A Cornish Cottage by the Sea. Jane Linfoot
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my new flat, and there’s no need to worry. After this, every day’s going to be BRILLIANT!’
Because when you’ve survived a skydive, whatever comes next has to be easy, right?
Four months later …
You could say this all started the day of the skydive. Like a lot of people, I’m obsessed with beginnings. It’s as if we have this need to look back and identify the exact moment where things began, as if fixing an exact point in time could help any. But there again, if I hadn’t broken up with Marcus, I seriously doubt I’d have done that jump, so possibly it began earlier, with the split. But there again, if I hadn’t got my new job, things with Marcus would never have kicked off as they did. So maybe it began with that. But whatever went on before, right now I’m on a journey I didn’t choose to make and didn’t anticipate either. And the rest of my life will only begin again when I get back to where I started.
*
A hundred and twenty-nine days ago I had a stroke.
At the time no one else believed it either. The Tuesday after my skydive I was still giddy with adrenalin. But when I got into the Zinc Inc office in Bath where I work, my boss, Jake, had to carry my morning coffee and muffin fix to my desk because I had pins and needles in my right arm. By lunchtime I couldn’t feel my fingers enough to hold my apple turnover. When I told Jake I could see rainbow halos around his head he took me straight to A&E.
At first they thought I’d slept awkwardly, and sent me home. It took days for them to discover a clot had formed in a blood vessel in my neck, then moved to my brain where it was causing a blockage. The skydive I’d done a couple of days earlier wasn’t directly to blame. They can only think it happened when I wrenched my head around to wave to Bella. Or because I’d spent so long staring up at the sky before we set off. Or maybe when I fell over the champagne bucket.
I didn’t know then, but the brain has millions of tiny things whose name I can’t put my finger on now, all firing messages to different parts of your body. If the blood flow to an area of the brain stops, random bits of your body stop working too. And that’s what happened to me.
You’d think if science has come far enough to land rockets on Mars that doctors would know everything about how the human body works. But the brain is so complicated there is still a lot about it even doctors don’t understand.
There are some things I do know. I’m actually lucky because it could have been a lot worse. I’m walking and talking, and I couldn’t be any more thankful for that. The outlook for recovery is good – most young people who have strokes will return to the job they did before. And that’s the hope I’m hanging on to.
My stroke took things away from me. Right now I’m having trouble with words. I can’t read. My speaking lags way behind my thoughts, and a lot of words I knew before just aren’t there any more. My sensations are all messed up too. Some are heightened, but others have disappeared completely. And I did have a seizure at one point too, so – for now – I can’t drive.
The last four months I’ve grabbed every therapy and medication on offer; I’ve improved a lot, and now it’s over to me. My car’s in the garage at home. My boss, Jake, is paying me a tiny amount until I’m well enough to do my job again. So what I have to do is to find my way back to what I was, one day at a time. It might be slow, and I’ll need to be patient. But what I think is, if I can jump out of a plane I can pretty much do anything. So long as I put my mind to it, I’ll get there with this too. All I want is to go back to being the person I was before. And so now I’m going to Cornwall for a while – I can always remember the Cornwall bit – because it’s my best hope of getting my life back on track. Watch this space …
Day 133: Wednesday, 14th March
St Aidan, Cornwall
Epic Achievement: Finding Cornwall.
‘Periwinkle Cottage, first on the left down Saltings Lane – this is the one!’
I’m looking at a rambling stone cottage next to the lane, its shiny slate roof and chimneys etched against the sky, one windy field back from the cliff edge, but the latticed front porch we’ve pulled up at is just like it looked in the pictures Mum showed me. I’ve been repeating the address under my breath since we left Bath this morning and my woozy head feels like I’ve crossed continents not counties. It’s the furthest I’ve travelled in a while, but it was important to hold out and stay independent on this one. Thanks to Dad’s mate Hal, an Uber driver, I’ve dodged the embarrassment of being a thirty-something getting dropped off by my parents. For the first time in ages I almost feel like a fully fledged adult again.
As we drove into St Aidan along the seafront there was time to take in the long stretch of the bay and the strings of lights being blown around between the blue painted lamp posts. As the sea spray lashed across the taxi windscreen and I peeped out at the clusters of random cottages with their pink and white render clinging onto the hillside, the tiny butterfly flutters I’d had in my stomach all the way here turned to flapping. We passed the neat harbourside houses, the lines of boats bobbing along the quayside, the cockle sellers’ sheds shut up against the winter winds, then wound up the narrow cobbled roads, where emporiums full of surfboards and neon-coloured T-shirts rubbed shoulders with patisseries and cafés and even a gorgeous upmarket wedding shop. We passed houses with small paned windows and bright front doors, and with every corner the car swung around there was a new glimpse of sea between the rooftops. And then we came out onto the top of the hill to find fields edged with rough stone walls, and as we turned into the lane the narrow tarmac road became a rough track, and the first cottage on the left was the one. And now I’m actually here there’s an entire flock of seagull wings battering my chest.
As I jump out and wrestle the taxi door closed I can’t help notice that the bright Cornish sun my mum promised is missing. When I turn to gasp at the hugeness of the sea over the cliff edge beyond the next field, instead of being blue and sparkly the water is blacker than the wide, stormy sky. But for now I don’t give a damn that it’s nothing like the azure postcard views in my head – what matters is I’m here, I’ve done it! And, better still, for the first time since the day I jumped out of that plane, I’m feeling a wonderful lift of achievement. That has to be a good sign.
‘My bags will be fine here. Thanks for everything, Hal.’
I know he’s rushing off to his next job, so I clamber over the pile of abandoned paint pots and stepladders heaped in the porch, give the ship’s bell by the door a loud jangle, then step back to wait.
Ideally I’d like to get off the lane as soon as possible so no one sees how much crap I’ve brought with me, but also because I try to keep my mum’s bags on wheels under wraps at all times. When Marcus and I split he kept all the designer cases, probably because they were all his. Wacky neon luggage might be great at baggage collection for someone my parents’ age, but as far as style goes I’m dying here. Not that I’m one of those ‘must have every label’ people, but a woman has to have some standards.
Hal’s already back in the car and I’m still here next to my bag pile, so I give another tug on the bell rope and wave him off. By the time he’s pulling out onto the main road again I’m remembering Mum mentioning my aunt and her afternoon naps, and how I had to go straight on in if no one answered. So I turn the door knob, giving it a shove, then, when it doesn’t move, I try the bell again but this time I ring it much harder and longer and even louder. Hal said we made good time and my aunt might well have nipped out to get something tasty for tea. Knowing how chatting runs in the family, I could be here all day.
But I’m on a roll here. This is the new, brave, Cornish version of me