by Fanny Blake
For those last two nights, Ali unexpectedly opened up. She followed Lou’s lead and chatted with the others after supper around the dying embers of the bonfire, easily finding her place within the group. But this happened so late in the trip that there was no pressure for her to give anything of herself away. By the time they returned to Delhi for the flight home, Lou had arranged to meet Ali again on their home turf. She was intrigued by ‘the cat who walked alone’.
Chapter 2
Delhi airport was teeming with people. Lou’s suitcase felt heavy and unwieldy as she concentrated on tipping it to one side so that it could roll along on the one wheel that hadn’t jammed. She hated airports, hated flying and was trying to drift into the zone necessary for any air travel to be . . . not pleasurable, never that, but endurable. She was looking for that Zen-like calm where anything problematic would just slip by her. Key to that condition was maintaining a cool indifference towards everything going on around her. Otherwise, she would be reduced to a gibbering state of impatience, then fear.
She and Ali stood together in the queue that snaked away from the check-in desk. They didn’t talk, just observed the hordes: families with children refusing to stay in line; trolleys laden with belongings heading with their owners towards a new start in another country; couples entwined after the romantic holiday of a lifetime; others barely speaking.
Eventually, they reached the front. She hefted her case onto the scales, catching her breath as she felt an ominous twinge in the small of her back, and watched the number of kilograms clocking up. Please God, let the airline official turn a blind eye.
‘It’s four kilos overweight,’ he announced, barely looking up.
Fuck. She should never have put in the fabric she’d bought in Udaipur. Instead, she should have had them shipped home like the rest of the fabric and the two bedspreads she hadn’t been able to resist in Jodhpur. ‘But you’ll let it go?’ she wheedled.
The official was unmoved. ‘You’ll have to pay the surcharge, I’m afraid. The desk’s over there.’ He could have been pointing anywhere. ‘Or you’ll have to remove some of the contents.’
And do what with them? Leave them on the terminal floor?
She could feel herself dithering, flustered, incapable of making a sensible decision. To pay a fortune for a few lengths of Indian silk, or not to pay? That was the question. Fortunately, Ali answered it. ‘For God’s sake, you mustn’t pay on principle. You don’t have to pay more for your seat because you’re heavier than me.’
‘Thanks for that,’ Lou muttered.
‘No, seriously, the same should apply to luggage. There’s some room in my case. Let’s just transfer a few things and I’ll give them back when we land.’
Relieved to have her dilemma so easily resolved, Lou agreed and yanked her case off the weighing machine. As she slid it back towards the queue, the implications of this perhaps rash decision struck her. She was about to reveal her totally shoddy packing techniques to the entire airport. But too late now. Someone else had taken her place at the desk and Ali was already unzipping her case. She flipped the lid back to reveal her perfectly folded capsule wardrobe taking up two-thirds of the available space.
Reluctantly, remembering the haphazard approach she had taken to her own packing, Lou began to pull at the zip of her suitcase, eyeing the straining seams. It had only consented to fasten when she’d sat on the case and shifted her weight about on top so the zip could inch round. The only way forward was to repeat the process. She sat down heavily, then, holding onto the zip, her knuckles white with the effort of not letting go, she began to pull. Slowly at first, it then gave with a little rush before slowing again. With Ali holding the two open sides as close together as possible, the last corner was turned and eventually, to the amusement of everyone alleviating the boredom of their wait by watching her, the final side was coerced into unzipping.
Self-conscious, Lou clambered off the case, half falling as she did. Steadying herself with her hand on Ali’s butt, she was aware that most of the queue could almost certainly see all the way down her cleavage as she bent forward. Mortified, she straightened up as fast as she could, adjusting her top at the same time.
Released from her weight, the case sprang open at the very moment that someone’s uncontrolled child cannoned into it. The contents jack-in-the-boxed into the air. Her Zen-like calm still nowhere in the vicinity, Lou could only think of one thing as she watched her most intimate garments hit the terminal floor. Why had she packed the Indian silks at the bottom of the case, leaving all her more personal bits and pieces on top? Galvanised into action, she reached for the bra that was spread-eagled on the floor in front of the crowd and folded it in half, tucking the straps inside. She’d never thought of her breasts as especially large until this moment when the D-cups assumed an embarrassing enormity. Neither had she noticed how much the once pretty pink lace had faded and discoloured to a dusty greyish colour. If only she’d invested in the sexy new underwear she’d thought might help mark the start of her single life.
Just then a young boy made a dash for it, her other bra capping his head, the straps dangling over his ears. She watched in disbelieving horror as his mother yelled after him to stop, then gave chase across the terminal.
Ali was no help. She was bent double laughing. At least everyone else had the grace to pretend not to be.
As Lou shoved one bra down the side of Ali’s case, the second was handed to her by the smirking child whose apologetic parent had a firm grip of his arm. She stuffed that one down the other side, her face burning with embarrassment. Still no one moved to help her. On her hands and knees, she reached out to grab the pairs of pants that littered the floor. Once they were stowed, she turned her attention to the contents of her washbag that had rolled towards the check-in.
As she snatched up the tweezers (the laser treatment to her chin was something else that had been too low on her priority list) and the bumper pack of ibuprofen, she became aware of a pair of unfamiliar male hands retrieving the pair of Bridget Jones knickers that she’d missed – the big cream M&S ones that only she knew she possessed. Until now. She’d brought them because they were perfect for the woman who only took her kit off when she was alone and who wanted to disguise her VPL without resorting to the bum-splitting discomfort of a thong. She certainly hadn’t envisaged sharing them with anyone else. They had landed on his very shiny dark brown left brogue. She watched aghast as the hands folded them once, then twice, before holding out the neat parcel to her. She wasn’t sure she could endure another moment of this.
Who would fold another person’s knickers? Mortified, she glanced up to lock eyes with a smart, suited Indian man of a certain age who was squatting beside her. He smiled a sympathetic smile. She had watched the DVD of Slumdog Millionaire for the nth time before she left, and the only thought that crossed her mind was that he was a dead ringer for the quiz-show host played by Anil Kapoor. It couldn’t be. Could it? Of course not. She took the knickers from his hand as briskly as she could without snatching.
‘Thank you,’ she mumbled, wishing the floor would rip apart to swallow her and her bloody case.
He nodded, straightened up and looked away. But Lou hadn’t missed the glint of amusement in his eye.
Meanwhile, Ali had recovered herself and had squatted down beside her to help Lou retrieve the last few clothes and shove them into her own case. ‘Let’s get this sorted. Quick. A gin and tonic is definitely called for.’
‘A large one!’ Lou agreed.
An hour and a half later, they had reached the departure gate, the alcohol having aided the recovery of Lou’s sense of humour. They were still laughing about what had happened as they walked down the tunnel onto the plane. Dodging elbows as hand luggage was stowed above heads and sidling past passengers preparing to sit down, they made their way through the nirvana of business class to the unholy limbo at the back of the plane. Lou was leading the way, checking the numbers of the seats, when she stopped dead. Ali b
umped into her. ‘Easy!’ she said, taking a step back. ‘What’re you doing?’
‘It’s him!’ said Lou, feeling her inner temperature soar, the perspiration prickle. She gestured down the aisle to where, in the outside seat of three, sat her knicker-rescuer immersed in a magazine. ‘Those are our seats! You’ll have to sit in the middle. I can’t small-talk with someone who’s on such intimate terms with my underwear.’
‘Sounds like a perfect match to me,’ said Ali.
For once, Lou was unamused.
As they waited for him to stand up and let them into their seats, Lou tried but failed to avoid his eye. They acknowledged each other with the briefest of nods before Lou, feeling herself blush, looked away and slid into her seat by the window, followed by Ali.
Trying not to panic about having to spend the next eight hours cramped in the economy seat, Lou jammed the airline freebies into her seat-back pocket. Preparing for take-off and landing were the parts of the flight that scared her most. Shutting her eyes, she tried again to find the calm that had so far eluded her. She breathed in, closing her eyes and trying to direct her breath out through the centre of her forehead, her third eye. Wasn’t that what the yoga teacher had said on the course she’d taken that summer, as he encouraged the class in the final relaxation exercise? She hadn’t understood what he was on about as she lay freezing on the floor of the decaying church hall, wishing she’d remembered to bring a blanket, and she certainly didn’t understand now. She tried again.
‘What are you doing?’ Ali’s voice interrupted her concentration.
‘Breathing. Not panicking. I’ll be fine.’ (Don’t talk to me.)
‘Tell me about your shop then.’ Ali ignored the incipient hysteria in Lou’s voice. ‘Now we’re on our way home, we might as well think about what we’re going back to.’
‘Give me a minute.’ Lou took in another breath and tightened her grip on the armrests, closing her eyes again. She was better dealing with her fear on her own. She re focused her mind. What would be waiting for her at the end of the flight? Just the words ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz: vintage and vintage-inspired clothes’ gave her a buzz of excitement. Her online business selling the vintage clothes that she’d acquired over years of working in the fashion biz, trawling vintage fairs, charity and junk shops, car boot sales and relatives’ attics was going to expand into the here and now. Finding the premises would be her number one priority when she got home.
Home. Rather than open her eyes to her present surroundings, she let herself drift back to the day, a couple of months earlier, when she had moved into the small Victorian house that she had inherited from Jenny.
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ Hooker, her husband of nearly thirty-one years, had grasped her hand as tightly as if he was trying to pull her from a fast-flowing river. Then she remembered how, apparently satisfied that he’d succeeded, he leaned forward for a kiss.
She pulled back, ignoring the look of displeasure that crossed his face, reclaiming her hand and abandoning herself to the current that was already carrying her out of his reach. ‘I’ll be absolutely fine,’ she said, firmly.
Until months earlier, that moment had only been wishful thinking, just like those times when she was drifting off to sleep and had fantasised about him leaving her or had even gone as far as imagining his funeral, what she’d wear and how she’d behave: respectful and grief-stricken on the outside, but gleeful about her new freedom on the inside. She was ashamed about those darker moments but he hadn’t always been the most ideal husband, especially of late, and it wasn’t as if she’d really believed anything bad would happen – or wanted it to. Not really. She had tightened her grip on the door as she began to shut him out of her life.
‘You are sure you’re doing the right thing?’ He stood his ground. ‘It’s not too late to change your mind and come home, you know.’
Leaning against the door frame, she willed her apprehension not to show. She knew him too well. If he spotted any weakness in her, he’d be quick to exploit it. ‘We’ve been through this a thousand and one times.’ She spoke slowly, as if drumming the information through his skull and into his brain. ‘We don’t love each other any more. We’ve agreed on that. So I’m going to live here now. It’s over.’
She remembered how she’d been reduced to romantic clichés. But they were true. She didn’t love him any more. And she doubted that he’d loved her for years, not really. Her sadness came less from their parting and more from the fact that their separation marked the end of their family as they had all known it.
Cramped in her airline seat, she flexed her feet, lifted one leg and rotated her ankle, then the other. Ali said something, but she took no notice. To take her mind off the flight, she forced herself to return to that day, the day that marked the start of her new independence. From now on, she was going to be devoting some time to herself instead of to the hours demanded by being Hooker’s chief wardrobe mistress, cook and bottle-washer: hours during which she had chosen to dismiss the occasional unfounded suspicion that Hooker might be playing away. That was a side to their recent life together that she’d never confronted. While the children were in their teens, she was determined to put them first. But they were grown up now and the need for that was finally over.
He’d run his hand over his thinning hair as if checking it was still there, clearly bewildered by her unfamiliar resolve but not convinced. ‘All right,’ he said, an edge of aggression entering his voice. ‘I’ll go. But don’t expect me to wait for you forever. That’s all. Let’s hope my door hasn’t closed by the time you change your mind.’ He turned to leave, obviously pleased with his parting shot, and quite confident that she’d be back.
‘Mmm. Let’s.’ She directed the words towards his back, not expecting him to turn this time. Insisting on having the last word was one of his shortcomings. One of his many shortcomings, she corrected herself, as she shut the door at last. She’d heard him rev his precious midlife-crisis of a sports car before he roared off, leaving her alone at last.
As if on cue, the roar of the jet engines intensified and the plane shook as it trundled towards take-off. Her white-knuckle grip on the arms of her seat tightened. Only another few minutes and she’d be able to relax – unless they crashed, of course. Everyone knew that take-off and landing were the most vulnerable moments of any flight. The shaking stopped, her ears filled as if she was underwater, then popped. Pushed back in her seat by the pressure, as the plane climbed to cruising height, she relaxed her hands.
‘You’ve gone very pale.’ Ali’s voice came from a distance. ‘Are you OK?’
Lou opened one eye, then the other. Everything was as it should be. The other passengers were strapped into their seats, adjusting the in-flight entertainment, chatting, reading magazines. The prevailing atmosphere was one of calm. How unnecessary to get so worked up – but necessity had nothing to do with it, her behaviour was instinctive. ‘I am now.’ She smiled as she let go the armrest. ‘Still want to know about the shop?’
By the time the stewardesses were working the aisle, bringing drinks and dinner, Lou had finished explaining the plans for her business and had moved on to Nic, her daughter. ‘She thinks I’m crazy, that I’ve no brain for business. She just doesn’t get the market for “dead people’s clothes” as she insists on calling them.’
‘Then you’ll just have to prove her wrong,’ Ali said, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. ‘What does she do?’
‘She’s a family lawyer. Took after her godmother Fiona who’s always encouraged her. Look, it’s not that we don’t get on really, she just has strong views.’ She paused with a short laugh, as always amazed to think how her almost edible, curly-haired toddler had grown up into such a touchy, opinionated young woman. Her father’s daughter, she guessed. Or else her mothering skills had let them both down. ‘My two boys, Jamie and Tom, are quite different,’ she said, feeling she had to justify herself. ‘They’re much easier and more understanding.’ She brok
e off as the trays were put in front of them, then changed the subject. ‘What’s waiting at home for you?’
‘January’s usually a bit of a hangover from Christmas in my business, so I’ve got a few small jobs plus a ring to finish for a guy who was too late with his ordering. There’s always someone.’ Ali looked resigned. ‘But, at the same time, I’ll be thinking ahead and starting to dream up designs for a new collection. Business is much harder than usual thanks to the rocketing metal prices. But before I do anything, I’ll have to go up north to visit my father and make up for missing Christmas with him.’ She made it sound more of a chore than a pleasure. ‘Not that we’ve spent it together for years.’
‘Both my parents are dead,’ Lou said wistfully, remembering the family trips they’d made to Scotland for Hogmanay when the kids were small. Log fires, long walks, icy cheeks and warm hands, skating on the frozen pond: annual pleasures that were all but ruined when her mother took to the bottle. Then, Lou would have to keep the children out of her way as her mother slipped from maudlin nostalgia into something more aggressive. When she was drunk, which she was more and more often after her husband’s death, everyone was a disappointment to her and she became angry and vocal about it.
‘Dad and I aren’t very close. We’ve tried but it’s been difficult.’ Ali stopped as she peeled the foil lids off the containers in front of her, then replaced them and pushed the tray the full two inches away from her. ‘God, the food never gets any better, does it?’
Realising Ali was not going to elaborate on her relationship with her father, Lou changed the subject. ‘But aren’t you moving in with your boyfriend? What’s that?’ Lou watched Ali pop a white pill.
