Monday 2 May 2011

Chapter 7 - Leaving

Sitting on the train, watching the English countryside race by she wondered again - for the hundredth time - just what she was doing and if it really was the right thing. Leaving everything and everyone she knew behind, striking out alone, heading off with no plan - and no safety net.

She thought back to her last few weeks back home. She'd eventually become completely exasperated hearing everyone telling her how brave she was being once she'd revealed her (lack of) plans. And always in capitals. And bold. And in italics. She could hear it in their voices. They thought she was just this side of daft, and sometimes not even that.

At the time she hadn't felt brave, she'd just felt irritated. Why was moving away something to be wondered at and praised? Wasn't it just another everyday thing that people did all the time? It wasn't like she was heading off to explore the deepest reaches of Amazonian rainforest or embarking on an Arctic expedition. All she was doing was going to Europe. It was hard to get more ordinary than that.

But now as she left the familiar and the known behind her, as the fields slipped away out of her sight, the slow dawning of realisation finally hit her. She finally understood what they had all meant, why they'd been so concerned, what it was they were worried about. Why they'd called her brave. A new place, with no friends, no job, nowhere even to stay when she arrived and a language she barely knew outside the classroom. It was madness - sheer and utter madness.

It's true, she thought, I don't feel brave. Right now I just feel scared. Alone and scared.

And with that, fittingly, her train plunged into the isolation of the Channel Tunnel. And she left.

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