Four Mums in a Boat: Friends who rowed 3000 miles, broke a world record and learnt a lot about life along the way. Janette Benaddi

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ herself. Wearing the same old groove? Going on the same journey 25 miles in and 25 miles out of Leeds? Every. Single. Day?

      ‘That’s it,’ she said to herself, pushing herself back in her seat. ‘I am asking them again. They can only say no.’ She put the car into gear. Her mother had died at the age of 58 from breast cancer. Frances was 28 years old at the time and her mother’s passing left a huge hole in her life. Her mother had lost her battle with cancer when she was little older than Frances is now. She had not lived long enough to meet Mark or her grandchildren – a loss that Frances had always felt very keenly.

      ‘We are only here once,’ she reasoned. ‘We should make the most of our short time here. I’m fed up with going to things and hearing how “busy” everyone is. I don’t care who is “busy” or who is not “busy”. What is admirable about being busy? I don’t care about any of that. I want to get out and do something else.’

      One of the things about the death of her mother that had always inspired Frances was how she never gave up – she always carried on fighting. For years she battled cancer with a serenity that was humbling. Her courage against all the odds was overwhelming.

      So, after refuelling with a weak, tepid coffee from the office kitchen, she sat down at her desk and wrote this email:

      From: Frances Davies

      Sent: 03 May 2013 08:19

      To: Janette Benaddi; Niki Doeg; Helen Butters; Caroline Lennox

      Subject: Atlantic Campaigns | Atlantic Rowing | TALISKER Whisky Atlantic Challenge | Atlantic Rowing Race – Helen – don’t delete!

      http://www.atlanticcampaigns.com/

      Morning,

      Do you remember my suggestion at the boat club dinner? I thought I would forward this to all of you. I do see that it sounds very silly, but I think we could do this race. Other people have done it and we must be just as good as they are.

      I think it’s possible to enter as 1, 2, 4, 5 or 6, so any combination of us could enter. It’s quite pricey and, of course, would mean taking a couple of months out of our regular lives! We would need sponsorship. Mark obviously thinks I’m ridiculous, but I have sold it to the boys on the basis that they get to go to Antigua to meet us at the finish!

      It would be amazing and probably life-changing, and we definitely won’t want to go back to work afterwards – we could maybe sign up for it if we get very drunk in France in September.

      Anyway, have a think about it.

      For those racing this weekend – good luck.

      Have a great weekend

      F xx

      She pressed send, sighed and waited. Shuffling through the papers she needed for her first meeting that morning, she kept her eye on the screen.

      It took Janette precisely 13 minutes to reply:

      From: Janette Benaddi

      Sent: 03 May 2013 08:32

      To: Frances Davies; Niki Doeg; Helen Butters; Caroline Lennox

      Subject: RE: Atlantic Campaigns | Atlantic Rowing | TALISKER Whisky Atlantic Challenge | Atlantic Rowing Race – Helen – don’t delete!

      Life’s for living, so let’s really live. I am definitely up for it.

      J

      Janette Benaddi

      That was so very typical of Janette. An impetuous force of nature, she is a self-made businesswoman who has been running her own clinical trials company for the past 20 years. Married to Ben, a French-Moroccan, whom she met dancing in her sister’s sitting room, she has never knowingly taken a duvet day in her life. Even after the birth of her first child, James, she didn’t take any time off. Not even a day! It wasn’t meant to happen that way, but she’d been booked to give a talk in London. She had originally thought she’d be fine. She’d have her baby; he would be two weeks old and she’d leave him with Ben for the day while she popped down to London to talk at the conference and popped back up to York again. But James was a first baby and first babies are often late. He was two weeks late. Janette had no choice, not unless she didn’t want to be paid, and anyway, she didn’t want to let them down. So she gave birth at 8 a.m. on the Tuesday after a long 36-hour labour with gas, air and ventouse. Come 8 a.m. on the Wednesday, she was on the train to London, leaving Ben in charge of their newborn son. During a break at the conference, there were a few doctors milling around, drinking tea and eating biscuits, and one of them approached Janette.

      ‘Do you have any children?’ she asked, smiling politely and nibbling the corner of a custard cream.

      ‘Oh yes!’ replied Janette, beaming with new-mother pride. ‘A son.’

      ‘How lovely,’ replied the doctor. ‘How old is he?’

      ‘Oh,’ replied Janette, her brain whirring, not wanting to lie that much. ‘Um… two weeks?’ she ventured.

      ‘Two weeks!’ The doctor was horrified; the crumbs went flying. ‘What are you doing here? Are you mad! You should be at home!’

      Little did she know that, back in Selby, Ben was busy explaining Janette’s absence to an equally appalled midwife, who turned up to weigh the baby and was completely astonished to find no sign of the mother.

      But Janette has never been one to conform. She left school at 16 with two O levels and eventually became a trained nurse, after putting herself through night school while working in a doctor’s surgery. As a nurse she became frustrated, as there was never enough time to do the job properly, never enough time to speak to the patients or give them the care they needed. Gradually, she found herself moving into the world of medical technology, travelling the length and breadth of the country, selling dressings and syringes to doctors, hospitals and surgeries.

      The second of four girls, her childhood was peripatetic, and financially it was either feast or famine. Her father was also no stranger to graft, and had at any one time an HGV business, a bingo hall, a coach business and a tyre business. ‘Some Christmases there were loads of presents and sometimes there was very little.’ So when Janette got the chance she worked, and she worked hard. She took the plunge and set up a clinical trial business, although it wasn’t exactly good timing as her husband Ben had just started university. ‘We were really strapped for cash. Every month was absolutely tight – we’d go to the wire, scrabbling around for change, because neither of us was really making anything. It was very hard for us for the first couple of years until the business got going. We didn’t have any holidays – a lot of people don’t, I know, but we didn’t for years. We had an old blue Nissan car and Ben used to make a lot of meals that were full of potatoes so we wouldn’t feel hungry.’

      But Janette was very focused. ‘I was once one of those kids who had free school meals. It was so obvious, the kids who were on free meals. We had different-coloured tickets from the rest of them and it was like a taboo was attached to you. It was like being put into a box, and I was desperate to break out of that box. Why should I be put into a box in the first place?’

      So then, together, she and Ben bought some old offices in Selby, which they stripped of СКАЧАТЬ