Chapter 14
A week later and I’m finally free to leave isolation and return to work. It’s been a painful three weeks of blisters and daytime TV to keep me company. Spring is creeping into the late February weather, the sun trying to shoulder its way through the clouds for the first time since October.
Soumia left me to fend for myself for three nights whilst she visited her father’s farm.
She was summonsed to attend a family meeting to listen to his plans to abdicate the running of Willowbrook Farm, along with her five brothers.
After reassuring her siblings she wanted nothing to do with the welfare of the livestock, she returned home with a Big Mac, looking like she could do with three weeks in isolation herself.
She’d barely had time to take the gherkin off her burger before she was called out to cover a flight.
Galley FM is on overdrive as Chantelle, the new recruit, got pissed down route and fell five inches off her heels and broke her big toe.
Her surgically enhanced breasts cushioned her from suffering any substantial damage to her face.
I’m grateful Chantelle has taken the limelight of me, less grateful that her shenanigans took nurse Soumia away from answering my every beck and call.
I’ve kept my promise to Soumia and the apps remain deleted. Even in a moment of desperation during a particularly depressing episode of Emmerdale, I managed to distract myself by counting the ways I’m better off single:
I can go out whenever I please and not answer to anyone.
I don’t have to pick wet towels up off the bathroom floor.
There is no one to clean up after.
Empty milk cartons don’t get put back in the fridge.
I don’t have someone fart under the duvet and then hold my head under the covers.
Although I did find that strangely funny.
The crew room is silent apart from the occasional announcement from the speakers in the main terminal building reminding passengers not to leave their luggage unattended.
Despite the constant reminder some fool will leave either their passport, wallet, duty free perfume, prosthetic leg, or child; all items which have previously been handed in to Lost and Found.
Soumia is in the office having her interview for Senior, she looks even more immaculate than usual. This morning, she put a red ribbon in her hair to match the red of the Tiny World Airlines’ logo, then dragged me into work 2 hours early.
The office door creaks open, Soumia’s backing out the office being overly polite, ‘Thank you for the opportunity.’ She closes the door then slumps back against it. ‘Thank Christ that’s over.’
‘How did it go?’ I signal to Soumia to sit next to me on one of the seats that are in a crew circle.
‘I did my best, but she doesn’t like me. She kept staring at her phone, I don’t think she listened to anything I said.’
‘Don’t be stupid, who couldn’t like you?’ I give her a playful elbow to the arm and a half smile.
‘Ivy Walsh for a start.’
‘She’s not as bad you make her out.’ I look at my watch, still thirty minutes before the rest of the crew check in.
‘I’m surprised she didn’t light up a fag whilst questioning me.’
Soumia takes out her compact mirror from her crew bag next to her chair and carefully removes the ribbon from her hair.
‘What did they ask?’
‘Tell us about a time you’ve had to face a difficult situation onboard.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘The usual crap about not having the right pre-ordered meals for the passengers and having to use sandwiches from the crew food to keep them happy.’
‘Could you not have thought of anything more original?’
‘I could have told her about the time a passenger got so drunk he shat himself and then smeared it all over the rear toilet and how I cleaned it up.’ Soumia scrunches up her face at the thought of it.
‘Did you?’ I frown back.
‘I had no choice. None of the other toilets were working and we still had 4 hours before landing into Hamilton. It was disgusting. The cabin stank from front to back. Some poor sod was travelling with a baby who got the blame.’
‘Did Ivy say when she’d let you know?’
‘By the end of the day. Which means I’ll know either way when we land in Boston.’ Soumia reapplies her lipstick. ‘How many hours behind are they?’
‘I’ve no idea, my phone adjusts automatically when I land.’
I stopped trying to work out time differences long ago. I don’t need a watch to tell me I’ll feel like I’ve been dug up on the night flight home; they don’t call it the graveyard shift for nothing.
Outbound flights are always busy, stag and hen parties overindulge because what happens abroad stays abroad, passengers who have been upgraded from economy to premium take full advantage of a complimentary bar, nervous flyers get braver with every gin, and call bells go off every few minutes to summon the crew for more demands of alcohol and overpriced salted crisps in tubes.
In contrast, the inbound flights are silent.
Always a late take off to fly 41,000ft above the Atlantic in the dead of night.
Rows and rows of passengers tossing and turning trying to get comfy on their cheap narrow seats, closing their eyes to catch some respite from their overindulgence down route.
Straight men pray to God that their wives don’t find out they’ve been to the dingiest of strip bars and have spent a month’s salary on a lap dance.
Women contemplate what it would’ve been like to have stayed behind and start a new life without their useless husbands, who despite letting themselves go, still think they’re God’s gift to women.
Most wives come to the same conclusion; they would have stayed if it wasn’t for the kids.
‘Are you ready for your first flight back?’ Soumia’s swapped onto my flight.
She said it was because Boston has a better class of passengers, more businessmen than the demanding tourist you get on a flight to JFK.
I have a slight suspicion it’s because she can keep an eye on me and demand a hotel room next to mine.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s asked crewing for a married roster for the next few months.
‘I just want it over with. I can imagine what they’ve all been saying whilst I’ve been off.’
And I can imagine it, everything from I’ve been fired to I’ve eloped with the gas man who came round to fix my pipes. The golden rule to Galley FM is that the more ridiculous the rumour, the better.
‘No one has said anything about you.’ I look Soumia in the eyes. ‘Well, they just asked how you were.’ I raise my eyebrows. ‘Ok, they asked if you’d quit or if you’d had a breakdown.’
‘And what did you say?’
I assume she’s told the crew I’ve had an ear infection, the obvious excuse for a crew member to be signed off work for three weeks.
‘I panicked.’ Soumia shifts in her seat, her cheeks flushing redder than the ribbon she’s discarded from her hair.
‘Soumia?’ My tone deeper, butcher.
‘I told them you had monkeypox.’ Soumia winces.
‘For God’s sake, Soumia. It would have been better that you’d told them I had a breakdown rather than a fucking STI.’ But I look at Soumia and I can’t be angry. She’s too nice to be angry at.
‘I’m sorry, babe, you know I can’t lie.’
She really can’t. She blows out her cheeks when she’s trying to think of one, making her look like a guilty puffer fish.
‘It’s not monkeypox, it’s mpox. You’ll pay for this Miss Leask.’
I give a half scowl, one that says, ‘don’t worry, I’m not mad, you’re lucky you’re the best nurse in the world’.
Soumia smiles. ‘How about we do The Cheesecake Factory in Boston?’
Why go whale watching when you can eat cake?
‘Only if I can have the Peanut Butter Chocolate.’
‘Well, you still owe me a box of chocolates, so we’ll treat each other.’
The crew room door bounces open. ‘Hiya Queens…’ Jason struts in a like a model on a catwalk for Salford fashion week, all style, no substance. He’s wearing thick black out sunglasses; I’m assuming to protect his eyes from the strip lighting and not the grey skies of Manchester.
Jason looks me up and down, judgement and venom written all over his face. ‘Surprised you’ve come out to play; I thought you’d still be licking your wounds.’
I bite back. ‘Yes, I’m fine thanks for asking. Your foundation is all over your shirt. You been buying it from Home Bargains again?’
Jason leaves his crew bag with us and goes to check his makeup in the cracked mirror which hangs loosely in the kitchenette. He’s going at his shirt with a damp dish cloth to remove the orange grease that’s smeared on his collar.
Over the next few minutes, the rest of the crew come to join us.
Eight cabin and two flight crew for today’s seven hour and thirty-minute flight to Boston on our clapped-out 30-year-old Boeing 767.
It should be a nice trip, all the crew are of a certain age with experience, so we won't be slowed down by newbies. Soumia, Jason and I are joined by Nick and Dave who are, naturally, sat next to each other, still holding hands like they’ve been superglued together at the palm.
Danielle and her Turkey Teeth (I’m tempted to ask Jason if I can borrow his sunglasses every time she smiles), Sandra Scandal, who naturally looks like she’s been electrocuted with her hair frizzed out in a perm and a fresh stain on her blouse from where she’s bitten into her cheese and tomato sandwich and squirted juice on herself, and heading up today’s flight is our Senior, Trevor – Trev, according to his name badge.
Trev is a rare breed when it comes to male cabin crew; he’s straight.
Which naturally means the gay lads view him as a challenge.
Despite the many attempts to make him a topic of Galley FM, Trev has not succumbed to any advances from the male crew.
He has a natural charm, confident but not arrogant, a genuinely nice guy.
‘Right, we’ll have no nonsense on today’s flight, we’ll bish bash bosh the meal service out and then offer the duty free.
Danielle, you’re in charge of the bars today.
Make a PA and say it’s a cash-only service, make up some crap about not having the right computers on board.
The rest of you, put a couple of quid on everything you sell and then we’ll split the profit on the way home. ’
Trev’s also a bit of schemer but there are no complaints from any of the crew. If we do it right, we should all make enough money to cover the price of a night out down route.
‘Have you all got your documents with you?’ Trev continues. We all nod. ‘Great. No point in going over the safety briefing, you’ve all been flying long enough. If you don’t know your shit by now, then there’s something wrong.’
Trev neglects to carry out a pre-flight brief, complacency at its worse. Not because he doesn’t respect safety, but he’s over trusting of his crew.
‘If anyone asks, we’ve discussed a heart attack and pre-planned ditching.’ Trev covers himself from an impromptu Civil Aviation Authority inspection; it’s a legal requirement that a briefing is carried out before every flight.
Trev tells us our working positions; Soumia and I are heading up premium today and the rest are down the back looking after economy. Trev’s going to float between the two and look after the flight crew who have just come to join us.
‘Congratulations on the arrival of your little one,’ Danielle says to Captain Skerrow.
An unconventionally handsome man, he’s 5ft 6 with a faint white scar running down the left-hand side of his face.
Galley FM has reported several ways in which he got it, my favourite being that he went fishing and caught himself.
There may not be much of Captain Skerrow, but what little there is of him is pure muscle.
Another Galley FM crewmour is that he’s as tall as a donkey but hung like a horse.
He speaks with a privately educated schoolboy accent and smells of pure man.
I’m not sure if it’s his own scent or if he buys it in an overpriced bottle, but it adds to his persona as a very short James Bond.
‘Thanks Danielle, not so new anymore, he’s already four months. Lots of sleepless nights but we’re both thrilled. I’ll show you some pictures in flight.’
I hope he doesn’t show them to me; I can’t stand faking interest in other people’s kids.
‘What’ve you called them?’ Dave asks, still clinging onto Nick.
‘Brooks.’ Skerrow straightens his tie.
Jason’s face could kill. ‘What sort of name is that?’
‘It’s after where he was conceived, on a night stop in Brooklyn.’ Skerrow’s cheeks flush.
‘Surprised you didn’t call him Butlin’s.’ Jason slams a half-eaten apple into the waste bin with such force that the bin spits a pip back out at him.
‘I couldn’t do that,’ Sandra chirps in, now with matching juice stains on each breast. ‘My two would have to be called Blackpool and Benidorm.’
First Officer McBride completes the crew.
He’s a pay-to-fly pilot. Fresh out of flight school and eager to build up his hours, he gets huge deductions from his salary to pay for his aircraft type rating training.
He comes out with less than the junior cabin crew.
Despite the fact he’s bonded to the company for the next four years and can’t afford to upgrade his medium meal to a large, he still polishes his two gold stripes and wears them with pride.
His sense of humour makes up for his lack of salary.
His mother still makes him a packed lunch which he brings to work in a Fireman Sam butty box.
At 6ft he towers over CPT Skerrow, though he’s not been at the company long enough for Galley FM to discuss his male appendage.
Heads turn to the meeting room as a cloud of vape fills the opened doorway. Ivy Walsh stands there like a contestant walking onto the Stars in Their Eyes stage.
‘Don’t you lot have a flight to catch?’