The Black Duffle Bag

My friend’s mum had packed me a bag. Not a small one. A ginormous black fabric duffle, so heavy I genuinely couldn’t lift it (and so I dragged it) stuffed with blocks of frozen cheese, butter, bags of crisps, jars of marmalade and jam, and homemade cakes — a Mary Berry lemon drizzle and a lime drizzle, each wound so tightly in clingfilm and tinfoil that they rattled with every step, like they were precious cargo. Because, to whoever was waiting at the other end, they were.

She’d thought of everything. The cheese was frozen solid so it would survive the flight. The cakes were wrapped layer upon layer, tighter than seemed strictly necessary, as if enough clingfilm could hold a lemon drizzle together across three countries by will alone. She’d probably stood in her kitchen the night before, working out exactly how much butter could fit around a cake without crushing it — the kind of calculation only someone thinking about her daughter’s face when she opens the bag would bother making.

I dragged that duffle across Manchester on the Metrolink. I dragged it across London on the Underground to reach Stansted. By the time I landed in Lima, I was half-expecting trouble — a duffle bag stuffed with unlabelled frozen cheese and mystery foil parcels isn’t exactly discreet, and watching the sniffer dogs work the baggage hall, I had a moment of real panic that all twenty-three hours of hauling were about to end with everything confiscated at customs. But nobody stopped me. I walked it straight through, out into the Lima heat, and then again through Cusco, arms aching, the bag refusing to cooperate on every single escalator.

I was on my way to Peru — to visit my friend, and eventually to a silent retreat in the middle of Lake Titicaca. But before any of that stillness, there was just this: frozen cheese sweating its way across three countries, cakes rattling in their foil with every jolt, and me, exhausted, laughing at myself in an airport queue somewhere between London and Lima.

She could have just wished her daughter well and left it there. A phone call would have done. Instead she sent butter, sugar, and a very determined amount of baking, as if love could be measured out and carried through customs. And when I finally handed it all over and Emily unzipped that duffle to find her mum’s lemon drizzle still intact, still wrapped as tightly as it had left her kitchen — her whole face changed. It wasn’t just cake and beef flavoured crisps it was a hug from her mum a thousands miles away.

And all that dragging was worth it.