RED BLANKET

I’m curled beneath a red blanket. My head’s on a squishy cushion and my back is cold. I’m at the Intrepids’.

“Are you okay?” asked my sister. She was in to open the post (mostly for her it turned out) and retrieve a parcel the postman had left ‘behind the green bin.’ She also loudly ticked off the itinerary sheet in the kitchen, next to where it said ‘at sea’ between ‘Nuku Hiva’ and ‘Papeete, French Polynesia.’ That is a long way away. I’m curled up in a red blanket.

“Just cold and tired,” I said as she put the pencil back.

“So you’re having a little sleep,” she replied. I nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

White sand, turquoise sea. The gentle lapping of the great Pacific, vast and free under a sky that makes you want to rethink your definition of blue. Wispy white clouds hang delightfully over the wide horizon, out beyond the swaying palms and the glistening ocean.

“You’ll be in the South Pacific by now,” I’d said in my last email. “Hope it’s warm and lovely, and less full of singing 1970s newsreaders dressed as sailors clutching mops, than I imagine.” 

I should unfurl myself and go home. My hip is hurting. I came in after work, made toast and set the dishwasher off. The next thing I remember is my sister waking me up, under this blanket. My phone has butter smears across the screen.

“Hope you feel better,” she said as she blustered out again. She didn’t wait for a reply. ‘I’m not ill,’ I might have reiterated, ‘just cold and tired.’ But she was gone. The front door snapped shut and the ticking clock returned, like waves rushing in to fill the sudden silence of an empty beach.

I should go home and curl up on my own sofa bed, with my own red blanket and ticking clock, I suppose. I should definitely do something.