The next day I wonder, Is this the next day? and Is this Canada? There’s a great word for this feeling—“discombobulated.”
I wake up at 3:00 a.m. The hotel air conditioning is whirring and Mum is doing her semi-snore. Jet lag is real and I can’t sleep. The hotel wireless is rubbish and Mum refused to make my phone international-roaming friendly. Therefore, I start to overthink everything. Like air conditioning. Teresa told me about something called Legionnaires’ disease. It lives in air conditioning. It gives you pneumonia, but you just think you’ve got a bad cold until it’s too late.
I fall asleep with this thought till I wake up again two hours later. I feel like a zombie and I may have a deadly illness that will kill me with a hacking cough but IT IS GENUINELY GREAT TO BE HERE!
Mum springs out of bed. She travels for work and seems to have complete resistance to tiredness, jet lag, and probably Legionnaires’ disease. “Come on, Millie!” she yells. “WE ARE IN CANADA!!”
In the hotel lobby next/this/WHATEVER morning, we meet our guide. She is a permanently happy woman called Cindy with bright red hair and a clipboard. She greets us like we’ve known her for years.
“Ms. Porter! Millie! Good to see you here! We’ve got such a packed schedule! The first day you are going to Niagara Falls and up the CN Tower! And then tomorrow, Millie, of course, there’ll be time for you to see your partner!”
My partner. That sounds very old.
“Now,” Cindy adds, “is there anything you want to do?”
I think of Bradley. “I’d like to see the world’s longest street, please!”
Cindy looks odd for a moment. “Yeah! We can do that! Anything else?”
Mum shakes her head. “Not for me. I just can’t wait to get going!”
“Okay, then,” Cindy says excitedly. “Let’s go to the CN Tower!”