Chapter 3
Dad checks the departure board for the fourth time since we arrived three hours early for my flight. We are sitting in a Wetherspoons on the wrong side of arrivals, Mum cupping her tea, Dad pretending to read the paper.
‘And you’ve got the documents for the car rental?’ he quizzes, his eyes appearing over the masthead.
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re sure you’ll be okay with a manual?’
‘I’ll manage.’
‘It’s been a while since you drove and everything’s the wrong way round over there, remember.’
I do remember, I remember the faded red Citroen that rarely made it to a destination without at least one breakdown.
It was my first car, the first one I had bought for two-hundred-and-fifty euros from an old man who had moved into a care home.
That car belongs to Etienne’s brother now, along with anything else that couldn’t be dragged back on a Ryanair flight.
Dad lowers the glasses back onto his nose and surveys the itinerary he had insisted on printing out, including the address of the place that Sam had booked on my behalf: an old Grenier apartment a few roads away from the square.
It’s not on a street I’m familiar with, and I’m grateful for that.
I figure that the stranger things feel, the easier it will all be.
He puts the papers back into a plastic wallet that he had found in his study. ‘I can run this all by Steve?’
I scrunch up my nose. ‘Who’s Steve?’
‘He’s one of your father’s friends from golf, used to work in property law,’ Mum fills in.
‘You met him last month at the Round Table lunch.’ I think about that awful lunchtime outing where I was sandwiched between my parents like a ten-year-old amongst a sea of pensioners.
It was one of their many attempts over the past three years at getting me out of the house and talking to some people that I wasn’t directly related to.
‘Can Steve speak French?’ I proposition, leaning over the table towards my father who I know is only trying to be helpful but has never quite adjusted to the fact that I am a certified adult.
Perhaps, in his defence, I had used my first taste of independence to take a year abroad where I swiftly sacked off my university degree for a man ten years my senior that I had met at a café, so his trepidation might be valid.
Dad shrugs. ‘He can probably use Google.’
I can’t help but grin, take his arm in my hand and squeeze. ‘You don’t need to manage everything, Dad, I managed to survive perfectly fine for seven years before…’
Mum can hear the waver in my voice before I can control it.
Her hand reaches out for mine and takes it.
She is making that face she does when she’s trying to appease me, when she’s trying to avoid a scene.
‘We know, love, but you weren’t doing it all by yourself for long were you?
You had him and now… well, we’re just trying to help.
’ She doesn’t want me to cry at an airport.
She is very English when it comes to things like public emotions, she gave me a Valium at the funeral so I wouldn’t have to feel things ‘too hard.’
Finally, the plane pops up on the board and Dad pats down his thighs and coughs loudly.
‘We’ll leave you to it then, you should have enough time to get through security.’
‘I’ve got two hours, Dad, it’s Stansted, how big do you think this place is?’
‘Well, better safe than sorry.’ I can feel my eyes begin to roll again and I stop it before he sees. I don’t want to leave like this. If Ettie’s death taught me anything it’s that you only get one goodbye, and it counts.
He kisses me on the cheek. His hand grips onto the top of my arm, pinches it a little too tightly.
‘Now I know you won’t accept anything now but if you need it, we can send you over some—’
‘Thanks.’ I stop him before he can finish the sentence. I have a few thousand euros in a bank account I haven’t touched, Ettie’s parting gift.
‘Well anyway, give us a ring when you land, hope it’s a good flight.’ Mum calls Dad off the attack with a wave of her hands. She hugs me. She smells of patchouli oil and linen, smells I only notice on the first and last hugs.
They wait in their seats, watching me, whilst I steer the trolley towards the sign for check in.
I sit down at my departure gate. It is quiet, only a few ageing faces peering down at their newspapers.
I open my passport. Take a glancing look at a younger me, early twenties, trying not to smile, excited about where it was going to take me.
It turns out it wasn’t the ticket to a host of exotic places, just multiple hops across a small stretch of channel to Ettie and back home again.
My phone lights up with another message from Mum asking how things are going. I shoot back an update that I am not currently being frisked in a back office behind security. There’s a message from Archie too. I try to ignore the small warmth that spreads through me; it feels entirely treacherous.
‘Thinking of you,’ he says in a little blue bubble. ‘Think I might even miss you.’ My thumb hovers over the keyboard.
‘Thank you,’ I reply.