So Now You're Back

I should be so lucky.

She quashed the spurt of panic. Once the take-off was over, she could let the pampering begin.

‘Would you like a beverage, Ms Best?’

She briefly entertained the idea of deadening her anxiety with champagne. ‘Some iced water would be great,’ she replied. Getting legless could be her fallback position if the sedative didn’t kick in soon.

Settling into her seat, she stared in dismay at the panel of buttons. Sweat collected on her upper lip and the muscles in her neck began to twitch. If only one of those buttons could whisk her across the Atlantic at warp speed.

‘How many knobs does one person need, right?’

Her head swung round so fast at the suggestive comment it was a miracle she didn’t get whiplash.

‘Luke, what the …?’ She searched for the flight attendant. ‘You’re not supposed to be in here. They’ll throw you out.’

‘I’ll risk it.’ The sheepish expression on his too-handsome face instantly threw her back to their schooldays and all those times he’d done something diabolical—like spray-painting an image of Mrs Wendell going down on Mr Truer all over the sixth-form toilets—and she’d been his final line of defence against instant expulsion. Annoyance bunched in her neck muscles, but beneath it was the furtive spike of excitement. A mortifying reminder of how her sixteen-year-old self had once relished his bad behaviour.

‘Relax.’ He settled into the pod next to her. ‘I got an upgrade, too.’

‘What?’

He slung his laptop bag under his console while she gaped as if he’d just spoken in Swahili. Either that or she’d gone momentarily deaf and misheard him.

What had happened to Luke Best, class warrior? The guy who thought first-class train carriages were there to be invaded? Even business class had seemed like a stretch.

‘I’m a frequent flyer. It only cost a couple of grand extra. And it’s tax deductible.’ He began to fiddle with the dials on his personal control panel. ‘This is actually pretty cool.’ Propping his feet on the footrest, he rolled his shoulders and relaxed into the seat. Then sent her a grin that plugged her right back into the electric socket.

‘You can’t stay here.’ The in-flight trauma of taking off was bad enough, she did not need the one man capable of giving her a nervous breakdown when she had both feet on terra firma as a witness to her humiliation.

‘Try me.’

‘But doesn’t travelling in first go against everything you ever stood for? I distinctly remember you telling me once that the premium seats in Holloway Odeon were an exploitation of the working classes.’

‘I’ve mellowed.’

‘You mean you’ve sold out for a lie-flat bed and some complimentary champagne?’ Why did it even surprise her? Luke had never had the courage of his convictions.

‘There’s complimentary champagne?’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Damn, if I’d known that, I would have sold out sooner.’

The flight attendant returned with Halle’s iced water.

‘Hi there, Debbie,’ he said, reading the woman’s name badge. ‘Is it true you get complimentary champagne in first?’

‘Certainly, sir, would you like a glass?’

‘You might as well bring the bottle. It’s a ten-hour flight and I plan to get my money’s worth.’

The attendant hesitated. ‘We’re only allowed to serve it by the glass I’m afraid, sir.’

‘And it’s ten o’clock in the morning,’ Halle butted in. ‘Drinking at altitude will get you pissed. You’re supposed to be driving us to the resort when we get off this flying death trap. I refuse to get in a car with you if you’re over the limit.’ Hadn’t the man grown up at all in sixteen years?

‘I guess that’s me told.’ He flashed a sheepish smile at the attendant, whose cheeks shone pink beneath the ten layers of foundation. ‘I guess I’ll have to pass. I’ll have what she’s having,’ he finished, indicating Halle’s glass.

The purser’s amplified voice filled the cabin giving them a rundown of the in-flight services as the stewardess headed off to do Luke’s bidding.

Halle gulped down the chilled water, but it did nothing to ease the rawness in her throat.

Shit, shit, shit.

She rolled the icy glass across her forehead, then bent to retrieve her bag.

‘Why did you call it a “flying death trap”?’

She ignored Luke’s question as she waged war with the child-safety lid on the Xanax bottle. Only to have the bottle whipped out of her hands.

‘What are these for?’

‘Give me those.’ She made a grab for the bottle as he read the label, only to have him hike it out of reach.

‘Heavy-duty happy pills. When did you start popping these?’

‘It’s not Ecstasy. It’s a mild drug to help with anxiety. And it’s none of your business what pills I pop.’

‘Mild, my arse. This stuff can kill you if you take too much of it.’

‘You are joking?’ She skewered him with her best give-me-a-bloody-break look. ‘This from the guy who once had so much E he ran down Green Lanes naked declaring to the whole of Hackney he was Sonic the Hedgehog.’

‘I was seventeen,’ he protested. ‘It was Super Mario and I was only half naked, don’t exaggerate.’

‘Nope, it was definitely Sonic. I remember because I was sober.’ Or soberish. ‘And all you had on was a baseball cap!’

‘Well, then I had all the essential stuff covered, didn’t I?’ He threw her the challenging grin again, daring her to deny it.

‘Essential stuff? What, like your brain, you mean? That certainly didn’t qualify as essential at the time, given it wasn’t the organ you did your thinking with.’

His eyes sharpened and she relished the hit. But then the captain’s monotone tenor came over the public address system with a rundown of their flying time and their altitude over the Atlantic, and the brief surge of triumph was smothered in panic.

‘Give me the bottle.’ She stretched out a shaky palm. ‘I need another before we take off.’

He lowered the bottle but didn’t hand it over. ‘How many have you had already?’

She pressed the tip of her tongue to her upper lip and tasted the salty sweat. ‘Only one.’ Or had it been two? Her mind seemed foggy on the details. But then the flight attendant strolled past to check their bays, and the plane rumbled into motion—and the panic became razor sharp. ‘Luke, for Chrissake, hand them over.’

‘Look at me.’

She squinted, trying to focus as he held two fingers in front of her face.

‘Do you know your pupils are the size of pinpricks?’