Chapter Thirty-Eight
Milo
‘There will be a short delay, folks,’ says the pilot. ‘But hang tight, and we should be in the air within the next ten minutes. Thank you for your patience.’
I’m not sure what’s going on. Flight attendants keep picking up the phone, talking hushed and quiet between them. Airspace problems again, maybe?
But I’ll be in the sky soon, on the way to Allie.
I’m at least on the plane. Just a few hours, and then, I’ll be .
. . I mean, I don’t even know. I’ve not thought that far ahead.
Jameson said he’d send me his list of contacts – helicopters, boats, all that – but warned me it isn’t simple to just ‘hop on one’.
But I guess, failing that, I’ll be bribing anyone I possibly can to somehow get to Allie at the research station.
I have no idea how to swindle it. Flights only leave at certain times, on certain days.
But I’ll make it work. Even if I have to make a raft and sail there myself.
I at least know how to use an oar now, thanks to Allie.
‘You’ll die out there,’ I hear in my mind, in Allie’s voice. Yeah, OK, maybe not.
It makes me smile. Allie lives in my head; she’s lived there for two years now.
Speaking to me, talking me down off the ledge, chiming in with irritating little contrary comments that Allie would definitely say in real life.
Even after the leak, I don’t think a day has gone by where I haven’t spoken to Allie Lake in my mind.
But now I don’t just want her in my head.
I want her in my real life. Every single day.
‘Excuse me, ma’am.’ A flight attendant appears in the aisle. She turns to my neighbour, the woman knitting the dog sweater. ‘Could I interest you in an upgrade?’ she says. ‘Complimentary of course.’
She drops the knitting into her lap. ‘Oh my Lord, really? Me? Why?’
I recognise that accent. It’s a totally, born-and-bred, old school New Jersey accent.
It makes me smile. She sort of sounds like Mom.
She’d be all for this. Dad, not so much, but Mom.
She was a romantic. She was untethered and adventurous.
She loved a love story. The nights we sat there, watching Roman Holiday together.
Recliners. Pizza. An Affair to Remember. Charade.
‘Surplus seats,’ the flight attendant smiles, and the woman beside me scrabbles to gather her stuff, as if, at any moment, if she doesn’t move quick enough, the airline might change their mind and throw her in the cargo hold instead.
Well. Nobody ever complained about having a free seat next to them on a plane. Her elbows kind of kept nudging into me anyway, and I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but she was glancing over at me for a little longer than a stranger might.
Allie’s voice chimes in again. ‘Not everyone knows who you are, Milo. Lest you forget the man next to you simply couldn’t care less about you. He doesn’t even want you looking his way.’
I smirk to myself.
I flick through the TV screen in front of me.
OK, I might not be there, but I do want to know if I win, hopefully watch Jameson read my speech.
I didn’t write Allie’s name once, but a lot of my speech is about her.
Not that she’ll be watching anyway. She’s probably got her whole body wedged in the nest of a puffin right now.
I can’t wait to be there with her. Then maybe we can fly back together.
She can see my apartment. I can show her New York.
Yio’s Pizza. The kitchen bear. Or maybe she’ll say she doesn’t want this, and then I’ll fly back alone.
Who knows? Who knows how this’ll work? I just know I need to find out.
I need to see her again, tell her how I feel.
I need to apologise, tell her I don’t want to hide anymore.
I want to thank her for the words – for holding that part of who I really am, gently in her hands for all that time.
And then I hear her voice again.
‘Thank you,’ it says. ‘Thank you.’
And for a moment, my bones freeze, because while I feel sure it’s in my head, as it so often is, it sounds . . .
‘Is this seat free?’
And slowly, I turn my face towards her voice. A dress. Black. Hair in waves. Small, dainty fingers, that impish nose, that quirked eyebrow, those blue eyes . . . her.
‘Well?’ she asks.
‘Allie?’ I burst out laughing. ‘Allie, oh my God, what . . . what are you doing here? I’m . . . I’m coming to find you.’
‘Found me,’ she says, matter-of-fact. ‘Here I am.’