Wood - Staunch

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Thank you as ever to the very staunch Caroline Hardman and all at Hardman & Swainson. Thank you to Rachel Kenny, Kate Fox and all the team at HQ.

As well as my travelling companions, thank you to my family and friends who feature in various guises in this book, especially my parents and my sister. Thank you also to those whose steady kindness and support did not make it into the drama of these pages, but helped me throughout.

Steve, Im very glad I took one afternoon off when I was writing this book. To behold, look at all those chickens.

W ell, cheers, girls. We made it! Heres to the Go-ers.

The four of us clink glasses. My cocktail tastes of pure alcohol and sugar, its called a Go-go Goa and its made with fenny, the local moonshine that I think comes from cashew nuts. We arrived in the early hours of the morning and this is our first early afternoon cocktail.

Im on the beach, on the first day of a girls holiday. Im wearing shorts and a bikini top, and successfully managing to skip cold and grey January back home. The sea is there, right in front of me not only a picture-perfect sparkling bright blue, but warm and inviting. Ive already been straight in for a swim. The sand is warm under our feet and the sun on our faces is heavenly. We are jetlagged and slightly frazzled after a long journey, but the excitement is palpable.

There are dogs and cows wandering around the beach and ladies in saris trying to sell us things on every corner. We are in India.

Specifically, we are in a beach shack strewn with fairy lights and residual Christmas decorations, sitting on picnic chairs. A sort of Indian-style mariachi duo wearing matching Hawaiian shirts and cowboy hats are playing in the beach shack we are sitting outside. I shit you not, they are doing a jaunty cover of Dylans Blowin in the Wind. However, thats not actually the most surreal thing about this girls holiday.

Rosie, do you think theres enough gin in this? my grandmother asks her older sister, my auntie Rose. Its so disappointing when you cant taste the gin properly. Its really not on.

Nan and Rose are both wearing brightly coloured sarongs that look incongruous against their white hair, sensible sandals and Roses walking stick.

I think its that local gin, Dot. Its just not the same. Id ask for an extra measure if I were you, Rose agrees. Its not very cold, either.

But we mustnt have ice, Rose! Nan cries. Dont forget, Ells she looks at me sternly dont ever have ice in your drink here.

I wont. I take a gigantic slug of my Go-go Goa.

My auntie Ann and I exchange a glance. Ann is Nan and Roses younger half-sister, so shes a youngster at seventy-two. She looks sophisticated with it, with her dark bob and sleek black swimsuit.

Its my first day of a girls holiday where I am the youngest by an average of forty-six years.

While it may be somewhat unusual at my age to be on holiday with three old ladies, I guess the idea of going on an exotic holiday to find myself and discover my family history is less so. In fact, I fear it may be pretty basic.

As I sit on the beach with a cocktail in my hand, I find myself thinking about how I got here. Its not exactly that I want to escape from my life not any more. At this point, I think its just that I need a break. A lot has happened and Ive just been trying to get through it. Now I need to recalibrate.

Im not sure where to start. I try to think back to my rock-bottom moment and, depressingly, more than one springs to mind. In the tradition of my own generation, I make a list ticking them off in my mind like a BuzzFeed article.

You wont believe how this girl wrecked her life (#3 will blow your mind)!

• Stepmum dying/stepdad leaving family falling apart, subsequent psychotic break; both parents now on third marriage.
• Breaking up with K after twelve years breaking up a whole life, a whole fucking universe for reasons that may have been misguided?
• Immediate new boyfriend, me insisting its not a rebound! even after everyone had stopped listening, another traumatic break-up, more rebounds.
• Going into therapy after dating a potentially violent, certainly threatening, narcissist (the most pertinent point of which should be noted: I did not break up with him he ghosted me).

Of course, it was a combination of all of these things. One long rock-bottom moment over the course of a few years.

I turned thirty feeling smugly ahead of the curve, with a long-term boyfriend, a charming flat by the sea, a lovely job, and a potential promising book deal on the horizon. Id given up smoking; I baked a lot of cakes. But I also still went to Glastonbury every year and wore great eyeliner. My boyfriend was in a band and I wore vintage dresses and went shopping in markets on a Saturday for records and ironic knick-knacks. I was the kind of cool, sorted thirty-year-old that teenage-me would have dreamed of being. I dont know if Im romanticizing in retrospect its easy to do, after all but I know I was happy. I really liked my life, my friends, my family. Especially my family.

Since then, theres been death and divorce. There has been total and utter heartbreak that I wasnt sure Id survive. If it were possible for grief to kill you, I would be dead. I smoke again. I cant remember the last time I made a cake, theres nobody to impress and Id only eat the lot myself, so whats the point?

I was made redundant from my ideal job, then very unceremoniously sacked from the next one, for shagging my boss ex-husband. I now have to commute from Brighton to London every day to try to keep a roof over my head. I live in a place I cannot afford and Im in debt from having to buy out my ex in order to keep it. I dont sleep at night because I worry about the damp kitchen floor that I cant afford to have fixed. When people come over, I have to ask them not to stand by the back door in case they fall through the gaps in the rotten floorboards. To be fair, I also dont sleep at night because of Stupid Things I Said in 2004 (not to mention Clever Things I Should Have Said in 2009), so its a fairly crowded field.

Ive had a string of sort-of relationships that have seemed promising and then gone nowhere. Each time, with every month I get older, it chips away just a little bit more at my poor battle-scarred heart. I havent had a dramatic break-up again thank God, I genuinely dont think I could take it but I havent been in love for over two years now. I dont think the musician in LA who I met via Instagram and do sexy FaceTiming with really counts. Love was something I used to take for granted, and I dont have that luxury any more. Instead its been a series of small-to-medium disappointments that have made me feel terrible about myself.