Home

We looked around the living room, each of us in our own little world. 

There was a bag of shopping on the table. We’d asked Pete to buy some essentials, the very same Pete who’d taken us to Castle Cary way back in August last year, and there they were, with the addition of a large box of chocolates which I managed not to open in the first twenty seconds. 

Rosa went through to her room still calling for her cat. 

Our lovely friend Sophie had been round and not only washed our bedding but she’d made up our beds, even draping some blankets over the boxes our house sitter had moved into Rosa’s room.

It looked and felt like home. 

Suitcase was too full of emotion to stay still and we all went into a bit of a late night frenzy, opening our rucksacks and pulling boxes out of the wardrobe, starting the ‘big unpack’.

I put the kettle on and noticed a large cardboard box on the side. I tried to move it, but it was too heavy, lifting one corner and peeked inside. Friend or foe? 

It was literally full of food! 

Rice and pasta, cans of beans and tomatoes, peanut butter and jam, chocolate, milk and tea bags, maple syrup and olive oil – even toilet rolls and washing up liquid! …I called Theo and Rosa to come see and we had loads of fun getting everything out, the box made us feel like it was Christmas, and there was a card…Samantha! 

I should have guessed, she is so utterly brilliant at detail, everything she does is full of things other people wouldn’t notice, or even think of. 

Such an incredibly thoughtful, loving, and kind thing to do. We hadn’t asked her and yet here it was, a week’s worth of supplies …I wouldn’t be giving the hanky to her!

After the excitement died down Rosa and I went out again to call for Tequila (the cat – Rosa is NOT an alcoholic). 

Until Rosa had her cat back in her arms it wouldn’t feel like we’d really arrived. We knew there was no reason to feel anxious, but…

There was still no sign of her after another ten minutes searching, so we put some food out and sat on the sofa. We didn’t want to go to bed without seeing her but there had been no one living in the house for a week, she could be anywhere …and we had been awake for forty-six hours.

We were exhausted and we needed to sleep. Maybe she’d be in the house in the morning, making her own way in when the house was still and quiet.

We made hot water bottles – it may be going to be the hottest year on record, but night times in England are still cold.

I got into bed… my beautiful, fabulously comfortable, bed. 

Bliss. Pure bliss.

We shouted to each other through our closable doors.

‘We did it!’

‘We actually flippin’ did it…’

Suitcase shuffled around a bit and then settled. One last little cheer for making it home, safe and sound, and we were gone, sleep coming easy.

I had no idea where I was when I woke up…the sounds of the birds sweet to my ears. 

I opened my eyes and looked around my bedroom. We were home.

Tidier than normal, despite our box opening efforts the night before. I remade the resolution that not all the crap that passed for my most precious possessions would make it back into the house. I’d managed to live without any of them for the last nine and a half months… How important could they actually be? 

I got up and went into the living room – the food had gone from the cat bowl!

Yes!!

The last hurdle to happiness – finding that cat!

I wanted to wake Rosa and tell her the food was gone but it was 6.40am, a bit mean. 

This was my time of day though. I could go for the walk I had done every day for the five years before we left for Australia.

I boiled the kettle, got dressed (Somerset wasn’t ready for the naked me) and headed out. 

It wasn’t even raining…

I walked up the green leafy lane and out into the light at the top, past the oak tree with a split down the centre and a huge limb missing after a lightning storm. Past the chestnut trees, sweet and horse, listening to the hedgerows alive with the birds that make their homes near mine. The robins, goldfinches, wrens, and blackbirds that sing to each other every morning.

It was such a big part of being at home for me. Those familiar trees, as constant as anything in my life, the generations of farmers who had planted and maintained these hedges. The way the lane gently moved through the countryside.

The only person out that morning was Gandalf. I doubt that Gandalf is his real name, but he has a long white beard and a staff, so I reckon it’s a fair guess. I could hear the high-pitched whine of a vehicle going too fast for its engine and there he was, wearing the same dirty overalls he’d been wearing when we left, driving his souped-up golfing buggy, leaning forward with a smile I’m sure you could see from the moon. His collie sat behind him in a specially made basket, with her tongue lolling out and a smile equally wide.

Gandalf hadn’t died! He raised his hand in greeting, shooting past me at breakneck speed. In all the years of walking these lanes I had never once seen him slow down on his way to do whatever magic he does.I carried on my way along the lane as the dust settled back down and the birds began to talk to each other again. I knew in the coming days I would see squirrels racing through the trees and if I was out early enough I might see a hare, and one day maybe we’d have badgers back in our garden again. 

We used to see them every day and we wanted them back – we love them as much as we love hedgehogs, and the farmers around here all knew it wasn’t badgers giving cows TB.

Enough with the cull. It made no difference and had cost the taxpayer forty million pounds so far. It wasn’t hard to think where that money could be better spent, and didn’t we all want an end to the suffering of creatures we love?

My friend Hugh has just written a book called ‘Cull of the Wild’ – full of the challenges we face to protect native and indigenous species – nowhere does it say it makes sense to kill our local badgers.

I would buy some peanuts. Badgers are suckers for a peanut!

I arrived back home to find my little family still fast asleep. A superpower I didn’t have…

I put the kettle on and went to wake them – I didn’t want to unpack anymore until we had found Tequila.

Rosa and I searched while Theo made breakfast – and underneath a bush next to our neighbours garden, we saw a flash of black and white.

Rosa and I stared at each other, eyes wide in delight. 

Now for the hard part.

Rosa walked slowly towards the hiding place, talking softly, and after a little while Tequila answered back.

She had quite a lot to say, it turned out.

I reckon if iTranslate had been able to translate ‘cat’ we would have been in for a bit of a roasting that morning.

WHERE – THE  HELL – HAVE  YOU  BEEN?

Which was just the launchpad for some serious questions about ‘loyalty’ and ‘time keeping’.

Rosa listened to ten minutes or so of ‘cat rant’ and then moved a little closer. 

Our neighbour came out to quietly cheer our efforts on, and after another five or so minutes Rosa was within touching distance. 

She slowly extended her hand and Tequila stopped shouting long enough to sniff it, and then rubbed her head against Rosa’s fingers. A silent cheer went up from the watchers… 

Tequila remembered Rosa. She was pretty pissed at us, but she knew who we were, and within five minutes Rosa had her in her arms, both of them in their happy place. 

It took three days before she stopped yelling at us, I have never heard a cat talk that much… it is possible she was simply filling us in on what had happened since we’d been away, but we could all hear the edge. There was definitely a ‘tone’.

We continued the ‘great unpack’ and each morning I walked the familiar lanes of home, beginning to make plans to see family and friends…

Our adventure was done.

The Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin-Man had made it home.

Theo had seen our world in a new way, the truth in his heart reflected in his lived experience. We all have opinions about different cultures, races, and religions, some positive, some less so. What he had seen was that people live their lives, loving family and friends, sitting with babies on their laps, laughing with neighbours, working hard …everywhere in the world. 

People face their struggles and look after each other in the best way they can. We had experienced, on an almost daily basis, the kindness of strangers… and as we tucked into yet another meal provided by our friends, we delighted in the kindnesses of the people who weren’t strangers too.

Rosa had left her home, travelling an inconceivable amount of miles with her parents (why do people fixate on that as being a miracle?!), got herself a job in Australia, was an extra in a Chinese TV show, put herself through four hours of Mandarin study a day for five weeks, and did the deadliest plank walk by herself – going first along that twelve inch plank 2.000 metres in the air, in both directions! 

Every single one of those things had required courage. Our Rosa was no cub anymore.

…and me? Did the Scarecrow have a brain? I’d spent my life doubting myself in all sorts of ways. I had never even thought I might be ‘clever enough’ to write. I don’t know the kind of words clever people use. Words I have to look up, gloss over, or guess what they mean when I read them. 

I guess it was a bit of bloody-minded determination to tell our story as I saw it that had got me started, allowing myself the freedom to write as I felt it and use the words I know, words I use in my everyday life. It’s who I am, and when I thought about it, it’s actually who most people I know are. 

It had felt good to allow myself to be who I am.

…and don’t we all have dreams? Things that matter to us that sit at the back of our lives not quite getting done? Could everyone I know do their version of our journey? Yes, of course they could. 

Maybe, just maybe, I could try and write a book and our story might remind people of their own dreams and stories waiting to be written. I shivered a little – fear or excitement? Time would tell.

Right now, there was a mountain of boxes to unpack and a home to be made. In a few short minutes my neighbours’ four-year-old would be coming round to find out what time I was taking him swimming and I still hadn’t done the washing up. Why doesn’t washing up do itself? 

So many questions to ponder, and the most important of all…

Where exactly was Suitcase going to live?