145. Home

Next morning, I’m awake early.  Result of my early mornings for work, mores the pity.  I lie in bed for a while but then quietly get up and go downstairs to get a complimentary paper, leaving the ladies a note to let them know where I am.   

After an hour or so my phone beeps with a message.  M1 is up and hasn’t seen my note.  I give her half an hour to get dressed then go back up. M2 is still fast asleep and M1 is in the girl’s room.  We sit, chat and have a laugh while A waits for her painkillers to kick in.  It is hard to watch her in pain; she’s so YOUNG and so eager to be full of life.   

Later, when M2 is up and about, we go out for breakfast.  Again, it’s hard.  A’s pain is still not good and her ankles are swollen.  M2 arranges some ice and tea towels and A sits with her legs up, but she’s scared; it’s obvious.  I feel a bit as if she’s my daughter and get the knot of anxiety in my stomach that I get when I is ill or in pain.   

A’s dad picks her up and we go for the train.  Complication: the air conditioning in our carriage has broken and it is unbearably hot.  We drag our stuff through the train, looking for a cooler place but the only place we can get to is first class.  A lengthy discussion with the guard ensues, but he is unwilling to let us move.  The girls try every trick in the book, invoking the C word repeatedly.  E even tells him that she has no nipples, to no avail.    Then an angry lady comes through and shouts at him.  After that he’s nicer to us and lets us go and sit in first class in what was previously a locked carriage that was merely being transported.