best for FICTION
Cleo leant on the ferry rail, recalling Mike’s apologetic words: ‘Sorry, I just can’t make this trip.’
The ferry and hotel tickets were already paid for, so it was too late to cancel. Cleo had put on a brave face. ‘It’s OK, Mike. I know you’re up to your eyes in it with Luce and the twins. Let me make this trip for both of us.’
Reluctantly, he’d agreed.
Cleo and Mike were twins themselves. When they were both 13, their beloved mum had died, leaving them alone with their grieving dad.
‘All the things she never got to do,’ he’d sighed. ‘The places she wanted to go. Did you know, kids, that she always wanted to travel? Before she had you two, I mean.’
He hadn’t meant to imply they’d been a drag on Mum’s hopes and dreams, but the idea had kind of stuck with Cleo and Mike.
Another one had taken root as they grew. They’d found an old copybook of Mum’s, with city destinations drawn across a map in wiggly red Biro like a string of beads – Amsterdam, Venice, Prague, Athens. ‘What if,’ Cleo had wondered, ‘we take a trip together to one of these places each year? And lay a flower in Mum’s memory wherever we go?’
Mike had been up for it, their dad less so. ‘Isn’t it just an excuse to go travelling?’ he’d asked.
‘Yes, we could go anyway,’ Mike had replied. ‘But we’ll be seeing the places for Mum, I suppose, thinking about her while we’re there.’
‘Too sad,’ their dad had declared. ‘Besides, you know me and abroad. All that travel upsets my stomach. I always told your mum she could head off and take you two along if she wanted.’
Perhaps she’d planned to, before she got ill. Cleo and Mike had never discussed it with her or known her dreams, only finding the copybook when they were 16.
So far, they’d visited several of the cities on Mum’s route, not necessarily in a logical order and not managing to go every year.
Life had its say: Cleo studying for her nursing degree, Mike training as a mechanic, getting married and becoming a father.
When they felt they couldn’t put a trip off any longer, they’d booked Paris. But now, for the first time, Cleo would be going alone.
So here she was, standing on a Calais-bound ferry, butterflies in her tum and a wistful sadness in her heart.
After the ferry docked, she took a train to Paris, feeling a little overwhelmed. She’d had solid, practical Mike alongside on previous trips.
‘Good grief, I’m not helpless,’ she reminded herself, and walked briskly to the Metro.
She bought her ticket and boarded a train for the station closest to her hotel.
‘You’d have loved this adventure, Mum,’ she murmured, tears gathering without
