries to slime its way into my mind; the Santa hat is long gone, of course, along with the DVDs and the TV and most of the Christmas decorations. I salt the slug and urge it to shrivel away.
“Kind of, yeah,” says Charlie. “What we could do is maybe each of us come up with a list of, like, five places, or books, or films, or food, or animals, whatever, that we enjoy. Then we draw them out and go there.”
“Well,” I answer, “I get it with places. Not sure how it’d work with the other stuff.”
“You’d have to be sensible, Mum,” he says, and I try to keep my face straight. Being told to be sensible by your eighteen-year-old son is quite something. “You couldn’t put something stupid likeGladiator...”
“Hush your mouth, child. Don’t you dare sayGladiatoris stupid—you know I have very strong feelings about that film. I will be the mother to a murdered son if you carry on with that nonsense.”
“I know. I don’t mean the film is stupid—obviously it’s one of the greatest films of all time—I mean if you putGladiator, we couldn’t exactly drive to ancient Rome, could we?”
I have always wished that we could. I mean, imagine getting to be one of the spectators in the Colosseum? Watching Russell Crowe tart around in a skirt and having loaves of bread chucked at you? Throw in some tequila shots and it’s the perfect night out. It’d be super popular with hen parties.
“But,” I say, “we could go somewhere Roman—like Bath, or Chester, or Hadrian’s Wall.”
“Exactly! So if I putJurassic Worldor whatever, we could go somewhere with fossils. We’d find a connection and go there.”
“What do you think?” I ask Luke, who has been watching our double act in amusement.
“I love it,” he says. “I might put some bands or songs in. And, actually, you know, just some places as well... Just bear in mind we might end up doing some crazy zigzags, if one is in Aberdeen and the next is in Cornwall and then it’s North Wales.”
“Let’s limit it to England then,” I reply, “and ban Cornwall, because it’s too far away and too isolated.”
It is also, I do not say, the place where I grew up. The place where my family, presumably, still lives. I am more than happy to ban it from our travels.
“Have you got a hat, though? That’s a very important piece of the puzzle...”
He laughs and assures us that he has a hat, and paper and pens and scissors, and also a whole collection of maps, guidebooks, and reference works about the sights, sounds, and animals of the UK that we can dip into for inspiration.
We chat for a few more minutes about practicalities—stopping off for food, gas, and water—and plan a last-night chippy run while we are still near civilization. Luke says it’s a tradition of his, and we can’t mess with tradition—it would be bad luck. He heads off on his bike to a small village a few miles away, ready todo some hunter-gathering that involves battered cod. While he is gone, Charlie and I unpack our few belongings, and I practice using the Mona Lisa and operating the shower. None of it is difficult, but it will take some getting used to.
When we are ready, I get out the bottle of fizz I have had chilling in the fridge and grab two glasses. Together, Charlie and I walk down to the place where our beautiful little home used to be.
