Pulling the travel guide out of my handbag by the bed, I browse its pages once more, stroking the glossy coloured pictures of locations too achingly exotic to contemplate – Isla Ballestas, Puerta Inca, Chala, Cahuachi, Puno, Moquegua. Places that are so vivid, so vast, so far removed from my ordinary life that I can barely imagine myself in that landscape. My eyes prickle with hot tears and the towering mountains, lush valleys and sparkling rivers blur until I can’t see them any more. Will I ever get there? Should I even be trying? Should I not just be happy with my lot and let this silly notion of adventure and independence go, for the sake of my family?

Sitting by myself on the bed, I cry, miserable, self-pitying tears, letting them roll down my face and wet the bare skin of my chest.

‘What shall I do?’ I howl out loud to no one. ‘What shall I do?’

But no one answers me and I don’t know what to say to myself.

Chapter 60

Chapter 60

Greg had long nurtured a love affair with tench. There was nothing better in life than sitting by the canal watching the dawn break, the rays of sunshine peeping tentatively through the trees and over the hedges, warming the waters of the canal, stirring the slothlike nature of the fish in to slow, languorous movement.

They had a lovely feel to them too, tench. Leathery, firm skin, fat, round and smooth with a shiny, iridescent green body that glistened in the sun. Their crimson eyes kept a soulful watch on you as you disgorged the hook from their mouths and released them to swim another day. Fine-looking fish, a tench.

He looked at the specimen in his hands with pride. They never struggled either, tench. They were the most placid of all the homely well-loved fish. When all else in life was falling apart, you could depend on the relaxing nature of the tench.

‘If I was Prime Minister,’ Ray said as he ferreted deep in his tackle box, looking for his box of weights or his floats, ‘I’d send all these Polish blokes home. They’re taking all our jobs. Send ’em back – that’s what I’d do.’

‘Didn’t you get a firm of Polish builders in to do your extension?’

Ray busied himself in his box. ‘Yeah, well. They came in at a good price. All the builders round here are thieving bastards.’

‘And don’t you get your car washed at that Polish place up by the golf club?’

‘They do a good job there,’ Ray admitted reluctantly, ‘and it’s only five quid.’

‘You could have had it done by a Bunny Girl yesterday,’ Greg said.

‘I wouldn’t mind that,’ his friend said with a raucous laugh.

‘My wife would have obliged.’

Ray’s eyes bulged like a carp. ‘You’re kidding me?’

Greg sighed. ‘I wish.’