Chapter 4
Just a couple of hours ago, I’d smugly listened to the ever-quietening thuds of Tabbi’s suitcase thumping down the staircase while preparing to be horizontal for the foreseeable future.
Yet here I now was, very much vertical, replicating that same luggage rhythm with my own awkward heaves.
Once more, the universe had cruelly reminded me that it was very much in charge, not me. The bastard.
The microscopic boot of Mum’s ketchup-red Nissan Micra was already full, so I shoved my luggage onto the back seat while Mum held the driver’s seat forwards, and then I clambered in behind it.
Anneka strapped herself into the passenger seat and wedged her smartphone into the air vent mount for navigation purposes. I leaned forward to read the destination.
‘Heathrow?!’ I said, unable to keep the panic out of my voice. I’d assumed we were heading to Bristol Airport, about an hour away.
They turned and grinned in Grinch-like synchronicity, saying nothing while the Michael Bublé track It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas began playing through the car’s tinny front-seat-only speakers.
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Unscheduled Overstimulation, more like.
I tapped out a quick message to Laurie while I had the chance, giving her a summary of the unhinged events that were unfolding and telling her I was unlikely to make it to hers for Christmas Day after all.
I put on my noise-cancelling headphones – which I’d only just remembered to grab as I was shoved out the door – squeezed my eyes shut and vowed to bank some rest before having to deal with the chaos of the UK’s busiest airport on top of the chaos of my family.
After parking in the long-stay car park – the word ‘long’ taunting me – we piled our luggage onto a trolley and headed into the terminal.
‘Right, can you please tell me where we’re going now?’ I said, as I pushed the trolley to a rolling start. ‘I’m going to find out at the check-in desk, anyway.’
‘Uh-uh. We’ve already checked in online,’ Anneka said. ‘We just need to head through security and then chill out in the departure lounge until our gate number’s announced.’
‘What about baggage drop?’
‘Oh, we haven’t paid for hold luggage,’ Mum said casually.
‘What?! But look how much we have! Your ginormous holdalls don’t even have wheels!’
‘Aha, but they have handles,’ Anneka replied, tugging at one of the small straps as if I’d never seen one before.
‘I’m not sure the presence of canvas loops will be enough to deceive the system, Anneka.’
‘It’ll be fine, Flo. Don’t stress. I’ve watched some YouTube videos – we just need to style it out.’
Given that I’d never styled anything out in my entire life, how did they expect me to be able to suddenly switch on airport stealth mode as if I was some kind of sleeper agent?
Sleepy agent, more like.
I smiled at my private joke and considered saying it out loud to Mum and Anneka, but they were focused on paperwork and passports as we made our way to the security queue.
Shit! Passport!
‘Umm, I’m sorry to say that I don’t have my passport.’
A flicker of hope ignited in my belly. Maybe this would scupper the entire—
‘You mean this passport?’ Mum replied coolly, interrupting my JOMO fantasy and shaking my precious ID in front of my face like a Polaroid picture.
Fuck.
‘Wait. Where did you find that?’ I looked at Mum, unsure whether to narrow my eyes accusatorily or widen them in fear.
‘Why are you squinting? Anyway, it was in your bedside drawer.’
Just as I’d feared. ‘You… you looked in my bedside drawer?’
Mum shrugged. ‘There was nothing in there that concerned me, Flo. To be quite honest with you, I was kind of relieved.’
‘Mum!’
Passing through security was as stressful as I’d known it would be.
I, of course, had to empty out my backpack under the watchful eye of security when a ‘sharp, metal object’ showed up on the X-ray machine.
It turned out Anneka had packed my tweezers (‘What?! All I’m saying is that your eyebrows could do with a little tidy-up!
’), and insisted on plucking seven of my ‘stragglers’ there and then before the tweezers were binned.
‘How much time do we have before the flight?’ I asked, eyeing up the departure lounge’s bookshop while rubbing my sore, freshly attacked browbone.
‘No time at all!’ Anneka said, as she cast her eyes upwards at the information screen, before swivelling on her heels and making a beeline for a corridor of departure gates. ‘Our gate’s already been announced!’
It shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did that we’d arrived at the airport in the nick of time.
For a moment, I almost felt grateful that I hadn’t been privy to any logistical information, since it’d prevented me from feeling any anxiety about the prospect of being late.
But then I realised that all the anxiety I was feeling about this trip far outweighed all theoretical worries anyway.
For the seventy-eight-millionth time in my life, I wished I had been born as carefree as Anneka – or as stubbornly resilient as Mum.
Anneka had always been one of those unflappable people who never seemed to be concerned about what the future might or might not hold.
It was as if she was rooted in the here and now, yet also able to bend and flex with the wind, whichever way it happened to blow – like the time she got made redundant from her ‘soul-sucking office job’ but had ended up running a doggy daycare business for all her ex-colleagues – and making way more money that way.
Mum, on the other hand, wasn’t flexible per se, just totally unwilling to confront anything that might end up challenging her way of life.
And her way of life had always been dominated by cheeky grifting and obsessive thrifting.
In short, if Anneka was a ‘fight’, Mum was a ‘flight’ – running away from anything that might threaten her status quo.
I, on the other hand, was undoubtedly a ‘freeze’, my instincts forcing me to shut down whenever something unscheduled reared its head.
And this trip was as unscheduled – and unexpected – as it came.
It took about ten minutes to walk to the gate in question. And then it all became clear. Not only because of the destination airport listed at our gate, but by the sudden sound of Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York blaring from Anneka’s phone next to my ear, accompanied by their delighted squeals.
New York. New. Bloody. York.
Yes, I’d always dreamed of going there. In fact, the plan had been for me and Will to go to NYC next December for our honeymoon once we’d saved up some money after the wedding.
Had I told Mum and Anneka about this plan?
Maybe in passing, at most. That said, they’d always known how much I loved the many on-screen depictions of the city we’d watched together over the years.
Come to think of it, our nights in watching re-runs of nineties New York-set shows like Friends and Sex and the City were probably the only times all three of us had felt relatively comfortable in each other’s company back when we’d lived under the same roof.
And watching Home Alone 2: Lost in New York every Christmas Eve was the closest thing we’d ever come to establishing a festive family tradition.
But did any of that mean I wanted to go to New York with them? Hell, no. And yet here I was, at the departure gate for JFK. With, somehow, zero choice in the matter.
I tried to imagine what Will would say to me in this situation to reassure me.
He’d probably try and game-ify the circumstances, suggesting I should pretend to be part of a Race Across the World team or something, with a giant prize waiting for me at the other end.
At this moment in time, the only prize I wanted was a bed.
Just aim for that bed, then, Flora.
Will’s disembodied voice in my head made me shudder as we found an empty row of seats in the departure gate lounge and spread ourselves – and our ridiculous amount of luggage – across the entirety of it. There was no way we were going to be allowed on the plane with all this stuff.
Mum handed me my boarding pass, which I tucked into my passport. It was only through sheer luck that my ID was still in date – imagine if it had expired?
Imagine if it had expired.
I allowed myself to drowsily revel in the fantasy until a boarding announcement jolted me to attention.
I rose out of my seat but Mum yanked me back down.
‘But they’ve just called our row,’ I said, confused.
Mum replied conspiratorially through smiling, gritted teeth, as if she was a day-one trainee ventriloquist. ‘Izzzzz zzzzzooo zzzzzooon.’
‘Please speak normally, Mum.’
Mum sighed, leaning in close to whisper in my ear. ‘It’s too soon, Flo-go. We need to wait until the queue’s a bit longer so we can get in the middle of the line at the busiest moment and sneak our bags through while it’s busy.’
‘This is so stressful,’ I muttered under my breath.
‘Seriously, Flo, just relax,’ Anneka chimed in. ‘We’ve got this. Do whatever you need to do to calm yourself down. If you’re all tense they’ll only notice us more.’
I sat rigidly upright for about six minutes until the next batch of rows was called.
‘Okay, now!’ Mum instructed through an assertive whisper.
She and Anneka casually heaved their holdalls onto their backs using the handles as makeshift shoulder straps, and carried their stuffed-to-the-brim backpacks by the top loops as if they were dainty handbags.
They chatted to each other casually, not displaying any self-doubt whatsoever about the fact they were carrying many more dozens of kilograms of cabin luggage weight between them than was permitted.
As they’d predicted, they were let straight through.
And then it was my turn. With my huge rucksack on my back, as per its design, and my cabin-ish wheely suitcase tucked in as close to my legs as possible to disguise its presence, I was so nervous about the possibility of being told off I could have cried.
But… I wasn’t. The staff on the gate didn’t say a word, the hubbub of passengers behind me acting as a wave of momentum pushing me through to my mum and sister, who were waiting for me at the mouth of the jetway.
‘See! Nothing to worry about! The woman on YouTube says they only question luggage allowance at the front and at the back of the queue!’ Anneka said.
‘I’d like to see the peer-reviewed paper that proves that theory,’ I replied, although I couldn’t help notice that the situation had flooded my system with a much-needed boost of adrenalin.
As we walked towards the aircraft through the concertina walkway, Mum and Anneka stood either side of me like brackets and, for the first time in many, many years, linked their spare arms through mine.
‘The stressful bit’s over and done with now, Flo. We promise you, from here on out it’ll be nothing but fun,’ Mum said.
We stepped over the threshold of the aeroplane as an interlinked trio, and were greeted warmly by a member of the cabin crew, his professionalism quickly overriding his initial surprise that we’d been permitted to board with so much baggage.
Fortunately for us, this misdemeanour was above (or below) his paygrade.
‘Welcome, ladies,’ he said, directing us to the relevant row.
We played a real-life game of Tetris with the overhead bins, before settling in for the eight-hour flight.
I immediately clicked my seatbelt into place, causing Mum and Anneka to roll their eyes.
Despite their mockery, I kept it fastened.
Because, whatever the next week had in store for me, I knew I’d have to take every opportunity I could to strap in.