Camilla Thurlow - Not the Type: Finding your place in the real world

Published by Metro Publishing,

an imprint of John Blake Publishing,

801 Wimpole Street

Marylebone

London W1G 9RE

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First published in hardback in 2020

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78946-343-9

Signed hardback ISBN: 978-1-78946-367-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-978-1-78946-345-3

Audio book ISBN: 978-1-78946-309-5

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design by www.envydesign.co.uk

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Text copyright Camilla Thurlow 2020

The right of Camilla Thurlow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright-holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.

John Blake Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

www.bonnierbooks.co.uk

For Chris and Erica

Note: The names of some individuals have been changed to protect their privacy.

Contents

I was dozing off, my hands loosely clutching a cheap copy of a fashionable Motorola flip phone in my lap. The roads were familiar even in the middle of the night. I had been driven along this route many times journeying between school and home. We had reached the Dalveen Pass, a deep valley in the Lowther Hills that lie midway along the road between Dumfries, my hometown, and Edinburgh, where my school was, some seventy miles to the north-east.

I was returning from a training weekend for the upcoming U19 Lacrosse World Championships, and had been picked up after landing at Edinburgh Airport at about 1 a.m. In a moment that I remember with startling clarity, the car clipped the verge on the left and then spun, sending us over the edge and down into the steep valley. The car continued to somersault, with our heads smacking against the dashboard and then back against the headrest, before coming to a stop upside-down.

The impact had forced the offside door outwards, and the driver was able to climb out and back up the valley, to get a signal to call the emergency services, but the passenger side had buckled inwards, trapping me. I was hanging upside-down from the seatbelt cutting into my middle, with my head pressing on a shard of glass from the sunroof that had been smashed upward and stabbed into my scalp. When the emergency services eventually got to us, they cut away my door and lifted me clear, then strapped me on a pulley stretcher and hauled me up the valley to the road. Amazingly, apart from the cut on my head, whiplash, and a very sore stomach from where the seatbelt had cut into me, I was completely fine. At the hospital I was given some strong painkillers to take over the coming weeks, but one of the drugs was on the banned list we had been given, so I couldnt take it. As a result, training was uncomfortable, though not impossible, and I went on to compete in the championships alongside my teammates.

I remember the police coming to speak to us in the days that followed, telling us how lucky we had been. How, when they saw the state of the vehicle, crushed and broken at the bottom of the valley, they had been expecting fatalities, rather than just the two of us, a bit shaken but largely uninjured.

Up until that point, I dont think I had realised how lucky a person I was. The crash ruptured the safe little bubble I believed I lived in. It was also instrumental in my coming to understand how much of life is down to chance and luck.

Im now an exceptionally nervous driver. It took me four attempts to pass my driving test, and I did everything to get through it, even taking the third in a nearby village that had a higher pass rate and I still failed. I am constantly, if affectionately, mocked by Jamie for my frantic apologies to all other road users because of my persistent indecisiveness. If I have to switch lanes, I will spend minutes leaning out the window mouthing apologies at the nearest cars. He now finds it hilarious to stick his arm out the window and put up his middle finger, while saying to me, If youre going to do something wrong, at least make it seem like you meant to!

Its odd, in a way, that I dislike driving so much, for it plays into so many of my desires: my need to be independent; to travel; to leave. But there is still a part of me that believes the worst will happen, that doesnt trust myself to do as Ive been taught. The only way I can explain this is to compare it to the feeling you get at the top of a very high building, and it feels almost as though you might just step out and over the edge even though in reality you wont. Its just an odd feeling, like your mind is testing your body to see how much influence it can exert over it. Whenever I drive, I feel like I might do something stupid, that I might misjudge something, and because I have known it to happen before, it is very hard to convince myself otherwise. I dont have nightmares about the accident, as I was warned I might. Instead, I revisit it in my daily life, in the context in which it is most relevant, so that every time I drive, I worry I will crash.

There was also, however, an enormous, life-changing positive that came as a result of the accident. It seemed a fairly minor matter at the time, and it was only really made clear to me by a chance comment my mother made. As it turned out, it was that remark that started to reframe my whole life.

It was a month or so after the accident, and I had spent the weeks since worrying myself sick about my upcoming A-level results. One day my mother turned to me and said, Do you really think your A-level results matter after what happened? Dont you know you could not be here right now? It was perhaps the first time that my lack of real control struck me, the realisation that this steady path through life that I had laid out for myself, and which had made so much sense to me and those around me, was actually subject to chance. Moreover, that steady path was perhaps not the most important thing after all living, I realised, isnt really measured by grades or attainment.

I am a nervous driver to this day, but perhaps I became a little less nervous of living. I was less scared to be in disarray, on a path that wasnt calculated and curated, but wild and indirect. I became less nervous to live in chaos and discontentment. After all, if there was a chance of being sent off course anyway, what point was there in living within the narrow parameters laid out for me? What point was there in following the well-worn life paths that so many had trod before? To be honest, after that I think I often chose the path of greatest resistance, for time and time again I was drawn to environments that I didnt fit into.