Scoop

Cat Walker

Description

Casey is a disheartened 30-something, struggling to find herself in the shadow of an unhealthy relationship with She Who Must Not Be Named. Danny is a long-time lad, terrified of commitment and prone to making a run for it when responsibility calls. Ari is the 12-year-old son of absent father Danny - and a good example of said responsibility. Alice is a bright pink 1970s ice cream van recently converted to a mobile home for three disaffected travellers seeking to find themselves in a spur of the moment six-week journey across Europe and Asia. Casey Jones is unfulfilled. Her charity job depresses her, her relationship with her adoptive and religious parents confuses her, and she has repeated nightmares about her ex, She Who Must Not Be Named. In a moment of sudden clarity she chucks in her job, contacts her old schoolfriend, Danny, and they plan a pilgrimage of sorts to find some real meaning in their lives. What she didn't plan for, however, was an extra passenger in the shape of Danny's 12-year-old son, Ari. Sullen and resentful about his mother's battle with breast cancer, and his recently re-acquainted father, Ari doesn't make the best travelling companion for child-cautious Casey. The three of them are thrown together, alongside bags of oranges and sacks of potatoes, for an intense rollercoaster ride through Europe and Asia's most beautiful and dangerous places, in an ice cream van called Alice, allowing the history and culture they encounter to change the way they see the world, and each other.

Informations

• Publié par: RedDoor Press
• Date de parution: 19 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781913227999
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Scoop


Cat Walker





Published by RedDoor
www.reddoorpress.co.uk
© 2020 Cat Walker
The right of Cat Walker to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections ٧٧ and ٧٨ of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act ١٩٨٨
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover design: Emily Courdelle
Typesetting: Jen Parker, Fuzzy Flamingo
For my son, Albert, and my god-daughters, Emma and Polly, in the hope that they will find their rightful places in the world and, above all, be happy
‘We all travel the same journey…
…some people have better maps.’
Printed on Himalayan Map House bag, Kathmandu, Nepal





Contents
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
EPILOGUE
Disclaimer
Acknowledgements
About the author
Prologue

Brimful of Ashram

I’ve been sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Rezhen Ashram since 4 a.m. I’m numb from the cold and tiredness, let alone the fact that my legs haven’t been forced into this position since primary school. Through the wall-to-wall window in front of me lies the highest valley on earth – the Tibetan Plateau – the roof of the world. The plateau is framed on all sides by beautiful icing-sugar-topped mountains whose names I can recite like an inner city school register: In the front row is the Nyenchen Tanglha Massif, flanked by Qungmoganze in the west, with Noijin Kangsang and Kalurong at the back beside the ragtag group of Himalayas, which run all the way round the back of the Ashram. In the middle of the front row, where the Nyenchen Tanglha gang meets the Namcha Barwa Himal stands the impressive class captain – Namchabarwa himself – over 7000 metres tall, with his little sister – Gyala Peri – a full 300 metres shorter but none the less impressive. I roll their names around on my tongue silently, enjoying the feel of their foreign exoticness.
The sun is just beginning to rise over Namchabarwa. Its yellow fingers take hold of the peak, then climb up and over and tumble down the pristine white slopes like an avalanche chasing a crew of show-off snowboarders. It plunges into the shadows at the bottom of the cliffs, then picks itself up and starts to creep over the foothills and stealthily across the plateau floor as if mounting an attack.
Inside, the room is filled with the reassuring low hum of chanting: ‘Om, Mani, Padme, Hum’, ‘Om, Mani, Padme, Hum’. The prayer drifts over me; through me. It seems to travel to the four corners of the earth and back, permeating everything; holding me in its warm embrace. I’m barely even aware of the cloaked figures around me. It really is as if we are all one. One room full of humanity acknowledging the power and beauty of nature, breathing and chanting in unison. I’ve never felt this kind of belonging before.
Outside, the army of the sun is filling the plain like a flood and advances still, gaining speed as it draws closer. It hits the window suddenly with an almost audible ringing sound. Climbing inside, it begins to sweep across the rush-matted floor towards me, waking the very particles in the air, which glisten and sparkle in the blaze of morning glory. Like a precious gold cloth the sunlight climbs on to my lap and envelops my body in the richest of cloaks. As it rises to my face I can feel myself holding my breath, as if I might drown in the warm golden tide.
Suddenly the whole world is burnished gold and I have to close my eyes against the dazzling light. Its purity and radiance overwhelm me, and nothing else matters. I’m completely and utterly at one with the light in sublime serenity. I’m in the flow of the universe. I’m living inside this very moment. This is finally it: Enlightenment!
I open my eyes to let the sunlight in, and can’t help sneaking a quick look around the room, smugly wondering whether anyone else has felt it too, or whether I’m the only one. I might be the only one. Perhaps I really could be the chosen one like I always hoped…
It takes me just a few glorious seconds of indulgent self-righteousness to realise that I’ve already blown it. I had it. And I’ve lost it again. Somewhere between the sun rising over Namchabarwa and the moment it hit my eyes I’d achieved nirvana, but in the very moment of recognition, in that instant of being at one with the universe, I’ve bloody blown it! I’ve started overthinking again – about myself, as usual.
And once I start thinking I can’t bloody stop. When I try to go back into a state of meditation, all I can think about is my failure. I try to concentrate on the beauty, on the glistening particles still flying in the air around me, but all I can think about is that it’s really just dust; and what is dust anyway? Dirty, filthy, dead skin cells and bits of crap floating around and being inhaled and exhaled by everybody: second-hand, third-hand, old-hand dust. What did God create dust for? I mean, He (or She) may have clothed the sparrows of the air and the flowers of the field, but what spiritual purpose could dust possibly have? Remarkably unedifying stuff, even when it is sparkling like a thousand tiny stars in a Tibetan Ashram in the middle of a dawn meditation.
Watching the dust fly I have a sudden urge to sneeze.
Dammit. I can’t sneeze now. It would shake the whole Ashram out of its meditative calm (I’m a loud sneezer). But, as in a library, this thought seems to be exactly what makes the sneeze seem so inevitable. The more I try not to, the more urgent the sneeze becomes. I go to put my hand up to my mouth to try to stifle it, but it’s pinned down, not just by my oversized robes but by the weight of a sleeping twelve-year-old boy. Momentarily the urge to sneeze subsides as I look down at his tousled mess of hair and feel a pang of… something I can’t quite name. I gaze down at the boy and think what a strange world this is, what a long journey we’ve all made to get this far, and how I didn’t expect things to turn out this way.
Without warning the urge to sneeze returns with a vengeance and this time I can’t stop it.
Chapter 1
The beginning and a surprise

‘Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.’
Dante Alighieri,
‘The Divine Comedy: Inferno’, 1867.

March 2006

When I was little I used to go on adventures all the time. I’d pack an apple, my penknife, a spare jumper and a compass into my brown school satchel, and Mum or Dad would find me tramping determinedly up into the woods behind our house. Thirty years on and the woods have been uprooted to make way for a new housing development, my adventuring days are long gone, and my compass is well and truly broken.
* * * * * * *

I’m staring at the apple perched on a corner of my office desk. Its wrinkled skin is pocked with little indentations and one side of it bears a burgeoning brown bruise from repeated falls to the floor. I wonder how long it could sit there before it rots away completely. Probably longer than it would take for my resolve to eat healthily to kick in. Outside the thick glass window, London’s skyline is struggling to make itself visible behind a misty veil of drizzle.
It’s Tuesday, the most boring day of the week. It has no claim to fame. Wednesday is hump day – halfway to the end of the working week; Thursday is the downwards slope to Friday, gateway to the weekend and perennial excuse to skive off any real work. Even Monday has a caché – everyone’s hungover and miserable and generally doesn’t get anything productive done either.
I’m meant to be filing some really-not-very-important paperwork just in case of an unimaginable future need to look at it again. I stand up, briskly picking up the sheaf of papers to dispatch them to their retirement home. After all, this is my job, and if I don’t do it… Well… Looking round the office at the nodding tops of people’s heads behind their computer monitors I’m suddenly struck by a frightening existential thought. I sit back down at my desk with the papers still in my hand, blindsided by the sheer inconsequentiality of my own existence. God, I hate my job.
Once upon a time I genuinely thought I might achieve some sense of purpose and meaning through work. But in the brutally competitive job market of London I just ended up in a series of dead-end jobs I thought beneath me; until I sank to a point where I found it hard to imagine ever getting out from under them to anything better. The rest of the wannabe-somethings drifted through the office, usually only staying for a couple of years, three at the most, before drifting off again to what I imagined were better things. I felt alienated by their youthful enthusiasm and ‘can do’ attitude. I switched to ‘can’t, don’t’ long ago. So I remained, plagued by the thought that anyone with any get up and go would have already got up and gone.
I thought about quitting most of the time, but never did. I stuck at it, vainly ho