Chapter 6
The plane landed at Heathrow at an ungodly hour, late, and in fog so thick that Tilly hadn't seen the runway until the wheels were on it.
She'd for sure felt it underneath, though.
Arriving back home with a bump, there was no applause for a smooth landing, rather a few gasps and thuds.
The cabin crew had told them, somewhere over the Channel, that their plane was one of the last flights cleared to land before the airport closed.
The British weather hadn't changed its tricks since Tilly had taken herself off to warmer climes.
As she stared out the window at a grey-washed sky, she was by that stage so tired and over it that she'd computed the news about the fog and airport closure as if it were happening to somebody else.
Throughout the whole second leg from Singapore to London, she'd not really slept apart from a few twenty-minute blackouts here and there, with her head feeling as if it were on stilts.
It had been an okay enough flight if sitting in a metal box staring at a screen and listening to a screaming baby for twelve hours was your kind of thing.
Once off the plane, the weather, airport, people and the walls all seemed to be wearing the same grey fog-like tinge.
Drab sprang to mind. Not quite the welcome home she’d imagined in her head.
What was she expecting, though? No one even knew where she was.
Once through, Tilly dragged her case behind her into a virtually empty arrivals hall where a handful of bleary couples were being met by other family and friends, a few bored, lifeless taxi drivers with signs, and a coffee place with its shutter halfway up, did not welcome.
Tilly had pictured landing back in England a few times since she'd left. Regarding what she was faced with on a grey day and an airport closure, she’d clearly romanticised it to within an inch of its life.
In her little homesick daydreams, the arrivals hall had been colourful, packed with smiles, chaotic, happy people, balloons, flowers, beams on faces.
Instead, grey, dismal, grim and near silence pushed back at her.
Somewhere over by WHSmith, a polisher was going slowly across the floor, a backpacker with his shoes off sat on the floor, and a woman frantically rummaged through open bags.
Outside the terminal, fog swirled in a thick, still softness tinged yellow from car lights.
After a quick check on her travel app, Tilly pushed her romanticised version of arriving home to the back of her mind and made her way to the trains and started her pilgrimage to the south coast. Having no clue what to expect, something told her she was doing the right thing.
Deciding she needed sustenance to see her through, she stumped up for a Pret coffee and sandwich and stood on the platform in a bit of a daze.
Boarding a bright blue and yellow fast train where the ticket had cost nearly as much as the one that had got her from Singapore to London, Tilly found a carriage with the fewest people in it, deposited her luggage in a rack and plonked herself down.
Taking the lid off the coffee, hoping that the caffeine would add some perkiness to the all-around grey, she took a sip and watched the weather through the window.
The fog so all-encompassing that the platform was almost not there, the lights smudges of yellow and signs just visible.
Somewhere down the carriage, a man was on his phone, speaking quietly in what sounded like Polish and as the train started to move, Tilly wondered about Lennixx and the fact that she’d had no communication with him whatsoever.
He was currently on a cruise around the South Pacific with sketchy, expensive internet, and his philanderings had no doubt contained little clandestine visits to double beds not his own. She, on the other hand, was now home.
Getting herself settled, Tilly shook her head at the situation she found herself in.
She’d imagined the journey back to the UK loads of times in quite a few different ways, none of which had showcased her alone on a train heading south to a place she didn’t know.
She'd imagined herself with Lennixx, perhaps planning his next gig, maybe a tour of the North or the like.
The reality of what was on her plate was a destination she knew zilch about, a too-hot Pret coffee, a window full of fog and a haze-like feeling whereby her body and its jet lag weren't quite sure what day of the week it was or what she was going to do.
Mulling over her decisions and trying to push down the fact that perhaps she'd been a little on the hasty side with her exit plan, Tilly sipped the coffee with a sense of impending doom. What had she been thinking? As the train picked up speed, the fog began to thin, and buildings spaced out outside the window, there was one thing that wasn’t in doubt: the train absolutely ate up the miles.
It sped along, depositing her back into the loveliness of the British countryside as if on a mission.
Tilly stared out the window in a daze: dewy fields of saturated green, soft misty edges, back gardens with old sheds, shapes of tall English trees, horses in paddocks, hedgerows full of England doing her thing. Home. Thank the devil for that.