The Book About Getting Older (For People Who Don’t Want to Talk About It) by Lucy Pollock

Author:Lucy Pollock [Pollock, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405944441
Google: 0LHSDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2021-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

11. Driving

I was on the phone to my friend Laura. We were at university together, but she’s a teacher and lives miles away, and we rarely see one another. After a long download of the adventures of our children, I asked after her mum. Laura paused, and sighed.

‘I’m worried sick about her.’

‘What’s up?’

‘I don’t want to make you do work outside work …’

‘It’s fine, what’s the worry?’

‘It’s her driving.’

Laura’s mum Connie had lived on her own since her husband Paddy died. She was lively and determined; Connie had trained as a vet many years ago, when women didn’t train to be vets, and since retiring she’d thrown herself into other passions – the creation of exuberant oil paintings and open-water swimming competitions, until her farmer’s lung kicked in. She was a lot of fun.

‘Tell me everything.’

‘It’s just … oh, awful.’ I could hear Laura filling the kettle, could picture her moving around her kitchen, phone propped between shoulder and ear, getting supper ready.

‘Her eyes are fine, and the heart people said it was OK for her to drive, but it’s not really a medical problem, I think. It’s more her judgement. You know what her driving’s like.’

For a moment I was back in Connie’s car the first time I met her, over thirty years ago. She had collected Laura and me from the station, hungover after finishing our second-year exams. We sped along the top road towards their small town between walls of once golden stone, now darkened by the soot of the industrial revolution; the windows were down and clouds scudded in the bright sky above the moor. The road swept into a valley, and Connie’s fair hair blew around her head as she shouted, ‘Whizzer bridge coming up, hold on to your tummies,’ and I saw Laura’s hand reach up to grab her seat belt, and the car accelerated, flying over the bridge, and I could taste yesterday’s vodka at the back of my throat.

Laura was still talking, cutlery chinking as she laid the table. ‘She doesn’t judge spaces right, the car is covered in bashes and scratches. She says, “Oh, someone drove into it when I was in Morrisons,” which is just a fib; I know it was her reversing into something. And she keeps a little pot of paint in the glovebox to cover up the new marks so she thinks I don’t see them.’

I smiled. ‘And?’

‘And she’s got very naughty about parking; she basically just puts it where she wants. She’s got a blue badge because she’s so breathless, but, honestly, the kids came back from town the other day and they’d taken a picture of her car on the pavement outside the post office – I mean, all four wheels were on the pavement. It’s just embarrassing.’

I snorted.

‘I know it should be funny, Luce, but it’s not, because the worst thing is the speed; she’s done the speed-awareness course twice, but she hasn’t slowed down, and I know her reflexes just aren’t as quick.

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