The Winter Project

10. Isabel

The sunlight was burning her eyes even before she had opened them. Her head was pounding, and she was comforted to remember that it was a Saturday morning and she did not have to emotionally prepare herself to leave the house and go to work. She rolled over and was forcefully awoken by the sound of an empty glass bottle hitting the hard laminate flooring as it fell from the bed. She sat upright and was aware all of a sudden that she was still in Cleo's bed.

Cleo came walking in moments later with two cups of steaming coffee and placed one on the table next the bed. Isabel took it gratefully.

"So," Cleo smiled. "The plan."

"The plan?" Isabel asked. She did not remember much of their conversation the night before after their second bottle of wine, but she knew that she had reacted dramatically to the situation involving the train, which now felt less significant as it became just another memory in a long list of memories that she did not enjoy to think of.

"Yes!" Cleo shouted excitedly. Isabel wondered how she could be so chipper after a night of drinking, but remembered quickly that Cleo drank a lot more than Isabel did and probably had a much higher tolerance for it. "I've come up with a plan for you, and you're going to hate it."

Isabel sighed. She already didn't like the sound of this plan. Each time Isabel felt a sense of dissatisfaction with her life, she would come up with plans. She would write them down, making extensive lists of the things she wanted to achieve and the places she wanted to go. It would take only a few days or even a few hours for her to read over her own words on paper, laughing at herself for ever believing she was capable of doing more than she already did. Her bedroom was full of notebooks, half-filled with half-thought out ideas, the empty pages never to be completed.

"You think that your life has been wasted and you're scared of dying having never accomplished anything," Cleo began. "You want to travel but you've never travelled since your parents died. You're scared of buses, trains, planes, being away from home, travelling and being alone. In spite of all of that, you're clearly more scared of dying with nothing to look back on. Taking all of this into account, I have decided that you are going to travel alone, for two months, via plane."

Isabel couldn't physically stop herself from laughing out loud. She loved Cleo and her enthusiasm, but she thought that Cleo's accurate description of everything Isabel hated would have formed a more thoughtful and manageable plan.

"Cleo, are you crazy? I wouldn't even make it to the airport without having a full on emotional breakdown."

"Isabel, seriously!"

Cleo was still shouting but her tone had moved from excitement to exasperation. She was looking at Isabel with an expression that suggested she was sympathetic but with a hint of impatience.

"Cleo, I understand where you're coming from, but to instantly do everything that has ever scared me? I don't think I'm capable of that. Even if these were the last few months of my life on earth, I'm not sure I would want to spend them strapped into an airplane on my own."

"Okay," she replied and her expression softened. She sipped her coffee silently and stared at the ground. Isabel knew she was assessing her options and coming up with a new plan; she had seen Cleo sit and come up with hundreds of plans hundreds of times. Most of them were usually focused around where they would drink for the night.

"Fine," Cleo said after several minutes. "Here's the new plan. I quit my job, you quit yours. We buy a cheap car, and we travel together. Indefinitely. Until we get bored."

Isabel stared at Cleo, who was not smiling and showed no signs that she was joking. She wondered what it would be like to be a person who could make snap decisions and experience the freedom of not caring, and wondered why Cleo stayed in a regular nine-to-five job when she had the capability to travel the world. She didn't understand why so many people around the world chose to live the same life that she did when they were not bound by such strict mental limitations.

"What about our flat?" Isabel asked.

"We sub-let it illegally and don't tell the landlord."

"What about your job?"

"Success to me is measured in happiness. I'm not that happy at work anyway."

"What about my job?"

"You are a receptionist."

They both laughed, and Isabel felt a twinge of excitement in her stomach.

"How do we pay for it?"

"I have roughly ten grand in my savings account, what do you have?"

"Six."

"Then we're good to go! Isabel, we don't need to fight all of your fears at once, but we also don't need to live miserable and boring lives in this flat for the rest of our lives. If you're going to die because you're clearly a risk to yourself, then die with a smile on your face."

'I'm not a risk,' Isabel said with a pout, and they both laughed with eagerness and a hint of their usual dark humour. She thought about what Cleo said, and she knew that Cleo was right. Isabel had been alive for twenty-four years, but she hadn't lived. She thought of her Grandma's stories of her travels and adventures and longed to live like her. She wanted to see the places her Grandma had lovingly described, and she wanted her Grandma to look down on her and feel pride. She felt the familiar twinge of grief as she thought of the woman she had loved so dearly for so long, and tears formed in her eyes. She mentally changed the subject, unable to think of her for too long without that feeling of a ton of bricks resting on her chest. She focused instead on the quick-fire set of questions she had just asked Cleo, and whether Cleo's responses were in any way feasible. She struggled to find a reason other than fear to carry out their plan.

By the early afternoon, Isabel and Cleo had drawn up a rough plan for how they were going to pull off their spontaneous adventure. They had both written down an intention of notice to leave their jobs. Cleo had transferred all of her savings into a current account. They had identified six potential cars online that they could buy, and were finally stood in front of a battered old van they had found for a few hundred pounds only one street away from where they lived. Isabel scrunched up her nose in disgust, which Cleo picked up on instantly.

"Isabel, this is perfect!" she cried out as if Isabel was crazy for not already realising it. "Your anxiety means that you don't want to leave the house, right?"

Isabel nodded.

"Well, imagine this."

Cleo pulled open the back doors of the van. Inside the back of the van was nothing except damp-looking plywood that covered the floor, walls and roof. It was more spacious than Isabel had imagined, but it was unclean and smelt of rot.

"Try and picture some kind of bed or duvet in this corner here," Cleo said, gesturing towards the far left corner behind the passenger seat. "We could have some cushions behind the seats, a stack of food and some bottles of wine in this corner over here. We can take it in turns driving, play music, camp in the middle of nowhere...we can travel the world without having to leave home because we can make this van our home!"

Isabel was trying to work out how she had gone from sitting at home dreading going into work a few days earlier, to nearly getting flattened by a freight train and subsequently buying a van she was deciding to live in with Cleo as they quit their jobs, illegally sublet their flat and travelled the world. She had never dreamed that she would get the opportunity to travel because she was too afraid, but Cleo's enthusiasm was giving her a feeling she hadn't had in years - excitement.

"The only thing we haven't worked out," Cleo said as she jumped out of the back of the van. "Is where we want to go."