Blonde Venus
As passengers stream past to disembark, Anna sits back in her seat, suddenly, inexplicably tired. Then she recalls it is the early hours of the morning in her time zone, even if the sun is heading to the horizon outside. She has been awake all night and it is looking unlikely she will see her bed anytime soon. The irony of being upgraded to a lie-flat seat and then spending all night awake is not lost on her. She sighs and waits and thinks.
Tolly was not what she expected. She’s heard of him, of course, as most hear of celebrities. Although she was not living at home the summer her sister Eleanor dated Tolly Hyde, she received her family’s reports. Admittedly, they are contradictory. Her mother regards him as some sort of saviour, an angel shimmering in a moneyed glow. Her father thinks of him as a sensible young man. The twins, Phoebe and Lily, describe him as if he were some old windbag. And Eleanor, she never speaks of him at all.
Neither Anna nor Jasmine, the next sister in line, had been around when the film crew descended on their home, bringing with them a horde of aspirational starlets. Anna had made a quick trip for the kick-off party, but although she had wined with the best of them, the leading man, Mr Darcy himself, had not been present. Anna had started the evening with every intention of hooking up with the gorgeous bad boy, Jamie Smythe. Until he’d spouted one too many idiocies. Anna had always found stupidity a most unsexy trait in both men and women. She preferred sharp and witty. She’d ended the evening in her own bed, alone.
The following day she had returned to her own life in London and forgotten about the lot of them until a succession of excited messages from her mother had announced the arrival of Tolly Hyde by helicopter. Then there was a late-night call from Eleanor, upset that Tolly had kissed her. But that must have all been smoothed over because the next thing Anna had heard was another flurry from her mother looking forward to her eldest daughter’s nuptials with the self-same man. Anna had ignored this. Until she heard the news from Eleanor herself, she would give no credence to her mother’s speculation. Her elder sister was level-headed and she doubted Eleanor was quite as carried away with love as her mother’s rose-tinted glasses implied, particularly as Eleanor herself never mentioned her new boyfriend.
Their mother was in love with the idea of a dynastic marriage, and Tolly Hyde, who came from a banking family, had been the perfect match. Anna had the general impression that Eleanor would eventually submit. After all, she had submitted in everything else. Eleanor had aced her exams and gone to Oxford University to read History, a suitable subject for someone destined to care for a five-hundred-year-old estate. After she finished, she’d returned home to join her father in the family business of being landed gentry. There had been no teenage rebellions, no gap years finding herself. Eleanor had always had a destiny, and she had followed the path allotted without a murmur. Finding a suitable man whom she liked well enough to settle down with was the next step on the path. Except Tolly Hyde had left Eleanor for Los Angeles and the chance to make his fortune. And Eleanor had jumped off the allotted path and banged the son of the gardener, Jake Winter.
Eleanor had never divulged to anyone, not even Anna, how she had, in the course of a few days, gone from being Tolly’s girlfriend to Jake’s partner. Family gossip held that Tolly had ditched her after landing a role in a blockbuster Hollywood film. And that certainly fitted with the facts but didn’t explain the rest. Whatever had happened with Tolly, Eleanor had become besotted with another man.
Their mother thought it was a rebound. That Eleanor was soothing her damaged heart with the adoration of a safer man. Or it might just have been poor timing because no one who had seen Eleanor could doubt she was crazily, stupidly in love with the impoverished ex-soldier she had married. And no one who had met Jake would ever describe him as safe . Anna could well remember their first meeting as adults. She had laughed for an hour after the phone call that set up the meeting, for her elder sister had managed to astound them all.
While Anna likes her new brother-in-law, she does not understand what lured her sister to upset the family applecart. Their marriage had caused a rift in the family. On the unsuitability of the relationship, their father had sided with Eleanor, but their mother had sided with their grandmother (possibly for the first time in their lives) against Anna’s sister.
Now that Anna has met Tolly Hyde, she is inclined to give her mother’s explanation more credence. She doesn’t think she would have found him such an easy person to forget. He is handsome, yes, but that isn’t all of it. He had a way of looking right at her when he was talking to her. It made her feel as if she were the most important person on the plane. So maybe her mother was right and Eleanor had been heartbroken by Tolly’s desertion. And she had sought to mend her heart with someone who loved her more than Tolly had. Because Anna can still feel Tolly’s magnetism, even after he has gone. And then there at the end, he had shown an unexpected level of kindness; he’d taken a risk and given a perfect stranger his contact details, just in case she should need a friend.
Anna has no intention of ever using that number. It would be a betrayal of her sister for a start. But she leaves it there in her phone. It is proof. Of what, she doesn’t know. A surreal night, perhaps. But something. Definitely something.
As the aircraft empties, Anna stands and gathers her belongings. She moves towards the First Class cabin and looks for the deceased. There in one corner, slumped against the body of the plane as if in sleep, is her patient. A mask covers his eyes, and a blanket is draped over his body. Unusually, everyone in First Class is still in their seats, waiting. As the trickle of disembarking passengers disappears, there is a muttered conversation between the flight crew on the plane and the ground crew on the jet bridge. The pilots appear, then stand back as a gurney is wheeled onto the plane. Two paramedics in blue shirts with big patches on their upper arms accompany it. Anna moves forward and identifies herself as the doctor who had pronounced death.
She gives her short summary of the treatment and the timings. Middle-aged man. Collapsed. Asystolic. Resuscitation started by aircrew. Epinephrine given. Time of death. A life reduced.
Then she is free to go.
She steps out onto the jet bridge to find it empty of passengers. The stultifying heat of Los Angeles hits her, sweat prickling on her forehead, clamming up her palms. Her footsteps echo as she makes her way onto solid ground. The normal stream of travellers that sweeps along towards the immigration hall has disappeared. Anna has to pick out the way from the signs alone. She walks slowly, back-tracking once when confused by the signage. Then she turns a corner and enters another world. Hordes of people queue in snaking lines. Their chatter forms a constant hum. Uniform-clad officials shepherd the masses, occasionally barking an order to an oblivious traveller.
Anna joins the end of a designated queue. Around her she can hear voices in French and German and maybe Swedish? Scandinavian, certainly. She guesses several transatlantic flights have docked about the same time and resigns herself to a long wait. She thinks of Tolly and his fast track through a VIP lane, and sighs. No good deed goes unpunished. She should have just slept and left him to cope with his own sensitivities. At least then she would not be standing here, only having had a couple of hours of refreshing sleep. But strangely, she finds she doesn’t care. She had fun talking to him. She corrects herself. They had fun talking together.
“Anna!” There’s a note of exasperation to the call. Anna looks around. Two lines in front of her, someone is waving furiously. A tall, leggy blonde. Not the bleach blonde that comes from a bottle, nor the blonde that is a shade lighter than brown. This woman has hair like a cornfield, rippling golden in the sun. It lies loose around her shoulders, in tumbling waves. Big amber eyes under darker, full brows. Anna has always fancied that in a past incarnation, this woman lazed under the blazing sun of the Serengeti.
“Bella!” Anna raises her hand in acknowledgement. But the woman is already moving, worming her way back through the queue to get to Anna. She’s dragging a cabin bag behind her and it scrapes a man’s ankles. He turns to snarl at her, then notices the golden goddess and bites his tongue. His angry Watch it morphs into a nonchalant No problem . But his display of stoicism is wasted as Bella hardly notices. She leaves him and his ego in her dust as she finally reaches her target.
“Oh my God, Anna! This conference might not be so dull after all.” Bella practically squeals the first part but mercifully drops an octave for the second as she throws her arms around her friend. Anna’s nose tickles under a cloud of Vanilla Milk.
“Were you on the flight from Heathrow?” asks Anna, surprised she hadn’t spotted her friend earlier. Bella stands out in any crowd.
Bella wrinkles her nose. “No such luck. They flew us via Toronto. Cattle class all the way too. I’m knackered.”
Wisely, Anna holds her tongue about her fortunate upgrade. Bella can be excellent fun, but she has a chip on her shoulder the size of a plank where money is concerned. But Anna need not worry because Bella has already moved on. “Where are you staying?” she asks, and when Anna names one of the chain hotels linked to the conference, Bella squeals again. “Oh great! We’re in the same place.”
Anna wishes she could summon up the same excitement but she doesn’t feel as excited. She has known Bella a long time. As a first-year medical student, she had opted to live in student accommodation, thinking it might help with making friends and settling in. Having attended boarding school, she was used to communal living, but student life was not the same at all. With no housemistress or parent to police behaviour, the students were free to do as they wanted. There were six in the apartment. One spent his days permanently stoned, but the stench of his weed habit permeated everywhere until Anna’s clothes took on the aroma. More than one tutor raised their brow as she passed. He also ate anything left in the communal fridge. Another was prone to manic intervals, dancing to music full blast at two in the morning. Two never seemed to leave their rooms. At least, she never saw them. She would have assumed they didn’t exist, except pans and plates were washed up and left to dry. And then there was Bella.
Bella was another medic, although Anna could never figure out why she had picked a career in medicine. The usual motivations (wants to work with people, loves science, or hates the thought of a desk job) did not apply to Bella. She was clever enough to excel at anything she chose to study, but she clearly didn’t relish medicine the way others on the course, and Anna herself, did. Neither did Bella have the God complex, so common among medics intoxicated by the power of having a life in their hands.
Anna’s stint in student accommodation had not lasted long. After a term, she had moved into the attic apartment of her family’s Chelsea house. She would jokingly refer to it as a garret in order to discourage visitors, but it was a spacious two-bedroom loft. Admittedly, it was chilly in winter and inclined to overheat in summer, but it was perfectly habitable. Best of all, she didn’t have to share. Except for occasional visits from family members, but she had long since learned to tolerate them and they rarely stayed long.
Although Anna no longer lived with Bella, she saw her often enough in class. Bella seemed to have taken to Anna and as she had a quick wit, Anna didn’t mind. The two of them, one fair, the other dark, cut a swathe through adolescent male hearts.
Anna is a little ashamed of her behaviour back then. She excuses herself because she was young. But so were the lads who offered her their tender hearts and undying devotion little expecting her to trample all over them. She is more careful now. She makes sure to choose sexual partners who are more robust than dreamy boys, and avoids those who are innocent, those with poor self-esteem and those who have spaniel written all over them. Her mind flashes back to the sandy-haired young man with eager eyes in the departure lounge at Heathrow and she wonders if he was one of those early mistakes.
“Anna!” Bella’s exasperated tone cuts through. “You’re not listening, are you?”
Anna shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve been awake for twenty-four hours. Somebody died on my flight.”
Bella’s eyes widen. “Did they do that ‘Is there a doctor on the plane?’ call thingy?”
“No. The flight attendant already knew I was a doctor. She came and fetched me.”
“Did they give you anything? An upgrade?”
Anna hesitates and then chooses not to mention she had already been upgraded. Although no one could have foreseen that it might be payment in advance for services rendered. “They offered me brandy, but I didn’t want it.”
“In that case, I’m not sure I’d bother.”
“Think the General Medical Council might have something to say about that.” Anna’s voice comes out sharper than she intends but she doesn’t apologise.
Bella, herself, seems unconcerned. “How would they ever find out?”
Anna lets it slide. Bella is a grown woman and a qualified doctor. Her career isn’t Anna’s responsibility.
“Anyway,” Bella continues, “what I was saying is, my brother, John, is in town, too. I’m going to sneak him into my hotel room. You up for a night out?”
“Not tonight!” Anna is alarmed. Maybe it is a sign of age, but all she wants is a nice big hotel bed with clean linen. And a shower. And dinner. But a night on the tiles is definitely on her no-fly list.
“Of course not. What about tomorrow?”
A loudly cleared throat behind them is a message from their fellow travellers. Bella glares at the passive-aggressive elderly lady, but Anna concentrates on shuffling forwards in the queue. After a couple of seconds to make her point, Bella follows. When they come to a stop again, Anna says, “Can’t do tomorrow. It’s the conference dinner.”
“You weren’t planning to go to that?” Bella shakes her mane of hair.
“Yes. I went last year and it was really useful.” Anna can see her friend is unconvinced, so she throws in something dear to her heart. “It’s included in the conference cost and the food is pretty good.”
“I suppose. What about the night after?”
Anna takes another step forwards before she answers. “I was going to a drug company’s party, but I could duck out early if you want to meet up?”
“A drug company party? Do they have free food?” Bella sounds interested.
“Some canapes. Nothing much.”
“Free booze?”
“Absolutely,” Anna confirms. “It makes no difference to us because all our drug purchasing is done by central committees, but some of the American doctors have serious purchasing power.”
“Can you get us in?”
“Us?” Anna queries, as she rolls her sleeves up. Her shirt is thin but even so, the temperature in the packed immigration hall is making her overheat.
“Me and John.”
Anna shrugs. “Probably.” She’s never met Bella’s brother before, but if he is anything like his sister, he’ll be good company at a party. She roots around in her bag, searching for her passport, then peels away to the e-gate. Bella is routed to one further down.
Anna clears the gate and looks around. Bella is not through, neither can she see her at the gate. She finally spots her friend’s blonde head at a kiosk. She waits while Bella talks. Then she sees two uniformed officials descend on her friend and march her off.
What just happened?