Chapter 20
There’s silence in the forward cabin as Trev blows into the tube of the policeman’s breathalyser.
The passengers have disembarked, but the usual hustle and bustle of the ground staff rushing to turn the aircraft around in ninety minutes is absent.
Crisps are trodden into the carpet, blankets thrown to the floor, sweet wrappers are stuffed into seat-pockets, and a library of books have been discarded, either finished or forgotten.
‘How much did he drink?’ I whisper into Soumia’s ear, she shrugs.
Trev stares directly in front of him as he’s led away by one of the officers.
I can’t tell if he’s in shock or embarrassed by the situation.
The officer holding the breathalyser connects a fresh tube to the top of the small machine, looks around the cabin, and asks who’s next?
Soumia turns round to look at me so fast she could give herself whiplash.
Our minds meet, we don’t say anything, but our look contains a full briefing.
Will the glass of buck’s fizz we had eight hours earlier come back to haunt us in red numbers on the policeman’s device?
The alcohol limit for crew is lower than that of drivers; a glass of champagne can put you twice over the limit.
‘I’ll go,’ I hear myself saying before I’ve time to register what I’ve said. If I blow negative Soumia will relax, if I blow positive then the few minutes delay might buy Soumia enough time to rid the alcohol from her system.
I step forward to the police officer and raise my eyebrows to the crew to say, don’t worry, this is totally normal, I’m fine.
But I am worried, it’s not normal, and I’m not OK.
One, two, three, I didn’t like the job anyway.
Prison won't be so bad. Four, five, breathe Callum, are they all looking at me expecting me to blow positive. I wonder if I wrote to Liam if he’d come and visit me…
‘Negative.’
‘Pardon?’ I ask the police officer.
‘Negative. Next.’
Soumia’s exhaling a deep breath by blowing out her cheeks, the worry lines across her forehead evaporate.
The rest of the crew test negative and the police officers disappear down the airstairs and take off in their cars to their next call out – hopefully to arrest a disruptive passenger and not another crew member.
Skerrow and McBride have disappeared into the flight deck.
A host of ground staff enter the aircraft, yellow high vis jackets flapping in the wind against their black uniforms. They look like a swarm of bees as they clamber over seats, preparing the cabin for the returning passengers.
Jason is the first one of the crew to speak, ‘I bet he’ll be bummed all over the slammer.’
‘Jason,’ Danielle fumes.
‘What?’
‘Shut up you absolute dick.’ Danielle threatens her pointed fingernails, she’s not afraid to use them.
I try to reassure Danielle. ‘He’ll be alright. The company will get him a lawyer or something.’
‘What about the kitty money?’ Nick’s broken from tradition and is sitting two seats away from Dave. Dave’s shaking from withdrawal symptoms having not touched Nick for at least three and a half minutes.
‘I’ve counted,’ Sandra Scandal pipes up. ‘We’ve made three-hundred quid.’
‘Shall we give it to Trev?’ Dave asks, using a drinks napkin to wipe his brow.
Soumia answers. ‘How? Besides, we’d only get asked where we’ve got this money from.’
Captain Skerrow and First Officer McBride join us from the flight deck. The engineer who was with them gets to work on detaching the emergency slide from the aircraft. Flip the flap and pull the strap, the words from the training video come back to me as the slide falls to the ground.
Captain Skerrow relays the order he’s received from head office. ‘We’re to go to the hotel and not speak to any crew back home.’
Danielle has taken her scarf off and is wafting herself with an inflight magazine to keep cool. ‘What’s going to happen to Trev?’
The air outside the cabin has the freshness of early spring, but the tension inside has the effect of an unseasonable heatwave, causing everyone to flush with heat.
McBride’s thick scouse accent replies to Danielle. ‘I don’t know, but he won't be flying with us again. Drunk on board and the cost of repacking that slide is the best part of 30k.’
Danielle’s shoulders are slumped, she’s ripping up a sick bag into tiny pieces, letting the paper flakes drop to the floor like snow. ‘Even if he could come back, he wouldn’t. No one will remember the drinking; he’ll forever be known as the senior who blew a slide.’
Danielle’s right. Crew who mistakenly deploy a slide take on folklore status, becoming a case study of what not to do in recurrent training for generations to come.
Soumia’s standing up and taking charge. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do.
’ We gather round Soumia, waiting for her master plan.
‘God knows what’s waiting for us when we get back home, but you can bet Ivy Walsh will be at the aircraft door the minute it’s opened.
Not a penny of that kitty money is coming back to the UK with us.
If this is our last trip, we’re going out with a bang. ’