Five Ladies Go Skiing: A feel-good novel of friendship and love. Karen Aldous

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СКАЧАТЬ two ideas were more genteel, but adventurous for mid-winter, I thought; for instance, cycling in Provence or hiking in the Lake or Peak District. Lou, who like me loves the sun, suggested surfing in Hawaii or Miami. Cathy suggested rock climbing in Sicily or Majorca. That was bad enough. But we passed the task to the waiter, who pulled Angie’s idea out. I nearly freaked. Skiing. And mountains. I would have preferred her other option, which was more my cup of tea: horseback riding in the Berber villages and fields of the Atlas Mountains. Not up in the freezing mountains, that in my mind were cold and hostile. Their scale alone evoked a light-headedness in me. When I’d glanced out during our flight, the ocean of rock whipping up waves from the valley floor looked like gigantic monsters circling me, like a pack of wild dogs. I was under no illusion of their ability to intimidate.

      As horrified as I was, I carried determination around with me, eager to take on the challenge and stay upbeat. My friends cared enough to think of me. That was fundamental and I couldn’t disappoint them. We had, after all, managed to get through so much together, those troubling baby-rearing and parental stages, supporting one another through the deaths of our parents. We could manage a ski holiday surely? And the build-up and preparation Angie had organised had distracted me to some extent. A fitness programme, diet, five dry-ski lessons. Overtly, I was cheering, skiing at sixty with my Flowers, covertly a faker and betrayer. As for Mike, he would be turning in his grave if he knew I was skiing.

      Flowers, by the way, was the name that us girls gave ourselves, because we are still girls at heart. We each had two navy sweatshirts with our own emblem of salmon pink roses. In fact, we had them on now. The idea came about quite accidently when Cathy declared one night that we were Fun-Loving Older Women Embracing life, and we completed it with a Renaissance of Spirit, which is exactly our philosophy.

      As Angie focused on the driving and Lou touched up her make-up, I kept the phone clutched in my hand, but then felt my chest lurch in panic. ‘Oh, God, I can’t remember if I put my thermals in. I remember putting in my big knickers in but …’

      ‘Stop worrying,’ chuckled Lou. ‘We’ll share if we have to. I’m sure we’ll have plenty between us.’

      Cathy pulled a face. ‘Urgh. No. They’re not the sort of things I’d want to share. It would be like sharing underwear.’

      Lou leant forward and frowned, her hand gripping a steel stem of Cathy’s headrest. ‘I know you’re getting on a bit, Cath, but you know, there’s this stuff they have nowadays called washing powder. It washes clothes. You can buy it in these places called shops, which they have even in the mountains. Correct me if I’m wrong, Ang?’

      The car shook with laughter. Cath’s shoulder blade collided with her ear as she lowered her head. Her tight lips then burst into laughter too.

      ‘Oh, mock me, why don’t you. Charming. I suppose I will have this all week. I love you all, my darlings, but I’m sorry. No. I’m not sharing my knickers or thermals with anyone.’

      Swiping a tear from her eye, Angie peered at me again through the rear-view mirror. ‘There are shops that sell them if you prefer your own, Ginny.’

      ‘Goodness.’ Cathy turned to face me. ‘Don’t we have it easy! I wonder what our grandmothers would make of us. Can you imagine your grandmothers skiing? My granny looked about eighty when I was a little girl. She could have only been in her fifties, forties possibly.’

      ‘Mine too,’ Lou said, chuckling, ‘but I bet they would share their knickers. A bar of carbolic and a scrubbing brush would soon sort them. Nan skiing, though. Not an image I can conjure.’

      ‘Lucky for us, we don’t have to revert to carbolic soap.’ Cathy let out a sigh. ‘Gosh, what they went through. All for our benefit. Two world wars to secure our future.’

      ‘And the other battles.’ I instantly recalled tales my gran told me. ‘Old aunt Minnie, not my real aunt, but a close friend of Gran’s and my mother’s when they were younger, was a militant campaigner for so many rights we all take for granted, like voting, equality, free healthcare, not to mention pensions.’

      ‘It is amazing what they did. So sad they didn’t benefit.’ Lou’s jaw crooked to one side. ‘We owe them so much. Imagine travelling back in a time machine, a hundred years. A war. Women pining for dead husbands, sons, brothers and fathers. Housing conditions damp and cramped. No work. Little food. Filthy streets. Not even a bath or toilet! And, unless you had serious money, you would never holiday, let alone go abroad. Poor mites. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to go back and thank all those who fought for us? We baby boomers live like royalty in comparison: our own homes, we choose where to live, work where we please, including abroad.’

      I clutched my chest. ‘Makes you feel guilty, doesn’t it, that they didn’t reap the rewards. We’ve been such a blessed generation. I’m so grateful to have been in a position to be near my children, share their lives and to enjoy our grandchildren.’ A mix of emotions circled in me. ‘And with spare time to have some fun. My one regret is that Mike’s gone.’

      Angie blew out a large sigh. ‘Flowers, please. They did us proud, they led the way; let’s be fucking happy.’

       Cathy

      ‘Language, Angie.’ I scowled sideways disapprovingly as she mouthed a ‘sorry’. I folded my arms as the sniggers silenced. Poor Ginny was sinking again.

      ‘So, Ginny, what’s the plan for the week?’ I asked, attempting a different angle at getting her to talk, thinking I’d posed an open question.

      ‘Skiing,’ she answered bluntly.

      Oh dear, this wasn’t going well. The elephant in the car was enormous. Whilst our foremothers were interesting and commendable, we were simply so backwards in coming forward. I sighed. So much babble when what we really wished to know was how Ginny was feeling, what she was thinking. It had been the hardest thing to prise Ginny open. I wasn’t one to pussyfoot around usually but in all honesty, apart from my parents, I’d never dealt the death of someone so close to me. Mike was so young. Only sixty-one. Anthony and I still couldn’t believe he has gone. A dear, dear friend who was such a mammoth part of our lives. Like a brother to us both. And Ginny. All we wanted was our friend back, but we didn’t know how to unwrap her from her cocoon. And, as far as I knew, she’d refused bereavement counselling or any help after losing her job.

      I popped another almond into my mouth to stave off hunger.

      In our own ways, we’ve tried to get Ginny to share her thoughts, and maybe Kim was the only one who’d managed it, having had some success in Australia earlier in the year, but Ginny’s been a closed book since. I was never sure how to broach the subject. In fact, not one of us has yet managed to tap into her heart since. Naturally, we’ve asked but all we got back from Ginny was ‘Stop worrying. I’m fine,’ when we knew she wasn’t.

      I was hoping to sit in the back with her on the journey from Geneva, try and have a chat to find out more about what her plans were for the trip, particularly as it was twelve months on and the perfect opportunity now that we were all together. Even if we could discover what she wanted to get out of this week and whether she wanted to have a memorial on the twenty-eighth. It had all been guesswork so far. Communication with her had been sparse these last few months and she shut herself away at home, refusing to socialise even one-to-one. I understood that she might feel it’s difficult with couples, but apart from our preparation sessions at the gym, and a weekend at a spa, she hadn’t been anywhere but her new workplace. And, frustratingly, any time I rang to say I’d pop in with СКАЧАТЬ