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I know this mall very well. I know its lanes and avenues like Ethan must know the waters of the Caribbean. I must have walked through here many hundreds, if not thousands of times, as a housewife. I used to come here several times a week to do all my shopping.

Yet today, it doesn’t feel at all familiar to me in the same way it once did.

I really don’t understand it because all the shops that were here before are all still here.

Yet, it’s like I’m having a déjà vu experience and attributing it to another lifetime.

It feels surreal to me. I’m noticing things that I’ve never noticed before. I see how incredibly pale and pallid and stressed people look as they rush around and pass me, pushing loaded shopping trolleys, prams and pushchairs, dragging screaming toddlers, all while chatting incessantly into their mobile phones or to each other. There are so many droning voices being punctuated by piercing high pitched shrieks and background music and other sounds that it has all become a buzzing white noise to my ears. It’s bouncing off the steel and glass and cold white tiles that clad the walls and floor of the shopping mall.

It feels quite suffocating and all consuming.

After spending so much time in the third world, where people have so little by comparison, everything here suddenly seems so abundant and glossy and extravagant. Shop windows are full of unpractical stuff that no one really needs but will buy because its Christmas. People proudly carry a clutch of bags showing off that they’ve been and bought the big brands.

Clothing. Shoes. Cosmetics. It’s all so excessive.

But I’ve never noticed it before. Not that I used to be any different. I used to do it too.

I once felt it was important to have the designer handbag, the new coat, the right shoes for every occasion, and a new dress because I couldn’t possibly be seen out in the same one twice.

Not to maintain modesty or to keep warm but to impress and keep up appearances.

A child, of maybe ten years of age, ran into me without an apology. He’d almost knocked me off my feet but without a care he yelled and swore at me as if it had been my fault we’d collided. I noticed how well dressed he was in an expensive premier league football shirt and training shoes. The same branded trainers that I know my son Lucas loves to wear.

For some reason, I was reminded of something that happened to me not too long ago when I’d been shopping for fresh fruit on a street on one of the lesser known of the Caribbean islands.

The shops on the street were just wooden tables, some made from old doors, piled high with a selection of locally grown fruits or they were simply a battered looking wheelbarrow that was filled with ripe bananas fresh from a nearby tree. A young boy, again around ten years old, had spotted me doing my shopping that day and was soon running alongside me to beg to be allowed to carry my shopping bag. I guess that with my western looks and my blonde hair, I’d been an easy target for his attentions.

‘Let me help you, lady. Let me carry your heavy bags today?’ he pleaded so politely.

I’d been immediately charmed by his smile and his entrepreneurial spirit and so I let him carry my bag containing a few mangos, a couple of pineapples, a hand of bananas, knowing that I’d be soon asked for a dollar in return. The day was scorching. Blisteringly hot. And, as we walked along side by side, with the sun beating down on our heads and heating up the hot hard dry sand base that formed the street, I could feel the heat burning through the rubber soles of my flip-flops. Yet, I noticed this boy wore no shoes. I asked him ‘where are your shoes?’

And he simply smiled at me and shrugged and then shook his head.

And that too had made me stop and reflect on how in the western world we have so much.

A thought that I suppose simply wouldn’t have ever crossed my mind before I’d travelled.

Of course, we confuse the price of material things with the price of happiness, don’t we?

It’s only by stepping out of the material mindset that we can appreciate that confusion.

But I do need some new clothes today. I need some practical clothes to keep me warm.

So I head across the mall to a shop where I know I’m likely to be able to pick up what I need for a reasonable price. It’s a charity shop where I used to work several mornings a week as a volunteer. Where, for many years, I’d worked with the same group of women who I called my closest friends. One of them, Sally, had been my very best friend in the world.

I used to confide in her. We’d had a laugh together. And a cry, sometimes, too.

But I didn’t want to see Sally today. Not yet. Not now.

Not dressed in my mum’s clothes and looking red-eyed and exhausted.

I know that’s incredibly vain of me, but I’ll freely admit to being a proud woman.

In Buddhism, pride and vanity are considered poisons, as they are part of a selfish ego.

No doubt, here in this small suburban town, where everyone knows everyone and everyone else’s business, I will bump into Sally soon enough. But, by then, I hoped I’d be more up for the challenge. More prepared. Because, if I was being honest, the thought of seeing Sally again filled me with anxiety and dread and a great dollop of despair.

What would we say to each other after what had happened and after all this time?

It’s not as if the past year has changed what I saw or diminished what she was doing with my husband in our marital bed on the day I came home unexpectedly early. If anything, it has amplified it. It’s like that horrific moment has being preserved – frozen in time – until it can be properly addressed and Sally and I face both the consequences and each other in real time.

Yet seeing Sally used to fill me with joy. She was my best friend.

More than that, she was like the sister that I’d never had and always wished for.

I suppose that’s what made this whole thing worse. Even more heartbreaking.

Why couldn’t Charles have had an affair with his secretary instead?

Why did it have to be the woman whom I’d allowed to become my soul sister?

I suppose it was for all the same reasons that I’d once loved her too. Sally was an attractive and sophisticated woman. She was great company and she was always upbeat and fun. She never seemed to run out of interesting things to say or exciting things for us to do together.

When Sally decided to lose weight and get fit, we joined the gym together. When she needed new clothes and makeup, we went shopping together. When she decided to learn French, we signed up for evening classes. We confided in each other completely and talked for hours over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine in each other’s kitchens. We confessed our most intimate secrets. I now cringed at the thought of telling her that Charles and I rarely had sex.

When I reached the charity shop, I see another co-worker and friend at the counter and so I go inside. I walk along the sale rail and pick out a couple of sweaters, a pair of jeans and a warm coat, a thick wool scarf and then head over to the till. When Taryn sees me, her eyes light up and she gasps in surprise. ‘Lorraine! You’re back! And, oh my gosh, you look fantastic!’

‘Yeah, I just got back today. I need a few things to wear. How are you?’

‘I’m fine. Just the same as ever. You know how it is. Nothing ever changes here.’

I nod my agreement as she rings up my purchases and I hand over my bank card.

‘We’re still short staffed, if you want your old job back, it’s yours!’ she said, while bagging my new-to-me things and putting me right on the spot with her immediate job offer.

I panicked a little and shrugged. ‘Oh, erm—I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

‘Sally doesn’t work here anymore. Just in case you were wondering. None of us liked what she did to you. Taking your husband. Moving into your house. If that helps?’

‘Maybe—’ I said, feeling a little flustered and trying to think of what to say in response and failing miserably. My jet lag was suddenly making me dizzy and giving me a headache.

‘Let me think about it and I’ll call you. Thanks, Taryn.’

I walked away not feeling as pleased as I might but feeling slightly horrified.

How easy it might be to slip straight back into my old life here?

Not all of it. Not back to being a housewife or a best friend. But the rest of it.

In many ways, being back here so abruptly, it feels like the past year has only been a dream.

That heading straight for the airport and arriving in Bangkok, then exploring Thailand, island hopping down the Andaman Sea all the way down to Malaysia; then having to convince Josh and Lucas – after they’d flown all the way out to Kuala Lumpur to bring me back – that I was still relatively sane and wanted to continue to travel, had only happened in my imagination.

But it did happen and because of it I knew I wasn’t the same person anymore.

I wasn’t Lorraine Anderson, housewife. I’d become someone else entirely.

I was now Lori Anderson, a world explorer.

I’d crossed continents and sailed the oceans and seen the most amazing things.

Yet nothing here in this town seemed to have changed at all.

And there was undoubtably something strange and disconcerting about that fact.

I thought back to yesterday, when I’d been on a beautiful Caribbean tropical island, swimming naked in an emerald green lagoon fed by a waterfall, with a tiny butterfly sitting on my hand. The symbolism hadn’t escaped me. In the same way that a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, I felt that I too, in travelling, had emerged from a cocoon and found my wings.

And then, of course, I’d met and fallen in love with Ethan.

At a time when I never thought I’d ever find love again.

Whom I’d left reeling and alone in Grand Cayman.

Who still deserved an answer to the question he’d asked me on the beach yesterday.

Had it really only been yesterday?

Chapter 5

I woke the next morning with an anxious jolt and in surprise at finding myself back in my old bedroom at my mother’s house in London. I’d been dreaming about being onboard The Freedom of the Ocean and so that’s exactly where I’d expected to wake up – in our cabin and in our small bed – with Ethan beside me. The creaking sound I’d heard in my sleep wasn’t caused by the ropes and the sway of the boat as I’d thought but by a tree in my mum’s garden.

I’d woken expecting Ethan’s big warm body to be stretched out next to mine, his long and tanned legs in a tangle with the sheet that had covered us in the chill of night. The sheet that would always end up discarded as soon as the sun had risen over the line of the horizon, sending pale pink shimmers of light through the small porthole above our heads followed by an intense yellow blinding light that quickly heated up our little cabin, until we lay splayed out and soaked with perspiration in our nakedness.

Then in our drowsy state, we would reach out to each other without opening our heavy-eyes and we would rouse each other with a tender touch, a sweeping finger, a tentative kiss from drowsy lips on hot sensitive skin. Then our breathing would quicken, and our tender touches would become something more urgent, and without a word uttered we would welcome this brand new day and greet each other, with a celebration of our lovemaking.

Realising I was quite alone and that the room was chilly and dark, I quickly grasped the reality of my new situation. My mind flitted over all that had happened over the last forty-eight hours. The island. Ethan’s brother. The news. The panic. The flight. Being back home.

I snuggled back under the duvet and sank into the warm comfortable mattress and let my head lay heavy on the soft pillow. A feeling of peace and relaxation and acceptance washed over me. I heaved a great sigh of relief that my mother’s heart attack had been a false alarm.

I found myself smiling until my smile became a ridiculously happy grin in knowing that my mum was perfectly all right and it was just a few weeks until Christmas and I was back here with my family. Just like I’d wanted. After all the pining and moping, and all the missing and the wishing that I’d done over the past few months, I really should be making the most of every precious minute with my family. I really should be making up for all the time I’d been away.

So, with a lightness of heart, I grabbed my phone from its charger on the bedside table to find that because I’d turned the sound down to sleep blissfully uninterrupted, I’d missed four calls from Ethan. On the last attempt, he’d left me a voice message, saying how relieved he was to hear that my mum was okay. He’d also said that he was missing me and that he still regretted not travelling back with me to the UK. I played the message twice over to listen to his deep and smooth and oh so sexy voice with his gorgeous Scottish lilt. I knew I could listen to him talk forever because his voice melted my heart and soothed my soul.

And I was missing him too. I was missing him so much that it hurt.

So much that my heart was heavy again and my thoughts conflicted and confused.

Arrrgghhhh! Was it even possible for me to ever feel completely contented with life?

What did Buddha say about contentment? That it is the ‘greatest wealth’.

I tried to call Ethan back but to my disappointment I got his automated answer again.

And that was the problem in having an entire ocean between us and being on two different time zones. I left him another message saying I’d just slept off my jet lag. That I was fine and I was looking forward to spending the day with my family. That I would try to call him again later if he didn’t call me first. And that I loved him.

Then I realised I could smell cooked bacon wafting upstairs from the kitchen.

Oh my goodness – I smell British bacon! Big fat rashers of lean and meaty goodness.

For a while now, I’ve been a vegetarian. It’s a personal choice but it’s one that fits in with my new beliefs and my life as a conservationist. I do feel passionately about animal welfare and greenhouse gas emissions and global warming and so not eating meat seems ethical to me.

In joining The Freedom of the Ocean, I had been correct in assuming that everyone else onboard would also be vegetarian. What I hadn’t expected, however, was that marine biologists generally don’t eat fish either and so are mostly vegan. I had happily and perhaps naively considered that living on ship, surrounded by water and therefore a bounty of seafood, would have meant me having to find a zillion different ways to serve fish for dinner.

It makes perfect sense to me now of course that people who protect and study fish don’t actually eat them. But I must admit (although certainly not publicly) that I love eating seafood.

So, I was quite gutted – pun intended – by the dietary restrictions and also in having to find a zillion different ways to serve tofu. Ethan, who like most men will happily eat anything he’s given on a plate, would if pressed always describe himself as a ‘flexitarian.’ In that he takes a more environmentally sustainable approach to the source of his food in occasionally eating meat and fish and other animal products. I’d always thought this was cheating and like having your beef cake and eating it. So, I did now feel terribly guilty, as I leapt out of bed and into the slippers and dressing gown that mum had kindly loaned me and padded down the stairs following the scent of cooked bacon into the kitchen.

My mum was at the stove waving a spatula at me. ‘Good morning, Lorraine!’

I was so overjoyed to see her, alive and well and real, that I rushed across the kitchen to put my arms around her and squeeze her tightly. ‘Good morning. I love you, mum!’

She laughed and kissed my forehead and ruffled my bed head hair, saying I should pour us both a cup of tea. Then we sat at the kitchen table eating good old British bacon sandwiches with HP sauce squidging out of them and drinking our strong tea and putting the world to rights.

We talked about all the things I’d missed as well as my family – TV soaps, British magazines, proper tea, fish and chips with mushy peas, Yorkshire pudding, proper gravy, Victoria sponge cakes and steamed pudding with thick creamy custard. Until we realised that we’d chatted half way through the morning and, as Lucas and Josh and Zoey where coming over for lunch, it was now time to start preparing the main meal. I was so excited.

This was going to be the kind of family day that I’d dreamed about for so long.

One that I’d dreamed of while standing onboard ship, looking across an endless ocean.

While sitting on hot sand with my toes in the tideline, gazing at an unbroken horizon.

Walking through a tropical forest, staring up through palm fronds into a cloudless blue sky.

Thinking about my precious and beautiful family so many thousands of miles away.

So, while I was helping mum and peeling vegetables and setting the table with a pristine white cloth and her best china, I happily continued to listen to her chatting away and telling me all about her social clubs and the pensioner trips she’d taken over the summer, all about her friends and what they were doing, and how busy she’s been with her church activities all year.

She told me how she’d recently started helping out at a homeless charity. That she still volunteered at the hospice and the local hospital and the food bank. This was all on top of the reams of stuff she did through her church. My mum is a kind and generous woman. She seems to have boundless energy and keeps her days incredibly full and active. I’ve noticed that some of the people she helps and refers to as the ‘older ones’ or ‘the elders’ are actually a lot younger than she is and I find myself wondering how she even has the time to sit here chatting with me.

‘Oh, don’t worry!’ she assures me when I ask if she’s going to miss church today. ‘Joan’s handing out the bibles today. As I’ve just come out of the hospital, John, that’s our Minister, has insisted I take this Sunday off. But maybe you and I can do it together next week, Lorraine?’

‘I’d really love that—’ I said, deciding that rather like my vegetarianism, I might be best to keep my new belief in Buddhism to myself.

Mum asked about my travels again. She wanted to hear more about places I’d seen.

So I regaled her with my adventures in Thailand at the turtle sanctuary and in Borneo learning about the Orangutans. How I’d learned to be a scuba diver and how amazing it was to be underwater and helping to restore coral reefs that had been damaged by either man or nature and about the lovely people I’d met and the incredible experiences I’d had along the way.

But I also continued to stress how I’d really missed her and the boys the whole time.

How I was really and truly happy to be home.

In turn, she confessed how worried she’d been about me.

‘I want you to know that every Sunday in church, I prayed to The Lord to protect you.’

Then she put down her teacloth and I saw she was trembling and had become a little tearful.

‘Mum, are you okay? What is it? What’s the matter?’

‘Lorraine, I do understand about you going off to Thailand. I understand why you felt the need to run away from that bloody no-good husband of yours after what he did with that no-good woman who’d called herself your friend. But all this time you’ve been away, a whole year, I’ve been hardly able to bear the thought of you out there all alone and so far away from us. And, for the life of me, I just don’t understand how you ended up running away to sea on that damned ship and going all the way around the whole world on it!’

I took a deep breath and decided this was exactly the right time to tell her about Ethan.

‘Look, mum, if we are being honest with each other then I have something to tell you too. I wasn’t all alone out there. I have someone. I’ve met someone quite wonderful and that’s why I went on the ship. I wanted to be with him and it was the only way for us to be together.’

‘He’s a sailor?’ she gasped in horror, as if sailors were the absolute depths.

‘No. He’s not a sailor. His name is Sir Ethan Goldman and he’s a famous explorer.’

Mum’s eyes practically popped right out of her head and into her tea cup.

‘He’s a philanthropist, which means he does amazing things all over the world to help people and animals and to save the planet, and that’s why he was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen.’

Mum, who was a big fan of The Queen, was immediately smitten.

‘Oh, go on, Lorraine. Tell me some more about Sir Ethan and your trip around the world?’

As she took a seat and dunked another shortbread into yet another cup of tea, I obliged.

I explained how after first meeting Ethan in Asia, and after a month or so of us living in the Caribbean together, he had been called to an important meeting in Grand Cayman. ‘It was to discuss a high-profile project to do with climate change with the world organisations. Naturally, they all wanted Ethan heading up the team. I knew at once when he returned to me that he’d already agreed to go. And, why wouldn’t he?’

‘So, Sir Ethan asked you to go along with him?’

I nodded. I couldn’t help but to wobble a bit at this point. Recalling this special moment in my life brought a great lump of emotion to my throat and caused tears to well up in my own eyes. ‘Ethan said to me; ‘Lori, there’s always a place for you in my heart and by my side.’

Mum’s shortbread hung in mid-air for a moment before falling into her cup with a splosh.

‘The thing is, Mum. I knew that I didn’t want to lose him. I’d fallen in love with him.’

She passed me a tissue when she saw the tears spilling down my face. I blew my nose.

‘But the whole assignment was to last eight months and the entire mission was at sea!’

‘Oh heavens!’ Mum sympathised. ‘And with your tendency for sea sickness too.’

‘Exactly. It turns out that the ship, called the Freedom of the Ocean, is the best equipped ocean research vessel in the world. It has a specially equipped laboratory designed for climate studies and high-tech computer gear and equipment for ocean floor mapping and an underwater drone that collects plankton and microscopic plastic particles for analysis.’

‘But you aren’t even a scientist, Lorraine. I remember you barely got a CSE in science.’

I shrugged. ‘I know. But Ethan insisted that my previous skills as a housewife more than qualified me for Head of Housekeeping, which on a ship, is a senior crew position.’

I laughed at the irony, but mum’s expression was still deadly serious.

‘But, Loraine, didn’t you think it would be dangerous?’

I shrugged. ‘No. My concern was how to tell you and the boys what I was doing.’

‘Well, you certainly had us worried, Lorraine. But now, this morning, listening to you talk so passionately about all the places you’ve been and all the people you have met, I realise that I was perhaps being terribly selfish in wanting you to come home. I do love hearing about all these amazing experiences you’ve had and how you’ve travelled to all these places that most can only dream about. So, now I feel terrible about you having to rush back here unnecessarily and on a completely false alarm. I’m so sorry, Lorraine.’

‘Oh, Mum. Please. I’m happy to be here. I’ve told you how much I was missing you all!’

‘Well, from what I’ve heard this morning, you might have preferred to stay where you were.’

‘Mum, I’m just so relieved you’re okay. Honestly, I was ready to come home.’

My mother studied me for a moment as if she was trying to decide on how to respond.

She patted my hand. ‘But what about Ethan? Don’t you still want to be with him?’

‘It’s complicated, Mum. I don’t know. I’m still thinking about it.’

‘You mean that you don’t really know if you do love him after all?’

‘No. It’s not that. It’s just that—well, he’s asked me to marry him.’

‘Oh. I see. And, you’re not sure if you want to marry him?’

I bit my lower lip to stop it trembling. ‘I’m not sure if I ever want to be married again.’

Conscious of the morning getting away from us, we quickly cleared up the kitchen and set the table for lunch and then went our separate ways to get dressed and ready for the boys and Zoey arriving. I was so looking forward to us all spending the whole afternoon together catching up.

When they arrived, we had lunch and then remained sitting around the table, drinking tea.

I wanted to know more about Zoey and how she and Josh had met and fallen in love.

‘Zoey is a reporter with the local paper.’ Josh told me proudly.

‘Actually, I’m a junior journalist with the Shamfold Herald.’ Zoey corrected him.

‘Zoey’s brother, Zack, is one of my friends from university.’ Josh told me.

‘My brother set us up on a blind date!’ Zoey explained, blushing.

I wanted to know if they’d set a date for a wedding yet and where they were going to live when they got married. I know Josh is currently sharing an apartment with another male friend.

But, no matter how many more questions I asked them or how hard I tried to steer the conversation to them and their exciting future plans, they keep giving me short sharp answers and then drawing me off course and onto the proverbial rocks, with yet more questions about my voyage. They did all seem to be overly fascinated by my time spent travelling the world.

Or, rather, Zoey did. Maybe it’s in her journalistic training to ask lots of in-depth questions.

She explained how she was really interested in marine conservation and so she wanted to know all about the mission and about the day to day life on an ocean-going conservation ship.

The boys wanted to know if I’d ever been caught up in storms and how I’d coped being in the middle of the ocean and so far away from land. My mum wanted to know what the ships kitchen was like and what my job actually entailed. I tried to answer all their questions honestly.

I explained that a ship’s kitchen is called a galley and that the rooms are called cabins. I tried to make light of all that I’d experienced. When in truth, they were asking me to describe to them in mere words what had certainly been the most incredible and the most intense experience of my whole life, perhaps aside from having given birth twice.

‘But how did you prepare for it, mum? Was there some kind of special training?’ asked Josh.

‘Of course.’ I assured him. ‘Every crew member gets survival training. We were always doing drills. For example, we had to practice how to fight a fire onboard. We also did man overboard drills and learned how to safely abandon ship if we were ever in danger of sinking.’

‘Wow. It all sounds amazing and incredible. The ultimate adventure!’ Zoey enthused.

‘It certainly was.’ I agreed. ‘Although, looking back, I think I might have been a bit naïve in thinking that life on a ship would be something like living on a small island.’ I laughed.

I remember Ethan using that line on me when I’d admitted my inexperience as a sailor.

‘There are in fact only two similarities; lack of privacy and lack of space. And, as you wake up every morning in a totally different time zone and a different part of the world, it can be a little disorientating!’

‘Especially as you’ve always suffered with motion sickness.’ Mum reminded me stoically.

‘But you sailed around the whole world!’ Zoey cheered, looking at me in wide-eyed wonder.

‘Yes, after our sail away from the Virgin Islands, we crossed the Atlantic to head down the coast of Africa and onto Asia before crossing the Pacific to sail through the Panama Canal and right back to where we started.’

‘How many others were with you on the ship? Were there other women too?’ Lucas asked.

‘Yes, there were always lots of other women. We had eight crew members plus around twenty scientists, all top marine researchers and biologists, who came aboard or departed at various ports of call. Some stayed with us for just a few weeks and others for a few months depending on their studies. During our months at sea, mapping and collecting data, we all saw first-hand evidence of man’s destruction and pollution of the seas and oceans – we sailed through oil spills and vast areas of floating plastic debris, we stopped to help dolphins trapped in discarded fishing nets, and we’ve freed turtles caught up in old ropes. All the people I met on the ship were really lovely and amazingly capable. We were all part of a wonderful team working hard to make a real difference in the world. And, on the tough days, when we faced real trauma or trouble, everyone pulled together seamlessly to help and support each other.’

‘What kind of traumas and troubles?’ Josh asked me in sudden concern.

‘Like the times we battled high-seas and gale-force winds or when we tried to avoid storms or to outrun hurricanes. Trauma, like the time Ethan cracked his head open and we all thought he had a dangerous concussion. Or trouble, when we came across illegal trawling vessels. Except, of course, Ethan doesn’t call it trouble. He calls it dispute.’

‘What kind of dispute?’ Lucas’s eyes were now wide in alarm.

‘Well, we had the good fortune to be spared any run-ins with high-seas pirates, but we did have the misfortune of coming across illegal fishing vessels at various times. Our protocol in these situations was always to call for back up from the nearest coastguard or from one of the Sea Marshal conservation fleet who often patrolled the same waters.’

‘I’m a supporter of Sea Marshal and Sea Shepherd myself.’ Zoey told me stoically.

‘But sometimes, when we came across illegal fishing, it wasn’t always possible to maintain our impartiality.’ I continued. ‘And of course, it certainly wasn’t in anyone’s nature onboard The Freedom of the Ocean to allow the killing of whales for their oils or the slaughter of sharks for their fins. So, sometimes, we had no choice but to get involved to try to stop it.’