The Right Thing

By Celia Banting

How often do we have to face making a choice to do the morally right thing? After accepting lodgings with strangers, Dr. Banting discovered that things behind closed doors were not as they appeared from the leafy, middleclass neighborhood avenues. It seemed an ideal situation, financial assistance for a daughter taking care of her mother who was suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, and someone to keep the poor lady company and give the daughter respite. Yet within days of arriving in America, it was vividly apparent that something very sinister and dangerous was occurring between mother and daughter, and Dr. Banting found herself caught in the middle, trying to help both.
Being a psychologist, Dr. Banting is brutally honest about her motives, fears and dilemmas, and reveals the pathology that was festering in the home upon her arrival but intensified into open hatred and violence as the dynamics in the house changed. The Right Thing is a harrowing and compulsive read, where the reader will understand how such abuse can continue and go undetected in a civilized society, and as Dr. Banting reveals her innermost thoughts and feelings, and psychological knowledge, the reader will embark upon a personal journey of their own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Celia Banting
• Release date: Oct 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301155750

Celia Banting

My career has always been around helping children and I began by training to become a Registered Nurse on the Isle of Wight, UK. My second love is psychology and understanding what makes people tick and I was very fortunate to gain a place at the University of Portsmouth in 1992 to study psychology. At the same time I started a clinical course at Wealdon College to train as a psychotherapist. I went on to achieve a Masters degree in Applied Social Science (social work) and then gained a PhD studying teenage suicide and developing a risk assessment tool. I finished my psychotherapy training at Metanoia in London in 2003. I have worked with young people in a variety of positions, those in a young offender institute (JDC to Americans) and I was "Matron" running the school hospital at Blundell's, a four-hundred year old boarding school, where I also taught psychology to the sixth formers. I have worked in schools to help teenagers avoid being expelled, then as a probation officer, and I currently work in a behavioural health care hospital, helping suicidal teenagers and those with depression and behavioural problems. I absolutely love teenagers and their zest for living, and it hurts me when I see teenagers weighed down with problems so that they don't feel that zest and excitement for life. I felt I had to do something to help and that's why I wrote the series of therapeutic novels to help them cope with their problems and so avoid suicide.

Book preview

The Right Thing

By Dr Celia Banting

Copyright 2012 Dr Celia Banting

Smashwords Edition

Also available in print from Wighita Press

The events of this story occurred over a four-month period. All names have been changed to protect privacy.

Layout by Michelle VanGeest

Cover production by Susan Harring

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Also by Dr. Celia Banting

I Only Said I Had No Choice

I Only Said Yes So That They’d Like Me

I Only Said I Couldn’t Cope

I Only Said I Didn’t Want You Because I Was Terrified

I Only Said I Was Telling the Truth

I Only Said I Could Handle It, But I Was Wrong

I Only Said It Didn’t Hurt

I Only Said I Wasn’t Hungry

I Only Said I Wanted To Kill Myself; I Didn’t Really Mean It

I Only Said Leave Me Out of It

All available from Wighita Press

This book is dedicated to dearest Ellen and to all the forgotten infirm and elderly who are abandoned by the state and who are mistreated by their carers. It is also dedicated to all children who suffer the same fate.

Contents

(To return to the contents page from the body of the text click on the chapter or section heading.)

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

About the Author

Acknowledgements

The acknowledgements for this book are many and varied. As always, my proofreader and typesetter, Michelle VanGeest, is first to be mentioned because she continues to replace my mother’s voice. By that I mean that I learned English grammar and punctuation not through formal education but from my mother; I learned her rules. I suffered from what is now known as dyslexia, though there was no diagnosis for dyslexia in the late fifties. If you need to take a breath, put in a comma. I’ve been on a 20 year journey to educate myself and all of it has been hard, but I’m helped by my mother’s voice telling me where the punctuation symbols have to go. After she died in 1997 and I started writing novels, Michelle replaced my mother’s voice, yet without the reprimand. When I get things wrong or talk funny because I’m English, she straightens me out. She’s honest and has great integrity. She will always be my proofreader and typesetter.

In order for The Right Thing to reflect my Englishness and our countries’ differences, I needed the manuscript to be proofread by an English teacher (she’s actually Irish). Marie Callinan took the manuscript first and proofread it her way, clarifying the differences between the way America and England dictate grammar— it’s very different. The confusion adds to the fog in my dyslexic brain. Marie did a great job, thank you!

The manuscript was then sent to Michelle, not to change what Marie had done, but to look for phrases that we English use that Americans don’t know the meaning of. In response, I added a glossary to address the different uses of our common language, English. There are many differences and I find them amusing.

The next person to acknowledge is Susan Harring, whose creativity amazes me, along with her character, her love and acceptance of everyone. Her design of the cover for this book says it all: all nations, races, and creeds worldwide should join hands to do the right thing. She epitomizes holiness—yet equally womanhood and motherhood—and has the most amazing sense of humour. She is an inspiration to everyone.

My next acknowledgements are equally as important, yet in different ways. Thank you to my precious friend, Vicki, for her continued guiding sense of style, and her profound oneliners that guide me in my personal and professional life. She always gets it right. She and my work partner, Dwayne, both helped me through those terrible four months. Indeed they have been my work partners since 1996 when we all first met.

Another precious friend I have to acknowledge is Jeremy Daniel who taught me American nursing in 1990 when I was fresh out of nursing school and very naïve. He tragically died in 2011 of A.L.S., a horrific death, leaving three gorgeous children. Jeremy has always been an inspiration to me; in fact, he is the one who came with me—as described in the beginning of this true story— to help me put fliers in neighborhood mailboxes so that I could find lodgings. I want every reader to know that Jeremy spent his life doing the right thing, and he impacted thousands of lives in the Children’s Cardiac Unit, and all those with whom he came into contact. He also gave in death by leaving his body to science.

Additionally, I owe so much to my psychotherapist supervisor, Dr. Maria Gilbert. During my training she guided, challenged and forced me to grow through questioning myself and everything I thought or felt. She asked the vital question that changed everything for me and my own personal journey, Who is going to take care of you? Her input in my life has been huge, always extracting the right questions, which forced me to find the right answers. So this book reflects the journey she forced me to willingly take, and I am forever grateful that she agreed to take me on as a student psychotherapist when she was so very busy.

Thank you to Dr. Claude Steiner, who renamed positive and negative Strokes as Warm Fuzzies and Cold Pricklies to make a complicated concept accessible to all.

The next acknowledgements, equally important, belong to the characters in that four-month period of my life: Darling Ellen, a precious lady, a gift I was honoured to meet; Brenda for her welcome home greeting she gave me at the airport; Alex for all his support, advice at work with the children (they loved him); and dear elderly Ben for helping me on that awful day. Although I’d never met Ben before that terrible morning, I found him to be an absolute gentleman despite his poor health.

I will honour him forever, because he taught me what it really means to Pay it forward.

I thank Mark who was a ship in the night, a gentleman who anchored me to a sane place when insanity was all around me.

I wish to acknowledge my love of those Americans who do the right thing, through the care I received from Barbara Tiffany, a semi-retired registered nursed who loaned me $200 when I was absolutely destitute. Barbara understood what was going on and had faith that I was trying to do the right thing.

God bless the fabulous Americans I’ve met in this great country.

Last, but never least, I acknowledge my darling husband, Dessy, who embarked upon the same four-month journey I did, yet differently, with neither of us knowing what the outcome would be. He grew, as I did, and forevermore he has shown the strength and tenacity that makes our marriage stronger.

Preface

This is a true account of a four-month period of my life when I returned to America from England and lived as a lodger with people I’d met on the Internet. I have been as honest as I can be and I’m aware that the book is harrowing and raises some pertinent issues about life and politics in America. Cultural differences enthral me, and I embrace them. Although what I discovered highlights a side of America that few see or wish to acknowledge, I want to emphasise that I love America. I know so many wonderful Americans and they have enriched my life more than I can say.

The issues I was forced to face throughout that four-month period, and since, are presented as a respectful challenge to all those who govern at federal and state levels. Thus, this book has three purposes:

• To highlight the plight of children, the forgotten infirm and elderly, and abuse that may be going on in the house next to yours.

• To honestly explore my own internal processes as I recognised that I was a mandatory reporter of abuse, and how that impacted upon myself and the dear lady I was trying to save.

• Lastly, to highlight that despite the United Kingdom and the United States both speaking English we are, as Sir Winston Churchill once quoted, Two nations separated by a common language, I wish to show how differently we use the English language.

* This four-month period occurred many years ago prior to iPhones and iPads, and the computer programme constantly referred to was an obscure one in its infancy that was quickly outdated and replaced by more efficient means of communication.

Chapter 1

"Always do the right thing," was the phrase my mother instilled into me before I knew that I was learning about life or what it would cost to live up to those words and ideals. It’s always been a part of me and I’ve lived to curse it at times—and now is one of those times.

As I sit on my bed in this unfamiliar room I feel far from home and very alone, only I know that I’m not really alone, my family loves me wherever I am in this world, even if they miss me, but I do know someone who is really alone. The thought of her curdles my stomach and muddles my senses, as I strive not to picture her frail, helpless, and frightened in her bed just feet away from me in the next room in this strange house so far from home.

I’m sitting in McDonalds at Gatwick Airport eating a sausage McMuffin, in fact I eat two, and feel guilty having just completed an eating disorder training course that says I should put distance between the impulse and the action. Why am I doing this; waiting for a plane? I look at Dessy, my husband, doing his paperwork: signing cheques and paying bills. I wonder if neither of us can say goodbye, since eating is my way out and paying bills is his. It’s bizarre and my stomach plays a crazy game with the sausage McMuffins as I see the second hand speed around my watch—it’s almost time to go to the departure gate and that means saying goodbye.

Dessy gathers up his bills and neatly encrypted envelopes, looking really pleased with himself. Well, that’s a good job done, he says, with a satisfied smile that belies his distress at my impending departure. The goodbye is brisk—just a brushed kiss, almost like kissing a maiden aunt or a stranger. We both know that to linger any longer would be too painful and this pact we’ve made will seem insurmountable.

I’m exhausted from trying to manage three university courses, so I’m taking a year off to go to a well-paid job in America. This will allow me to repay my tuition fees without having to beg Dessy to loan me the money. When I suggested taking the job, I think he was so relieved that I wasn’t going to ask him for the money that he said, Well, I won’t like it but it’ll solve a problem, won’t it? His end of the deal is to finish decorating our house. During the four years we’ve lived there, we’ve become complacent and the type of people that neither of us likes, and our house reflects our exhaustion and complacency.

Are you sure you’ve picked out the colour for your study? he asks, and I wish he’d just say I love you instead.

Yes. I’ve put a cross on it, and when I think of a cross I think of kisses, and long for a proper kiss that would tell me that he loves me and is going to miss me, but it doesn’t happen and I understand. It’s too hard to go anywhere near our love, for I might not be able to walk through the departure gate, and I know that it’s the same for him.

Don’t wait, I say, urging him away. Before I married him, I’d go to America several times a year and normally he’d wait until neither of us could see each other anymore by stretching and craning our necks, and I’d make him laugh by pulling silly faces or strongman poses. This time, however, I can’t bring myself to do those things since I want him to go quickly. He does as I ask, and when I turn around to see if he’s still there as I queue to have my bags and my shoes searched, he’s gone and I feel abandoned and alone. Does he have to take me at my word, this time of all times?

My shoes pass the test and I’m allowed to go through the metal detector as nothing bleeps. I guess I’m a safe person. I don’t feel safe, in fact I feel far from safe. Beyond the security checkpoints there are crowds of people in a holiday mood and I feel even more alone, wondering if I haven’t just made the worst mistake of my life. I’m going to be away from home for ten months. How on earth am I going to do this? I get homesick after just two weeks away from Dessy and England’s green and damp countryside each time I go to America. Yet it seems that I’ve developed an uncanny knack of being able to blot out unpleasant feelings or thoughts, because I walk along the moving walkway without thinking about how I’ll manage without my soul mate, my friend and lover, for so long. Instead, I get to the departure lounge panting, and fumble for my phone so that I can leave messages for the other people in my life that I care about.

I’m just about to get on the plane and in case it crashes you need to know just how much you mean to me, I say, with panic and a tinge of hysteria in my voice that is not tempered by the Valium coursing through my body. I miss what’s said overhead and watch people walk so confidently towards the boarding gate, and when I’m the last one left, still making last minute love phone calls, I feel an incongruous sense of urgency to get on the plane, thinking Hey, don’t go without me! I am terrified of flying and always hang back, but this time I rush towards the gaping open mouth of the plane, stifling my terror with indignation that I’m the last in line.

My handbag bumps into the people who are already seated.

Sorry…sorry…oops…sorry, I say to mildly irritated passengers, seasoned travellers who, from the tortured look on my face, must think I’m either neurotic or a relative of Mr. Bean. I kick my cabin bag under the seat in front of me and as the captain tells the stewards to prepare for take-off, I frantically search for my seatbelt, praying that it’s big enough to go around me, and accidentally run my hand along the thigh of the man sitting next to me.

Sorry, I say again, as his boyfriend, who’s holding his hand across the aisle, glares at me while I yank the belt as tight as I can, trying desperately to stop a gruesome thought rolling around my head: If this plane goes down then at least I’ll still be in my seat.

I guess the Valium must be kicking in for I manage to smile at the lady sitting on the other side of me as I feel the plane revving beneath me and the overhead lockers judder…They’re loose. Someone should screw them down. Oh God, I hope nothing else is loose. I can’t help but remember the time I stuffed myself into a tiny plane a year ago, terrified as usual, and certainly not prepared for the Captain to announce that a wire had come loose. I mean, what does that statement do to someone who is terrified of flying?

To retain my sanity I chase those thoughts away.

Before too long we’re in the air and I’m asleep. Disjointed figures float before my eyes as I dream of the last few weeks and all the goodbyes I’ve dreaded and endured. I awake to an irritated, over-painted air stewardess who would look more at home babysitting her grand-children than flying the skies with her glamorous cohorts.

Pardon? I say.

I said, ‘fish or chicken’? she says slowly as if I’m stupid.

Chicken, please.

As she hands me a tray, I notice that this will probably be the last time I’m given a knife and fork to eat my dinner before having to cope with merely a fork and my fingers as Americans seem to use a fork in their right hand and not bother with a knife. I hate plastic cutlery (in England, tableware refers to place mats and cruets, table decorations and candle stick holders; cutlery is the collection of utensils you use to eat with). However, little do I know that within hours of landing all my cutlery will be plastic and my plates, paper.

I try to use my knife and fork but give up as my elbows offend my neighbours, and the boyfriend is still glaring daggers at me across the aisle as I accidentally nudge his lover.

Sorry,

I grin inanely at them, dropping my knife and swapping my fork into my right hand, resigned to the fact that when with Americans, do as Americans do, even though I’m not on their soil just yet. I pass my tray back to the harassed, painted lady and nestle back into the seat and think of the changes I’ve been forced to make in order to sort my life out.

My ambition has always been to be a chartered clinical psychologist, but after finishing an honours degree in psychology, at that time in England there was a waiting list of eight years for a place to study clinical psychology. There was also a cut-off age limit of forty years and, as I was forty-four when I finished my first degree, it seemed as if my ambition was beyond my reach.

I was fifty-one when I saw an advert offering the same course in Australia with no age limit, and after reaching the final interviews I’d already started packing. I was devastated when I wasn’t offered a place. Undeterred, I decided to enrol at a college in London to complete my psychotherapy training, having already done three years at another college. However, within a few months an advert appeared in the Psychologist magazine offering the same Australian course in London, so I applied for a place. I never expected to be accepted but I was, and I found myself in a situation where I was nearly at the end of a PhD researching psychological and sociological factors implicated in teenage suicide attempts, and at the end of a Masters programme in psychotherapy. I couldn’t give up either, having spent so much time, determination and money just so that I could be a clinical psychologist in order to help children and young people.

"Always do the right thing," rang in my head.

Okay, I can do this, I thought. I’ll juggle three university courses for this year and at the end of the year I’ll have finished my Masters’ training in psychotherapy and my PhD. Then I’ll only have this one course to do and that’ll be a piece of cake by comparison.

Only I didn’t realise just how awful it would be. My life had begun to resemble a hamster frantically running on a treadmill going nowhere. I was tearing on and on, driving for hours to get to Greenwich—the eastside of London a few miles away from the Millennium Dome—attending classes in body only, and then racing across a traffic-congested London to my next psychotherapy supervision appointment. Then there were course assignments that needed to be handed in on time, and all this as well as working full-time as a probation officer, which was a difficult and challenging job with sixty open cases between two offices. I was exhausting myself and getting further and further into debt, with only a smidgen of time for my poor, patient husband, and none for myself. I remember exactly the moment when I decided I had to change my life.

The National Probation Service decided that one person from each office had to be trained to work with sex offenders and they chose me, particularly as I worked between two offices, so from their perspective I’d be twice as valuable. I know that sex offenders have their issues as well, need to be treated with respect, and need help too—but my ambition has always been to help children, and I couldn’t bring myself to work with perpetrators of crimes against them. I tried to explain to the office supervisor that I had my own issues about these perpetrators, having inadvertently allowed a family friend into my home, who then went on to attempt to groom some of my children. I knew I couldn’t be objective, but the needs of the National Probation Service in the United Kingdom were paramount— I was the one chosen to train in sex offender treatment and that was that.

I felt hopeless, as if all the years of studying were going to be for nothing. I made my decision easily, almost as if it had been made for me and I had finally listened to what I needed to do. I had finished the fifth year of my psychotherapy training, was at the write-up stage of my PhD and had completed the first year of the clinical psychology course at Greenwich University. The decision was crystal clear to me—I was going to take a year out, go back to work in America with children in a behaviour health care facility, pay off my debts, and finish writing up my PhD thesis. However, unbeknown to me at that time, my PhD supervisor had found another job and left the university without telling any of his students. So far from being at the write up stage of my thesis, I still had two years to do to catch up with all that he’d let slide. I found this out the week before I flew out to America and I was in despair. At least I got to meet my new PhD supervisor and she was mortally embarrassed that this could have happened at a prestigious English university. She was so outraged, she had her department pay for my tuition fees, and she drove me relentlessly—for which, looking back, I am eternally grateful, although at the time I couldn’t see it and cried every day. My husband had no idea what to do other than pat my head helplessly, wondering why women are so emotional. (I didn’t do a lot for female-kind. Sorry.)

I have always wanted to work with children, so when after qualifying as a Registered Nurse on the Isle of Wight (a small island on the south coast of England) I discovered that there were no vacancies to do so, I looked further afield. I found an advertisement in the UK’s Nursing Times to work for a large children’s hospital in America. My five children were ecstatic at the thought of going to America, and so we all travelled to this wonderful country in 1990. I was terrified to leave the sleepy, safe, tiny island but I followed my dreams to work with children. It was an amazing experience, but initially I only stayed just over a year because the city had a terrible gang problem, and I was scared for my teenagers.

However, I made lifelong friends there and America has been an important part of my life ever since. Each year, in order to retain my Green Card, I’d return and I was lucky that the hospital valued me enough to allow me to work for them during my annual trips.

For years I’ve stayed with a colleague who accepted my presence in his home with the same nonchalance as his two pet lapdogs.

Oh, you’re back, they would yap for thirty seconds, and then go about their business of nestling into laps. Eighteen months ago, after a family emergency, this friend had to move from the area, so suddenly I had nowhere to stay. It was a turning point for me. I had to ask myself whether America meant anything to me and if it did, I had to find myself new lodgings. I thought about it a lot and decided to take control of my life and make things happen for me rather than just sit there and let them happen to me.

Twelve months before I left England, I took a week off from my English treadmill with a mission in mind—to find new lodgings in America. I walked down a leafy subdivision behind my beloved hospital and put an orange flier in every home’s mailbox. It said: Registered Nurse seeks lodgings. I’m quiet and respectful and when I’m not working or sleeping, I’ll be studying and completing my PhD. Let’s share each other’s cultures.

I flew home a week later, my heart in my mouth, my future in the hands of strangers, and wondered and waited. Days later an email arrived and suddenly there appeared to be the perfect answer and the perfect situation: a daughter taking care of her mother with Multiple Sclerosis needing financial help and a change of face to amuse her mother. Greta and I chatted over the Internet in the months before I was due to leave England and she seemed so perfect, so friendly, and I couldn’t wait to meet her. When she told me that she had given up her English fiancé in order to care for her mother, I thought, What an amazing human being, one who obviously knows how to do the right thing.

So, armed with a place to stay that was mutually beneficial to each of us, I left my English treadmill and my dear husband, who promised faithfully to finish decorating the house while I was away. I set out to follow my destiny: to work with children, to write up my PhD, and to clear my tuition debts.

The Valium’s wearing off, and I sense an uneasy tremor in my stomach, which lurches horribly every time the captain turns on the fasten your seatbelt sign and we plummet through turbulence.

Please let this be over soon, I pray; my head is so full of bargaining prayers that I can’t even begin to fret over what might be waiting for me when I touch down. I become neurotic as I watch the flight information that shows exactly where we are. As the plane edges towards Atlanta on the screen and begins its descent, my nails leave a permanent indentation on the armrests. I mumble hurried prayers, and as the ground swings up to meet us and the tyres screech, a sigh wheezes from me. The engines slow as we taxi to the terminal and I display the blasé cockiness of a seasoned traveller, which belies my terror and my profound relief.

Now that the business of flying is out of the way and I’m safely on the ground, I allow myself to wonder what might be awaiting me. Will Greta turn up? I mean, I don’t know her from Adam even though I have her address, and I could take a taxi if she doesn’t turn up. But if she changes her mind about having a lodger she could just turn me away, and then I’d truly be alone with nowhere to go and no one to care about me. It’s not a nice thought. I long for Dessy and tears prick my eyes, but when the longing threatens to engulf me, I try to ignore it.

Don’t be so daft, I chide myself and force my feet to walk to the barrier where I think I see her. It takes me a second to work out which of the few people waiting at the barrier has to be her, for she is not waving and hugging the weary passengers. I force a bright smile on my face and give a cheery wave. I am amazed at my ability to squash all the warning bells that ring through my head. It started last night—last night seems a world away, which it is. Dessy and I had wasted our last night together in an attempt to ignore our impending goodbyes by logging onto the Internet. Finally after all the months of chatting on the Internet, Greta had allowed us to see her image on the computer, and I’d had a sinking feeling in my stomach when I saw her straggly hair and bloated body. I had instantly reprimanded myself and thought how outraged I’d been at the eating disorder training programme I’d attended a few weeks ago, when someone had said that fat people have no control over their lives. I’ve always stuck up for the underdog, tried to do the right thing, and in the past have ignored my gut instinct in the pursuit of being fair. And last night when I saw Greta’s appearance was one of those times.

Greta lifts her hand in some sort of greeting as I walk towards her to give her a hug. I try to ignore the way her body instantly freezes with human contact. I’m anxious—maybe she is too.

It’s so good to meet you, I gush. You’re so kind to come and meet me. I mean it. It is good of her to meet me, but every part of my body and instinct is screaming at me to run and book into a Holiday Inn.

Good flight? she asks curtly, walking away before I can answer her. Come on, walk this way. Baggage is down here.

I feel so uncomfortable as she marches off in front of me. I sneak a look at my new landlady and automatically think of the sentiments that woman at the training session had voiced. I had frowned at her at the time, and I’d known that my nostrils were flaring with distaste when she had said that she wouldn’t consider offering therapy to a person who was very overweight, for it would indicate a profound level of psychopathology. Yet watching Greta waddle off towards the baggage claim, I can’t get the woman’s words out of my head. I don’t know what to say, so I chunter on about the flight and how I managed to stop myself feeling afraid, but as she raises one eyebrow at me, I feel stupid and weak.

Go over there, she orders, then you’ll be the first to get yourbags.

I do as I’m told, stifling the thought, Hey, I’ve been waiting around for nearly twelve hours, five more minutes isn’t going to hurt! But I do as she says, trying to squash the image I have of her being the sort of person who would beat her way to the front of a jumblesale queue or—more appropriately now that I am on the other side of the Atlantic—garage sale line. I don’t want to push in—it’s not me, and I know that my bags are very heavy—so to get them off the conveyer belt will mean that I’ll have to swing them to gather momentum, and I’ll be just as likely to beat some poor old person over. Luckily my bags come out last, rattling their way towards me after the old folk have moved away.

Greta storms off ahead with one of my suitcases and I tug at the other, wishing Dessy was here to help me. She is already in the distance and I start to feel really girlie as my hand hurts with the weight of my bag. I need my man. I try to keep up and feel as if I’m three feet tall with my mother about to shout at me to hurry up and stop dawdling. As I try to ignore the pain in my hands and shoulders, I begin to wheeze in the humid heat and tell myself that now is not the time to have an asthma attack.

Oh, thank you, I wheeze, lifting the end of one suitcase as we try to haul it over the electrical wiring in the back of her car.

Oh, maybe it’s a bit close to the wiring? I say, full of concern, having once knocked out the wiring in my friend’s car with my heavy suitcases.

No! she says emphatically, and I feel silenced and stupid. Come on, Celia, get a grip, I think, tears springing into my eyes. You’re exhausted. It’ll be all right, you’re just too sensitive, and so I smile and say Thank you, which she ignores.

I try to focus on the drive. I’ve missed the trees and landmarks that all hold sweet memories for me.

It’s so beautiful, I say, feeling awkward, desperate to dispel the anxiety in my stomach and to bridge the gap between us. I realise that it’s likely to seem strange. After all, despite chatting on the Internet, we don’t really know each other, but I’m troubled because I know deep down that I’m capable of feeling really close to complete strangers if they are capable of reaching out to me. I try again.

I just love autumn; the trees are so beautiful. I’m never here during the fall. The airfares change on the first of November back home so I always miss it. I always miss Halloween, too. I can’t wait to experience Halloween. Do you have many children in your neighbourhood? Oh, I do hope so as I long to be a part of Halloween, I gush

She looks at me sideways.

There are some, I think, she says, but I don’t really do children. I prefer animals.

I remember last night when Dessy and I were on the computer and she had written, I hope you like pets. My heart had sunk even further for I don’t do pets. It’s not that I don’t care about living creatures, I do. It’s just that as a child I had some unfortunate experiences with horny dogs that kind of put me off fur and slipperiness. I’ve never quite managed to get past the idea that any creature with its genitals on show should be wearing underpants, and not doing its business in public or on the road.

Animals don’t seem to like me, I say, lying, for they like me rather too much. I recall taking my toddlers to our church’s cream tea years ago and the vicar’s small dog escaping from the house, making a beeline to hump my leg. The vicar was very embarrassed, but I just wondered what it was about me that brought out such behaviour in dogs. A sentiment that was reinforced years later when I sat on the esplanade pavement, hanging my legs over the sea wall watching children building sand castles. A dog ambled along, cocked its leg and peed down my back. Why me? I thought.

Greta jolts me from my musing. Give me animals over people any day, she says. Oh, that reminds me, I must pick something up for my mother.

What’s your mother’s name? I ask, ignoring her slight against human beings and the association between animals and her mother.

Ellen.

How is she? I ask, full of concern. I deduced from Greta’s emails that she was up to her eyes in responsibilities, being the sole carer of her fifty-four-year-old mother, having no brothers or sisters to share the burden. She had told me that she had given up her fiancé and a life in England to care for her mother, and while reading those emails I felt as if I was in the presence of someone very special and self-sacrificing. So why don’t I feel that now?

"She’s a bitch, always calling for something. I’m sick of her. D’you know that the other night she woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me to get her a breath freshener. Can you believe