Alex nods sagely.
‘Birdie is a true friend,’ I tell them. ‘She wouldn’t ask this of me if it weren’t desperately important to her.’
Alex and Donna look at each other. ‘We’re just worried about you is all,’ Alex says. ‘You’re not exactly, you know, worldly. Have you ever left Greater Manchester?’
‘I went to Chester once!’
‘Chester,’ Donna says. ‘That’s not even an hour away from here.’
‘You like things just so,’ Alex points out. ‘You get grumpy if things are different, if anything changes unexpectedly. You once told the BBC weatherman on the telly to go fuck himself because he’d predicted no rain and it did rain and you didn’t have an umbrella.’
‘I trusted that weatherman!’
‘You like your routine,’ Donna adds, smiling benevolently. ‘And, Olive, we’re just worried that you’ll get all the way to New York and get yourself into some sort of pickle.’
‘A pickle?’
Alex shrugs. ‘That you’ll get lost or in trouble or homesick.’
‘And it will be left for us to fix things when it all goes wrong,’ Donna adds, as if she’s the parent talking to a problem child. ‘I’m not being funny but, we just know you. We know what you’re like.’
I don’t want to go. I don’t want to do this. Everything they’re saying about me is completely correct. But still, I feel a flicker of sadness that they think so little of me, assume that I’m incapable.
‘I can get in touch with Birdie, if you don’t want to go,’ Alex says, patting my arm. ‘I mean, it is a bit of an awkward situation. I can tell her that it’s too much to ask of you. That you can’t just take off to New York out of bloody nowhere! You’re not the sort of person who can do that. And that’s okay.’
The flicker of sadness turns into a flame of anger at their complete lack of belief in me. I’m allowed to not believe in myself. Donna doesn’t have to either. But Alex? He’s my brother! He should trust me.
Like Birdie does.
She trusts me.
She trusts me to do this.
I take a deep breath.
‘Wait a minute…’ I say as something occurs to me. ‘Are you guys trying to reverse psychology me? Are you trying to piss me off by saying I can’t do something so that I retaliate with impressive courage and I do it?’
Donna and Alex shake their heads.
‘No,’ Donna says. ‘We genuinely think this is a terrible idea and that you shouldn’t go and that your friend is desperate, of course, but also a little selfish for asking this of you.’
Before I have chance to respond, my phone dings with a text. I open it up. It’s from Birdie.
I know you’re probably shitting yourself right now. But I just want you to know that I appreciate this so much, Brewster. I upgraded your flight to first class so it’s a little comfier, I know how you hate small spaces.
I smile. And in that moment any wobbles I had seem to fade a little.
‘Is that Birdie?’ Alex asks. ‘Shall I ring her now? Tell her you’re staying.’
I stand up and put my hands on my hips. ‘No. Because I am going. And I will find Chuck Allen. I will do this for my friend because I love her and that’s what friends do.’
‘Doesn’t she have family in America who can send this letter?’ Donna asks.
I shake my head. ‘She was a foster kid. She doesn’t have family. I am her family. I will be back in less than a week. So, you can either support me and help me sort out this shit heap,’ I say, indicating the room of doom. ‘Or you can bugger off. I’m already nervous as it is and I don’t need you two here trying to talk me out of it.’
There. That told them. I am Olive Brewster. Strong, capable woman and they can eat their words.
Alex and Donna blink at my little speech, shake their heads sadly and leave the room.
Oh.
‘You’re not going to help me pack?’ I yell. ‘Guys? GUYS?’
I hear them tread softly down the stairs.
‘Guys, come on,’ I call out again.’ Help meeeeee!’
They’ve gone. They’re seriously not on my side?
‘Alex?’ I shout. ‘Come back, dude!’
No answer.
Fine. Fine.
Looks like I’m doing this alone.
Totally, completely alone…
I am an adult woman and I can do this alone.
Can’t I?
Chapter Six
Olive’s phone reminders:
Passport, money, tickets!
Remember: Air travel is the SAFEST mode of transport
Listen to ‘Still Minds’ app in taxi to airport
Don’t freak the fuck out, you massive worrywart
Arriving at Manchester airport, I poke my head between the two front seats to pay the driver. As I hand him the money, I notice that my dumb hand is trembling. It’s 4 a.m. and I have spent the entire night getting all of my earthly belongings into my suitcase, plus a smaller suitcase I borrowed from Donna (who informed me that I should be careful with it as it scuffs ‘super-duper easily’ and she’s already doing me a huge favour lending it to me). I’m operating on zero sleep.
The taxi driver accompanies me to the boot of the car and heaves out my suitcases, his face turning fuchsia with the effort.
‘Great! Thanks!’ I place a firm hand on each suitcase handle and start to yank them to the airport doors. They’re so ridiculously heavy that my rate of movement is around 0.001 miles per hour. As I’m dragging them, I’m making a sort of guttural animal noise, like a contender on The World’s Strongest Man contest pulling a lorry.
The cab driver pops his head out of the car window and laughs at me. ‘You want a trolley, love!’
‘Sorry?’ I say. A trolley?
He points over to a big line of upright metal contraptions on wheels. I notice that everyone else in the vicinity is using these trolleys to push around their luggage.
‘Ah! Yes, of course!’ I say.
Of course!
It all makes sense now.
‘Have you never been to an airport?’ The driver laughs, judging me.
‘Ha ha!’ I laugh back. ‘Duh. Of course! What kind of human woman aged twenty-seven has never even been to an airport? That would make me a loser, right? Nope. I come to the airport all the time! I practically live here! I’m like Tom Hanks in that film where he lives in the airport.’
The taxi driver gives me a pitying smile.
Shaking my head with mirth, like I’m in on the joke, I lug my cases over to the trolleys and heave them up, making a strained ‘eeeeehuuh’ sort of noise as I plonk them on. There we go! That wasn’t too hard in the end! I allow myself a little smile while I catch my breath. I’m doing this. I’m actually doing it!
As I enter the main part of the airport, my positive feelings increase. Oooh. It’s very quiet and organised. Runs of check-in desks line the huge expanse of back wall. Before each desk stands an orderly queue, filled with people patiently waiting to check in their luggage. I love a queue, me! I once made the joke that ‘everyone knows where they stand with a queue’. I thought it was quite a witty joke, sadly no one else laughed. But the point is that with a queue you know what to expect. Everyone in a queue has made an unspoken pact to follow the rules, to respect the right order of things, something about that speaks to me on a deep level.
I scan across the check-in desks until I spot one with a British Airways logo and, with a yank, set my trolley in motion, trundling towards my queue.
At the back of the line, a couple of people ahead of me turn around and give me a friendly smile. Queue buddies! I have queue buddies! One of them gives a nod of approval at the bumbag slung around my waist. I smile back and pat my bumbag proudly. What a find that was! While rummaging around the house for a pair of light gloves for if the weather turns cold but not cold enough for the heavy-duty mittens I had already packed, I found this old bumbag stuffed in the bottom of a plastic storage box full of things
Alex has been asking me to throw away for years. I loved this bumbag when I was twelve. For a start, it’s luminous pink and on the front there’s a shiny hologram picture of the sun. Plus it’s super waterproof, plus it has a secret pocket inside. I used to carry it around with me everywhere, put in cool-ass daisies I’d picked on the field behind our house, store my Hubba Bubba supply so that Alex wouldn’t nick them. I’d keep my Walkman in the front and my chapstick in the secret pocket along with a fifty-pence piece I found on the street and wanted to keep safe in case the person who lost it tracked me down and asked for it back. It was fantastic to have a little pouch tied around my belly like a kangaroo. And since it’s so much more secure than a handbag that could be lost, or snatched away by a thug at any moment, I decided, at around one this morning, to extend the belt to its largest possible width and bring it with me for my trip. It’s perfect! Even if Donna did point and laugh when she saw me in it. What does Donna know? Nothing, that’s what.
In the secret pocket, tucked very safely away, is the thick white envelope containing Birdie’s precious letter to Chuck Allen. In the main bag part is my phone, my passport, flight tickets, antacids, paracetamol, chewing gum and some wire headphones. I know it might not be the most stylish apparel, but everything I may need at any moment is literally clasped around my waist and in that there’s a certain security that transcends the need to look cool to people I don’t even know. And even so, a part of me suspects that it actually does look pretty fucking cool in a hipstery, ironic, retro sort of way.
I’m almost at the front of the queue when a loud American voice makes me jump.
‘Excuse me! Excuse me! Sorry, folks!’
I whip my head around and notice a slim man approaching our line. He has messy, slightly too long light brown hair and dark, thick-framed glasses perched on his face.
‘Excuse me!’ he repeats, striding past everyone with a sense of great importance.
I frown as he marches ahead of me, shuffles in front of the woman before me in the line and leans his forearms casually on the check-in desk. He plonks his passport down, running a hand through his hair.
Is… is he pushing in?
‘Excuse me, miss. Sorry!’ he says, this time to the check-in assistant, a young dark-haired woman with tired eyes. ‘My name’s Seth.’
‘Hello sir.’ The woman gives a slight forehead wrinkle. ‘Um… is everything okay?’
‘I’m incredibly sorry about this,’ the guy says, ‘but I’m a TV writer and I have to file a last-minute change to a script that’s needed immediately. But the thing is, my laptop and my phone are out of juice and I need to get through to the departure lounge charging station so I can charge them up and send the script changes by email.’
He’s cutting the queue because he needs to charge his electrical equipment? I let out a little snort. That’s not a reason to jump a queue! Maybe he should have been more organised. Maybe he should have done what I did and charged all of his electrical stuff before leaving the house, while also packing spare batteries and one of those wind-up chargers you can use in emergencies.
I turn back to the rest of the queue with an eye roll that says ‘get a load of this guy’.
A few of my queue buddies nod in agreement. One sighs, one curls her lip discreetly, but mostly they look at their feet.
I turn around, peeved, tutting loudly to myself.
The man turns around at my tut, a look of surprise on his face.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ he says with a wide smile. ‘I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t kind of a work emergency.’
Ma’am? Isn’t that American slang for women of a certain age? I’m only twenty-seven. I found a grey hair last month, and I may be make-up-free because it is stupid o clock, but I don’t think I could be mistaken for a ma’am. This guy looks older than me! Behind the glasses he has little crow’s feet around his eyes.
‘In England we queue,’ I tell him, immediately realising that I sound like a real dick, or Donna. I don’t mean to but his self-entitled line cutting is really getting my goat.
‘Which TV show?’ the check-in assistant asks him, her tired eyes perking up a little.
Seriously?
The guy lowers his voice but I’m close enough to hear him say, ‘Sunday Night Live’.
Wow. Sunday Night Live is a huge American sketch comedy show. Even I know that.
‘Oh, I love that show!’ check-in woman says, fully awake now. ‘That Beyoncé Lemonade Parody you guys did. I saw it on YouTube. It made me laugh so much!’
‘Thanks,’ I hear the man reply. ‘If you let me through you will be saving the next episode from disaster, I swear!’
God, how dramatic. Who would even fall for that?
Then, to my outrage, the woman puts her hand out to take the man’s passport. He only has a large record bag lobbed across his body and a tiny hand-luggage-sized suitcase, so with a few clicks on the computer he’s checked in and she’s ushering him through to the departure lounge before anyone can protest.
‘Thank you, thank you!’ he mutters, hurrying through the walkway by the check-in desk. But before he disappears from sight, he turns on his heel, points at me and calls out, completely straight-faced: ‘Nice fanny pack.’
Oh my god. WHAT did he just say to me? I blush a crimson red, my mouth opening and closing like a Hungry Hungry Hippo.
It takes me a moment to figure out that fanny pack is American for bumbag and that this bespectacled stranger wasn’t complimenting my vajeen. But before I can respond with anything more than a disgusted shake of the head, the queue jumper has disappeared.
Honestly, some people are just so rude.
Turns out I was completely duped about what the airport would be like based on the check-in area. It is not calm and organised and serene. It is Freaking Crazy!
I stand stock-still in the departure lounge, eyes wide in disbelief as to how totally different it is to the zen-like check-in area. Here, it’s crowded and loud and grim. There are children running around unattended, huge groups of men wearing matching T-shirts and women in headbands with miniature penises atop them.
I blink and try not to let the chaos terrify me into turning around and going right back home to my bed and to my job and to my little life that’s safe and comforting and wonderfully predictable.
I shuffle forward a few steps, wondering where the perfume shops are and where I might buy a book, when I hear a kid behind me yelling with glee.
‘Look at it! Look at it go!’ he squeals.
I turn around curiously, following his gaze to a huge glass window wall on the other side of the departure lounge and my throat freezes up. I do an actual gasp. Because, right there, through the window is a massive airplane speeding down the runway, the front wheels tilted off the ground at an angle that does not, in any way, look okay. I swallow hard, my eyes wide. Of course I’ve seen airplanes take off before on TV and in movies, but seeing it up close and knowing that in a few short hours I will be sitting on one of them as it cranks away into the sky. Argh!
I waddle slowly towards the massive window, watching as the back of the airplane lifts off from the ground. It looks so heavy and unstable. It can’t possibly be safe. It looks ridiculous. How is it doing that? Why is it tilting? Surely, that can’t be right?
‘Check out that lass! She’s turned green!’
My thoughts of doom are interrupted by deep voices and laughing from my left. I turn around to where a group of muscular men are sitting around an open-plan bar table, guzzling pints while laughing and pointing at me.
‘You look a bit unwell there, love,’ one of them, a huge muscled guy with tanned skin and nice sideburns, says to me.
‘Green in the face,’ another of the group adds, helpfully.
‘Do you, like, need to puke?’
‘Uh, I’m fine,’ I say, my eyes flicking to the now empty space outside where the airplane once was. Where is it? Is that it right up there? That dot going into the clouds? How is it in the sky?
Why have I never really thought about this before?
‘You don’t look it,’ another guy with curly blonde hair says. ‘You definitely look like you’re going to puke!’
I shake my head. ‘Just a bit nervous about flying, I think. I’ll be all right!’
I make to leave, to find somewhere quiet to sit, to maybe listen to that Still Minds app I’ve been meaning to listen to, when the hunk with the sideburns asks, ‘Where are you off to then?’
‘New York,’ I answer, feeling a little flicker of pride as I do. It does sound super cool when I say it out loud. ‘Manhattan, actually,’ I add.
‘Hey! New York! Get me a cup of cawfee! And a chilli dawg!’ the men start saying over each other, laughing loudly at their terrible impressions of a New York accent. I can’t help but laugh a little as one of them adds ‘I like brunch!’ and when he can’t think of anything else to say, he says ‘Get me a cup of cawfee’ again, to which they all laugh uproariously.
‘We’re going to Australia for the rugby,’ Sideburns says. ‘But our flight’s been delayed. We’ve been sitting here for three hours already.’
Behind me I hear another plane taking off. I spin around, my eyes wide, my stomach dipping as it wobbles its way into the air.
‘Fuuuuuuck,’ I groan to myself.
‘You’re really frightened, aren’t you?’ Sideburns asks, elbowing curly blonde to stop doing his terrible Robert De Niro ‘You talkin’ to me’ impression.
‘Pretty much, yeah,’ I say, pulling a face. ‘It’s weird seeing it all up close! The planes look so big and cumbersome!’
‘Well, Dan here is shit-scared of flying,’ Sideburns tells me, pointing at curly blonde guy.
Dan gives a thumbs up. ‘It’s pretty much my worst fear,’ he confirms, not looking at all bothered about it.
‘No one really likes flying,’ a hunky dark-skinned man says. ‘We just do what we have to do to get through it.’
‘And what’s that?’ I ask, desperate for any information that will make this whole prospect less alarming. ‘Tell me the secret! Please!’
Big Sexy Love: The laugh out loud romantic comedy that everyone's raving about! Page 4
