Chapter Seven
SEVEN
Something’s not right, I think despondently as I surreptitiously check the time on my phone.
We’re over an hour into the flight, cruising above Germany, and Hamish is still talking.
He’s barely come up for air as he walks me through the last ten years of his life.
I should be feeling that dizzy, giddy feeling I remember from when we first met all those years ago back home in Cornwall.
My heart should be soaring. This is the moment I’ve dreamed of countless times over the past decade.
Spent hours fantasizing over. Only now it’s actually happening and it feels distinctly unlike a fantasy.
Something is off.
‘So, yeah, man, I was having a really tough time,’ Hamish is saying as I turn my attention back to him, try to focus on his words. ‘And I came to the conclusion that I just don’t belong in the corporate machine.’
‘The corporate machine?’ I repeat. ‘Sorry, I must have missed a bit. Weren’t you just telling me about your part-time job at a beach bar?’
‘Exactly.’ Hamish bobs his head up and down solemnly. ‘It was just too much. One day, while I was pulling pints, I looked out across the ocean and I thought to myself, “Hamish, you should not be shackled by this monotonous nine-to-five”.’
‘You worked nine to five in a beach bar?’ I ask, surprised.
‘I’m elaborating,’ Hamish admits. ‘It was more of a five till ten p.m. shift, Tuesdays to Thursdays. But I just couldn’t be chained by it any longer. It felt so repetitive, like I was a cog in a machine, stuck. I couldn’t get out. I felt so limited. You know what I mean, right, Nee?’
Nee. I’d forgotten how much I used to love that nickname, all for me.
So why does it now sound jarring, like he’s just throwing out random body parts mid-conversation?
I busy myself trying to make understanding noises but, truth be told, I’m starting to fret that Hamish and I are no longer on the same page.
‘Isn’t that just the working world though?’ I suggest tentatively. ‘There are always going to be days when you feel bored or frustrated.’
‘Yes!’ Hamish agrees feverishly. ‘Bored and frustrated, exactly. So I quit.’
‘Oh! And what have you been doing since.’
‘Well, that was a few weeks back and then I flew straight back to the UK to see the family. I haven’t thought about what’s next for Hamish, yet. It’ll come to me. I have been busy making necklaces out of objets trouvés I find on the beach.’
‘Objets trouvés?’
‘You know, like hidden treasures?’
‘Do you mean … beach litter?’
Hamish tuts. ‘No, I mean objets trouvés. People love them, I’ve sold at least three necklaces now. So that could be a career option. Or I might buy a campervan and travel around Aus, just me and my surfboard.’
I’m temporarily blinded by the giant red flags waving right in front of me.
Firstly, I’d conveniently forgotten that Hamish likes speaking about himself in the third person.
Secondly, objets trouvés?! Thirdly, I thought this beach bar job he was talking about was from years ago.
I knew he planned to work in a bar when he first got to Australia but to discover that he’s been doing this for the past ten years of his life?
I fidget uncomfortably with the flap of my seatbelt.
I’ve been focusing on my career since I first moved to London.
Before I even set foot in Kat’s office as a junior PA, I knew that this was what I wanted to do with my life.
Planning events, launching brands, making people’s dreams come true.
And I’ve been working flat out at it ever since.
One day, I hope to run my own events planning company and with a good track record, I’m looking to set something up in the next few years.
I’ve already started working out the finances, figuring out what business loans I can get, where my office might be.
I’ve got a mood board full of ideas for my dream office and quite often I’ll find myself doodling designs for company branding.
All to say, I think I’m pretty ambitious.
So to hear that Hamish found his part-time job at a beach bar on the Australian coast too corporate is …
unsettling, if I’m honest. Does that make me a snob, I wonder uncomfortably.
Drive and determination underpin my day-to-day and here’s Hamish, a decade on, still pottering around doing the same thing he was doing back when we were twenty.
I know I shouldn’t judge him like this. It’s totally unfair of me.
Not everyone is motivated by career, I remind myself.
And Hamish’s passion is for surfing. So, really, it’s very cool to hear that he’s still managed to keep his passion as his main focus, right?
Right!
And also, hearing him talk about the ocean is spellbinding. His eyes have lit up, and it doesn’t matter that he’s wearing turned-up jeans and sandals which ordinarily would give me the ick.
‘Some of the sunsets I’ve seen,’ he’s saying, the lightest Scottish twang left in his voice after years away. ‘Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll see migrating humpback whales on the horizon as the sun goes down. Magical.’
‘No way! I’d love to see that.’
‘Maybe you will.’ He turns his striking gaze to me. I inhale, remembering how good it feels to have those dazzling blues all to myself.
This is it. This is the feeling I’ve been searching for all these years.
This connection between us, it’s undeniable still.
I look into his eyes, as blue as the ocean itself, and I can practically see the promise in them.
There’s so much still to say, so much he’s yet to ask me about my life, but in this moment I’m content just to be here with him.
A wealth of conversation opens up before us, so many possibilities as yet untapped.
And I wonder how I’ll answer when Hamish asks me about what I’ve been doing since we last met.
I have so many work stories to share, and I’m proud of where my life is going.
I don’t have many watching-the-sunset anecdotes with which to dazzle him.
But that’s okay, isn’t it? That’s probably why we worked together in the first place.
Different parts of the same puzzle, fitting together.
I stare, transfixed, as his lingering look turns into a bright smile.
‘It’s been really great catching up, Nee,’ says Hamish, clapping his hands together. ‘And now I need to get some sleep.’
With that, Hamish pulls out an eye mask and some ear plugs, wraps himself in his airline blanket and proceeds to fall asleep on our love story. He hasn’t even asked me one solitary question about myself.
Also, that ‘it’s been really great catching up’ line sounded distinctly like he was ending the conversation full stop. Like he’d had his fill of our reunion, in which he literally only talked about himself for an entire hour, and had run out of things to talk to me about.
WHAT THE FUCK, HAMISH?!
Oh my God, I am raging. How dare he cut me dead like that?
There’s a tiny possibility in a strange and frightening realm that I did, indeed, time-travel to get to this point in my life – in our lives – and now my future partner has fallen asleep in the middle of our romantic reunion?
This will not do. My body vibrates with irritation and I have no choice but to focus on sparking up some more conversation with Hamish once he’s woken up.
Next time, my friend, I will be impressing the heck out of you.
Hamish does not wake up until we land in Singapore.
By which point I have watched two films (different ones this time), eaten as many Tim Tams as I could get my hands on thanks to numerous trips to the galley, and ranked all of my favourite Hollywood actors in terms of hotness and star talent.
I even made notes, because you never know when these things might come in handy.
‘Great kip,’ he yawns. ‘I always get the best sleep on these flights, don’t you?’
It’s the closest he’s come to asking me a question since we boarded this plane thirteen hours ago and I grasp it with an open heart.
‘Actually, I didn’t manage to get any—’ I begin, but Hamish does not wait for me to finish my sentence.
‘Want some?’ he asks, and to my horror I see that he is proffering an egg sandwich. Flashbacks to arriving at Heathrow and swerving sandwiches fill my mind.
‘No, thanks,’ I reply, trying not to wrinkle my nose up.
‘I can’t fly without one,’ Hamish is saying.
I blink.
‘You can’t fly without an egg sandwich?’
Hamish takes a bite.
‘Yep. It’s like a superstition thing. Funny story, I lost my egg sarnie on the way into Heathrow earlier.
I’d got it packed in my rucksack, ready for the flight.
Even went to M&S to get one because theirs are the best and I love going to M&S when I’m back in the UK.
Anyway, I swear it was packed, but when I did a final check of all my stuff on the way to the departure lounge I realised it was missing.
So I had to race back to the shops to try and find one, which was not easy, believe me. ’
‘So, let me get this straight, this entire flight was delayed because you’d lost an egg sandwich?’
Hamish has the audacity to grin at me.
‘Guess so, bro,’ he chuckles, polishing off the offending item with seemingly zero clue that I’m now finding the bro-cabulary grating as hell.
The plane lands, but I don’t hear the roar of the engine this time. All I can hear are my inner screams.
It’s pitch black in Singapore and it seems so strange that we’re in this country I’ve never visited and I won’t be seeing any of it, just marching through an airport before catching another flight.
There’s a hotel in this city with the world’s largest rooftop pool on top of it and I would love to see it.
I turn excitedly to Hamish to tell him as much but he’s preoccupied with his phone.
‘I’ve got some calls to make, Nee,’ he says, coming to a standstill. ‘You go on!’