Chapter 2 #2
Flavia shakes her head. ‘Yes, but also no,’ she says.
‘Yes, there are the statistics, but they don’t tell the whole story, do they?
Some airlines and routes are safer than others.
And if a plane does go down that’s it. Whereas if you’re in a boat, train or road vehicle crash, it’s rare that everyone dies. ’
‘That is true,’ I concede, ‘but the whole point is that we won’t go down.’
‘And why won’t we?’
‘Erm, because statistically the chances of it happening are vanishingly close to zero?’
‘You’re very over-rational,’ she says disapprovingly. ‘Some planes do go down. Therefore ours might.’
‘You’re terrifying me now,’ says a woman from the row behind into the gap between our seats.
‘See,’ says Flavia. ‘Other people agree.’
I struggle not to roll my eyes.
‘Something that helps me,’ says the woman from behind, ‘is thinking that it is what it is. If this is our time, we’d have died in a car crash or from a heart attack or something instead.’
Flavia turns and peers through the gap.
‘Hi.’ I see her smile at the woman, and feel irritated by how much I still like that smile. I shouldn’t be liking things about Flavia in that way. There should clearly not be any kind of romance between us on this trip, and no-one enjoys feeling uncomfortable temptation.
‘Hello.’ The woman behind has obviously been struck by the full force of Flavia’s smile.
‘For me, I’m not sure that’s right,’ Flavia begins. ‘It’s like the theory of predestination. I don’t want to believe that no matter what choices I make or actions I take the outcome will be the same.’
‘God, you’re right.’ The woman’s voice rises. ‘So we’re basically in a dangerous vehicle for no good reason.’
‘A British Airways aeroplane is not a dangerous vehicle,’ I point out.
Flavia shakes her head. ‘Sorry, but first of all there’s the worry that something might go wrong during take-off.
Then there’s the whole how-does-it-even-stay-in-the-air thing.
Like what if it runs out of fuel or we’re hit by a drone or a bird or a terrorist blows us up?
And then there’s landing, which is also dangerous. ’
‘Oh, God,’ the woman behind moans.
‘Nonsense,’ I say. ‘A terrorist could blow you up anywhere and there are very, very stringent checks now at airports, so really you’re way safer here than almost anywhere else.’
The woman moans again.
‘No. I…’ Flavia suddenly stops talking. Maybe she’s realised that it really won’t help anyone if she flips the woman behind into screaming terror, something that to me seems like a very real possibility.
She twists fully round to face the seat gap again.
‘On reflection, you’re completely right when you say it is what it is.
You’ve made me feel a lot better. It’s all going to be fine.
I feel very calm now. Thank you so much.
’ She presents the woman with another blinding smile and then turns back to me and whispers, ‘She is so wrong.’
I sigh. I am going to have to engage with Flavia or she’s going to have a terrible flight, and clearly statistics are not the way to go.
‘You know what I think.’ I inject as much soulfulness into my voice as I can.
‘I think we’re all in this together. I think the pilot sounds like a lovely man.
I think there are a lot of lovely people on this plane.
We won’t go down, but if we do, which we won’t, we’ll be together.
We’ll go to our next adventure, in the afterlife, at the same time.
With some really great people. But also, I think the pilot sounds like a man who has a lot more life to live.
I think he’s going to keep us very safe.
But the main thing to remember is that we’re all in this together.
’ I am talking so much crap it’s beyond belief.
‘Hmm.’ Flavia studies my face. ‘That – as you say – is lovely.’
I sense a but.
‘Like, what you say actually makes a huge amount of sense.’ She quirks one eyebrow. ‘Except you so clearly don’t believe a word of it.’
‘What?’ Surely I’m not that transparent. I really went for it there. I really believed that I was transmitting extreme sincerity.
‘However,’ she continues, ‘since your words did make sense, I will take comfort from the fact that if I go down I’m going down with you, and I will now focus on reading my book and not worrying about anything, because in the event that we do crash I will join eternity with you, the lovely pilot and—’ she lowers her voice to a very quiet whisper ‘—the woman behind us.’
‘Great, then.’ My lips are twitching again, which for no good reason at all I find a little irritating.
‘Yep. So feel very free to continue with your very urgent whatever-you-were-doing.’ She flaps a hand in the direction of my phone as though she’s dismissing me, which is a little rich given that she interrupted me with her flying phobia chat.
‘Thank you,’ I say with as much sarcasm as I can muster.
‘No worries.’ She bestows a sunny smile on me like she’s doing me a favour, and the very annoying thing is that I feel myself slightly respond to the smile.
I shouldn’t be annoyed; I should just be pleased that I can now return to my emails.
I’m beginning to type out a response to the tricky message I was considering earlier, when the woman behind asks Flavia through the seat gap about the book she’s reading on her Kindle, which she couldn’t help noticing and has been considering reading herself.
She wonders whether Flavia would recommend it, and would be very happy to share book recommendations herself.
And Flavia, possibly trying hard to wind me up, smiles at me and says, ‘Don’t worry, we won’t disturb you,’ and begins a normal-volume, wide-ranging conversation about books with the woman, right in my ear, clearly greatly disturbing me in regard to the possibility of me getting any work done at all.
Fortunately, I have noise-cancelling headphones. I don’t like wearing them, and I’ve read that research shows that they aren’t good for people, but I do always bring them for eventualities such as Flavia.
Very quickly, I have all sound drowned out and am working away. All is well now. I keep the headphones on, I only glance a few times at Flavia, who’s still deep in conversation with her new friend, and I’m able to get a lot of work done.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her. She jiggles a bit. She reads a bit. She watches a film. Eventually, she nods off.
I do have to say that, given that she’s such a nervous flyer, I’m very impressed that she’s so stoical.
I’m also pleased: I’m tired and she’s been keeping me awake with all the jiggling, plus I felt like I should keep an eye on her given her flying phobia.
Once she’s asleep I’m able to go straight to sleep too.
A few hours later, as the sun comes up, I’m woken by quite severe turbulence.
Two seconds later, Flavia jerks awake and attaches both her hands to my arm in a vice-like grip, before whimpering, ‘Make it stop.’
Half of me wants to laugh and half of me feels very sorry for her.
‘It will stop,’ I say, as soothingly as possible.
And then there’s an announcement. A very bad one: we are told to assume the brace position for a crash landing on water.
‘You dickhead,’ hisses Flavia. ‘Your stupid statistics. Completely wrong. You lulled me into a false sense of security. We’re going to die. And I’m going to have to join eternity with a cynical, conservative, jedalike lawyer.’
‘And I am going to have to join eternity surrounded by chaos.’ I indicate her strewn belongings and do not bother to ask what she means by the word jedalike.
We stare at each other for a moment, before I shake my head and say, ‘Let’s brace. Just in case. It might actually help.’
We both go into the brace position, but on my way down, something occurs to me.
I really don’t think we’re over water. I put my head up for a second to check out of the window, and no, we aren’t.
I think that the announcement must have been a mistake.
Also, if anything, the turbulence is settling.
From just above my knees, I turn my head in Flavia’s direction.
She has her eyes squeezed shut and her lips pressed together.
‘I feel like this is a mistake,’ I tell her. ‘There’s no water nearby.’
All around us, people are screaming, saying prayers, trying to leave voice messages for loved ones. It’s a truly awful bedlam.
I hope desperately that the announcement that they should have made – there really is no water anywhere in sight – was a less terrible one.
‘Fuuuuuck,’ says Flavia from between her knees. Apparently what I said did not help at all.
And then there’s another announcement apologising hugely for the first one and saying that they just meant to inform us that there’s turbulence but that everything is alright and that they just wanted to remind us to fasten our seatbelts.
Flavia sits up very slowly and looks at me.
I raise an eyebrow.
‘Good that it now seems unlikely that we’ll be entering eternity together,’ I say.
‘I was thinking about apologising,’ she says with dignity, ‘but have now decided not to.’
I laugh.
She carries on looking haughtily irritable for a couple of moments, and then she laughs too.
‘Fine,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’
‘Deeply apologetic apology accepted,’ I say.
The plane does another really big (genuinely somewhat alarming) lurch and Flavia grabs my arm again.
‘I’m just going to say now,’ I say, ‘that if we do, er, join eternity together, not that we’re going to, obviously, I am very, very sorry.’
‘As you should be. You shouldn’t have tempted fate with all your stupid statistics.’ Flavia’s fingers are still digging hard into my arm. I vaguely wonder whether she does some hobby or sport that involves gripping things, because her fingers are strong.
We remain like that until the turbulence entirely disappears, after which Flavia gradually relaxes her fingers, and then we give each other quick smiles, before resuming our separate activities – me some work, Flavia her Kindle – until breakfast is brought round, and the rest of the flight passes uneventfully.
I’m not sure how I feel about sitting next to her like this, I reflect over a cup of very stewed tea.
Following the turbulence, the false alarm and Flavia’s arm-holding, we seem to have reached some kind of understanding that we might vaguely like each other despite our very clear differences (and her chaos).
Also, even without the turbulence experience, there’s a strange kind of intimacy about sharing a long-haul flight with someone; it’s as though this has become our home for a while.
I don’t think I want to experience this with Flavia.
It’s causing me to remember how I thought I felt about her all those years ago. It’s unnerving.
I am, therefore, looking forward to landing and joining our wider group.
I would imagine that Flavia and I will then not be forced to spend any one-on-one time together until the flight home, and I will be able to push away any uncomfortable memories about how I truly believed I was in love with her.
I glance at her again. She’s even more beautiful than she was when we were younger.
Over a decade’s maturity shows in her face and it would be very, very easy for someone less life-hardened than me to imagine they were attracted to her.
Fortunately, I have learnt from experience that a pretty face does not a perfect companion make.
She’s the daughter of my mum’s close friend, and my own close friend’s sister, and I wreck relationships.
Plus, the grown-up Flavia seems very chaotic, and chaos is not my thing.
Frankly, I was ridiculous to believe I’d fallen in everlasting love with her.