The Function to Breathe

Twenty Seven

Couldn't sleep, so I decided to give you this part now :-)

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2015

Over the next couple of months my life becomes busier than it has ever been before, and I seem to spend half my life driving between St Agnes and London. Every time I leave London – and Ricky – it gets harder, each weekend seems to fly by a bit quicker than the one before and the days in between drag.

I have a wonderful lunch with Martha the Saturday after I'd initially got in touch with her, we spend as much time talking about our lives over the last fifteen or so years as we do discussing what I need to do to complete my degree. It turns out that it really is as simple as me completing the final year, together with a couple of assignments that Martha sets for me to complete before term starts in September.

She tells me that they're a requirement of me being accepted back on the course, but I think in fact they are more for my benefit, to get my confidence back and remind me of skills I might have forgotten. She also gives me a long list of equipment and materials I'll need for the course, so my first job is to go shopping for those; I'd kept almost nothing from my first time around.

Then I'm able to start on the assignments themselves. The first one is quite straightforward once I get started – to design and make a dress to perfectly fit my own measurements. I work on it during weekday evenings that I spent in St Agnes, doing a little bit each evening after I finish work, have dinner and talk to Ricky.

The second assignment is harder and more time consuming; to create a small 'collection' of six pieces of clothing that had a common theme to them. Again I have to design and make everything, but this time I have to include background research and an essay explaining why I've chosen to create those particular items. This is a taste of what I'll be expected to do from September, the whole of my final year will be devoted to researching, designing and making another collection of clothing that will be modelled at the end of year degree show. I know this assignment is going to take several months to complete and I find myself working on it any spare moment I have, discussing my ideas with Ricky, showing him my sketches and swatches of fabric once I've got far enough to be thinking about fabric. I love every minute of it though, it never feels like work at all, and I find myself wishing I'd done this a long time ago.

In mid-May the house finally becomes ours. We spend one night there – the first night it is officially ours – sleeping on a mattress in the master bedroom and then almost immediately a builder comes in to start ripping out and replacing the kitchen and the bathrooms. Thankfully when Gavin and I had divorced we'd done so on good terms, so I've been able to pull in a few favours from building contractors I'd dealt with while I was married to – and working for – him. All being well we'll have the kitchen and our bathroom done by the end of June, so we can move in properly and then the rest of the work will be complete by the time I start university in September.

Then at the end of May Tara, Chloe and I go to a festival in Dorset that Ricky and the band are playing at. Chloe is beyond excited to be going to her first festival and Tara seems almost as excited as her daughter, looking forward to meeting the band – and Simon in particular – for the first time. I'm slightly less excited, I am looking forward to it, but I'd been to a festival in France with Ricky a few weeks before and had found the crowds overwhelming. I hope it will be less daunting this time because I know what to expect and because I'll have Tara and Chloe to keep me company when Ricky is otherwise occupied.

It is less daunting, whether it's because I know what to expect, or because I have company or whether the festival itself is more laid back I don't know, but I am much less overwhelmed than I had been at the first one. The band are scheduled to play early on the Saturday evening and after arriving on Friday lunchtime we all spend the first twenty four hours wandering round, watching other bands and having fun. Normally Ricky would stay on the tour bus with the other guys at night, but this time he's booked a couple of mini log cabins in the luxury camping area, one for the two of us and another for Tara and Chloe. They're so cute, fitted out with proper beds, a small sofa and washing facilities, each with a little outside area with a couple of chairs on a little deck. As soon as we've put our bags inside Chloe starts trying to work out how she can get Tara to buy one for their garden at home, totally ignoring the fact that their garden isn't anywhere near big enough.