My sister, the one who lives a few miles away in Dulverton, sent me an email while I was in the Caribbean, working, during a hurricane, suffering from acute food poisoning. ‘Lynnie is not well,’ was the header.
‘Hi Liz,’ she wrote. ‘Sorry to email while you’re away working, but I thought you ought to know. Lynnie has been rushed to hospital in Sydney, and it turns out she has an ulcer that has burst. She has had emergency surgery, and is now in intensive care on a ventilator. They are worried about her because she has lost so much weight in the past few months, and because of her smoking.’
It’s no surprise, really, that our sister Lynnie is ill. Losing her son, Nick, at the age of 21, after his almost lifelong battle with leukaemia, has been too much. She was strong while he was alive, but now his illness is taking its toll on her. She has another son, Tom, to live for. He is Nick’s younger brother, his best friend. But she could not help but crumple.
Growing up, Lyn was always very different to me, and I looked up to her. She was incredibly beautiful, looking just like a young Jenny Agutter. She was tactile and outgoing where I was introverted and frigid. She was never short of male admirers, handsome doctors who flocked to take her out in their open-topped sports cars. But being beautiful never brought her happiness. Her marriage broke up not long after Nick first became ill with leukaemia as a toddler. She has been on her own ever since. She has never had any money, having worked as a nurse all her life, and doesn’t own her own home. Sometimes, when I think of my own problems, I think of Lyn, and remember how relatively lucky I am. I wish I could fly out to Sydney to visit her. Show her that I care.
My so-called boyfriend will be in the South of France and I don’t have the airfare
I remember not long after Lyn left home to train as a nurse and live in the nurses’ home (‘nursing home’, she called it), a gypsy woman selling pegs and dusters came to our big front door. She told my mum, apropos of nothing, that one of her daughters was cursed, and was being chased by demons. I don’t know if my mum believed her. I thought at the time the gypsy woman meant me, as I have always felt blighted, that nothing ever goes right for me. But perhaps she meant Lynnie after all.
But still, even though I am luckier than Lynnie, in some ways, things keep going wrong for me. I was sent my water bill the other day, for this quarter, and it is £2,500, which is clearly ridiculous. I still haven’t exchanged contracts on my sale, and I have so many debtors snapping at my heels: my accountant, the VAT man, the tax man, the builders, the equine vet, the bank where I have the mortgage on my sister’s cottage.
I am going to have to put the horses (my three, plus Nic’s two) into livery when I move, as I cannot afford land. My friend Isobel offered me her fields for nothing, but I can’t afford what it will take to erect field shelters, and put down a hard surface so there is somewhere to dry their feet, or put them off the grass if one of the ponies comes down with laminitis. The only reason I moved to the country was to have my horse at home, and now I’m right back where I started. I’m worried, though, as Lizzie as well as being difficult is now blind in one eye. She is used to me, and I to her.
It is my 54th birthday on Tuesday, and I won’t even see my so-called boyfriend, as by then he will be in the South of France, I think, and I don’t have the airfare. My pride is too big to tell him this, though. I will just tell him I’m working. I have no friends, well, only three friends. Not one of them is free on Tuesday. My mum is bedridden, in constant pain, delirious. People always tell you that if you are a good person, kind, generous, and you work hard, then life will work out. That ‘things happen for a reason’. But I don’t think either statement is true. I’m not in a very good place right now.
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