The Christmas Express, page 4
Sara caught my attention first, confirming it was her when her violet hair pulled the gaze of everyone at our gate when she strolled in, statuesque, slick carry-on case, serene-resting face. Her eyes met mine and I gave her a stiff wave and she gave me a stiff smile, then ignored the empty seat beside me and wheeled her bag five rows away, sliding her sunglasses back over her eyes. Sara is the coolest person I’ve ever known. If she were in a movie, she’d be the cool eighties heartthrob guy who always wears shades and a simple white T-shirt and is unfazed by life and makes everyone want to smoke. Not that Sara smokes. But she has that vibe that says, ‘look at me, but I don’t care if you do or not because I’m not looking at you anyway’.
Brother and sister, Joe and Joss, arrived separately and seem to have been silently squabbling from across the rows of chairs ever since they sat down, raising their brows at each other, rolling their eyes, giving each other barely concealed middle fingers. We all acknowledged each other with similar amounts of warmth. As in, not much.
Finally, I let myself catch Luke’s eye again, and I tried to mouth ‘hello’ at him but my lips stuck together and I actually mouthed ‘pillow’. He replied with a curt nod, and looked back at his book. Now I can’t stop fiddling with the pieces of hair framing my face.
Is he watching me?
I do a totally casual neck stretch to see . . . No.
‘Passengers awaiting to depart for this morning’s flight to Toronto, thank you for your patience,’ an announcement comes over a speaker in the gate area and the rows of travellers hush their conversation to listen. ‘We will soon begin boarding, starting with our families with young children and those needing assistance, and then our first-class fliers. We will then be calling passengers up by rows. Please remain seated until we call your row. Please.’ The staff member puts a heavy stress on the word, which makes me smile, which makes me look back up at Luke to see if he’s smiling, and this time I catch him watching me.
My heart boings with surprise and my smile slides a little bigger. I turn away quickly. Damn it. I wish I had the confidence to hold eye contact.
Over the following fifteen minutes, fellow passengers are filtered through the gate into the tunnel which leads them to the plane, and I wait for our row to be called.
I’m rehearsing some things to say to the others. I quite like, Shall we clear the air before we get into the air? Or maybe I should just launch into an apology, get the ball rolling, and hope they follow suit? Or how about, Let’s get plane-drunk and all ignore the tension until we get back to the UK?
The next row is called and I spot Luke stand up. Huh? I check my ticket, moving to stand, but this definitely isn’t my row – not even close. I sit back down, catching his eye again and he shrugs.
My old friends filter into the line like cards being shuffled together over the next five minutes. We aren’t sitting together. I’d just assumed, but I guess I don’t need to rehearse the small talk any more. I can just relax, enjoy the flight, watch a movie or two, get a little drunk on my own, enjoy not enduring the forced proximity.
A little sinking feeling, a flutter of disappointment, makes its way through my chest.
When my row is announced I join the queue, along with my soon-to-be-neighbours and those who will be sitting in the rows near me.
Is that . . . ? No. I thought I glimpsed someone else from our past for a second there, a few people ahead of me. I’m on such red alert that now I’m just seeing people I used to know everywhere.
I have a clear view of the back of Luke’s head. Which makes me sound like a stalker, or a sniper, but I’m totally neither; it’s just a fact, okay?
We’re in the air at cruising altitude, the UK behind us and the Atlantic Ocean far, far below. Canada is somewhere in the distance, waiting for us, snow-covered and Christmassy.
Mmm. I pull up the pictures Bryn sent across of our vast log cabin again. It looks huge, such a contrast to that cramped villa the six of us had on that disastrous holiday. Each room in this cabin has its own kitchenette and bathroom, an armchair beside a huge window, some of them even have their own entrances. Really, Canada is the perfect setting for Bryn to have her dream wedding, for us to all be there, but with the ability to keep a lovely chunky distance from each other.
That’s not very in the Christmas spirit though, is it?
The clouds edge by beneath my window. What do I actually want to happen by the end of this trip? Do I want to keep my distance?
My betraying eyes glide back over to Luke. God, I spent years pining over him, loving him from afar, even though we were so close, emotionally and physically. Then everything fell into place, and we fell into each other, and it was the best week ever before it all went wrong. I wish I could go back in time to when we were just friends, such good friends, all six of us.
No, I don’t want to keep my distance. But I still have the scars I brought on myself and I can’t let those old wounds open again. Perhaps over the next week I’ll let myself be like freshly fallen snow – light, surface-level, melting away again after a few days.
The plane rumbles over a little turbulence – no big deal – but I glance at all my friends instinctively. Luke tousles his honey-coloured hair, like he always used to when he was nervous. I need a drink.
‘Excuse me, ’scuse me, sorry, I’m just going to . . . Sorry.’ I squeeze past knees and under loops of headphone wires out into the aisle and make my way to the back of the plane, where I convince the flight attendant to let me have a miniature bottle of vodka and some cranberry juice after I start telling her all about the fact my ex is on the plane.
Oof, it’s nice to be out of my seat for a bit, though. We’re only halfway to Canada but my legs are stiff and I’m really worried my feet smell because I’ve taken my shoes off and now everyone can see the thick ski socks I had on underneath as I pad up and down the lower end of the aisle stretching out my calves.
It’s so interesting to see what everyone’s watching. I feel for the woman watching a movie with a surprise sexy scene it in because she looks like she wants to be all nonchalant while at the same time scream, ‘I DIDN’T MEAN TO WATCH THIS IN FRONT OF EVERYONE.’
Someone else has fallen asleep in front of the interactive flight map, their neighbour engrossed in a seat-back game, and, ahh, It’s a Wonderful Life – I love that movie. I glance at the viewer just as she glances up at me, and I jerk to a stop, my eyes locked in hers.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Hi,’ says Ember.
Chapter 6
Ember
Shitting shit shit shit. As soon as my eyes connect with Bryn’s friend, Cali, I curse myself for not having the discipline to just keep my head down. Maybe some part of me wanted her to see me. Wanted her to acknowledge that, yes, I am still here in the world, even after all of them cut me out.
‘Hi,’ she says first.
‘Hi,’ I reply, my mouth dry.
‘Wow, I nearly didn’t recognise you!’
‘Yeah.’ God, this is so awkward. I swallow. ‘You . . . having a good flight?’
‘The best!’ she enthuses. She looks much the same as she used to – long hair in natural curls, warm smile, casual but neat style. I must look a total mess. Which is just one of the reasons I hadn’t wanted her to spot me sitting here.
‘Well, I’d better get back to my seat. Enjoy the movie! See you in a bit!’
Cali scuttles off down the aisle like she’s walking on hot dropped peanuts and I sit back and close my eyes. My heart is thumping. My lips are parched. My mind is zooming about.
Hours earlier, it was Cali I first spotted at the airport gate. She joined the queue to get on the plane a few people behind me. Goosebumps flooded my skin like a rash, and I forgot to breathe for a moment. I’d thought that flying out a week before the wedding meant I’d arrive before any of Bryn’s wedding guests. I’d get to see her all on my own. But here was her best friend, who must be taking the same connecting flight as I am, otherwise that’s a huge coincidence. And as I found my seat on the plane, I realised the rest of them were on board too. Not sat together, which is weird considering they’re all such ram-it-down-your-throat best friends, but all there.
I kept my head down, my baseball cap on, and found my seat as quickly as I could, which luckily is near the back of the plane, and I don’t think any of them saw me.
Could it have been possible to avoid them across two flights, another gate, passport control and baggage claim? Once we hit Vancouver it wouldn’t have mattered, because by then it would be too late for any of them to try and talk me out of going, or to alert Bryn. Not that I wanted to ambush my ex, but I wanted to see her without any outside opinions. Just me and her. We’d always been level with each other and if Bryn was calling out for me like I think she might have been, it’s between me and her.
Focus on the movie. This is one of my favourites. Focus . . . focus . . . focus . . .
‘You okay, love?’ asks the man beside me, pausing the game he’s playing on his seat-back TV. ‘Do you want to sit with your friend?’
‘No! No, thank you. She’s . . . we’re . . . I’m fine.’
He raises his brows at me but I’m not about to start spilling my life story to a stranger, especially not when Cali could, technically, be in earshot.
She’s fidgeting, getting her phone out. A coldness rushes over me – what if she’s bought Wi-Fi access? What if she’s messaging Bryn right now and telling her I’m on the plane? No. She doesn’t even know I’m going to the wedding yet; perhaps I’m just a girl, heading to Toronto.
Perhaps I should just head to Toronto. I wish I could call Tonia right now. She’d know how to handle this.
I can’t concentrate on this film any more, my attention is zipping around the cabin, a paranoid worry that they’re all talking about me. Especially when Cali stands up again, and without looking back to me, races off towards Luke.
Chapter 7
Cali
I sit back down in my seat, my mind whirring. Ember and Bryn split up perhaps a month before I last saw Bryn, and before we all fell out. I remember Bryn being heartbroken and asking us all to not mention her ex after Ember moved across the country to live by the sea, shortly after their break-up. She wanted to shut down the memories and get over her as quickly as possible, so we all obliged. I can’t see how Bryn went from that to being friendly enough again with her that she’d invite her to her wedding?
‘Sorry, can I just squeeze out again?’ I say to the man next to me, for the second time in less than twenty minutes. He sighs, and the shuffle-squeeze-shimmy dance begins again, and when I’m back in the aisle I walk briskly, my head down, until I reach Luke’s row. He’s in the aisle seat, and I crouch down, looking up at him.
I use the seconds it takes him to pause his movie and remove his headphones to scan his face, absorbing his skin, his lips, his brows. I haven’t been this close to him in so long. Our eyes meet, his softer now in the muted dim of the aeroplane.
‘Um, hello, Cali, how can I help?’ Luke stumbles over the simple words, like he’s reading from a script. It makes me snort out a gurgled nervous giggle, which is just great timing, thank you, me. ‘You okay?’ he asks me. That voice. Deep but with a quiet lightness, like I’m the only one who can hear him.
I find my words. ‘Ember’s here.’
‘Amber?’
‘Ember. Bryn’s ex. She’s on the plane.’ My voice doesn’t sound like my own, it’s crackling and squeaky, the natural patter between us now sounding like the first table read of a pilot TV show. Between two non-actors. Who speak different languages.
‘She is?’ Luke llamas his neck up to try and see her but I pull on his jumper and he turns back to me.
‘Don’t look!’
‘Are you sure it’s her?’
‘We said hi to each other. And yes – we knew her for like, a year. It’s her.’
‘Is she going to the wedding?’
‘Um, I don’t know. She must be, right? That would be a big coincidence otherwise?’
Luke runs a hand through his hair. His other hand, not the one attached to the arm whose jumper sleeve I’m holding onto. He hasn’t moved that. ‘I guess they made friends again.’
We fall into silence. I wonder if he’s thinking the same as me, wondering how Ember and Bryn managed to reconcile when we couldn’t.
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I think it’s a coincidence. She’s probably just going to Toronto for work or something.’ I start babbling, filling the silence with anything that comes into my head, not wanting to leave his side yet, and then there’s movement beside me.
‘Do you two want to keep it down so the whole plane doesn’t know our business?’ In a crouched position beside me, Joss has appeared, and I snap my mouth closed. Where’d she come from?
‘We were just saying—’ Luke starts.
‘I know, I heard. You’re talking about The Ex.’
We all fall silent, Luke pressing his lips together and, briefly, meeting my eye. My thighs are beginning to shake from squatting, and I can feel Joss’s glare darting between me and Luke. I lean back a little, not wanting her to think I was being too clingy on Luke already, and subsequently topple back on my bum, which I style out by sitting cross-legged in the middle of the aisle, but I’m pretty sure I’m sat in some spilled cola.
I hope it’s cola.
‘Are you okay?’ Luke asks, twisting and untwisting the wires of his headphones.
‘Yeah, totally fine.’
Seven years tick by while we all think of something to say, and then Joss drops her voice to a whisper. ‘Do you reckon she’s staying in the cabin with us?’
‘No.’ I shake my head, an unsure chuckle escaping a little too shrilly. Christ, maybe I am a bit loud. ‘I think Bryn would have told us if Ember was going to be there too.’
‘Maybe Ember was the big surprise?’ Luke suggests.
‘Weird surprise,’ mutters Joss. Then, like we aren’t all in this bizarre tangle of resentment and bitterness and confusion, she reaches over and takes a swig out of Luke’s drink. Even after half a decade the girl has no boundaries.
She sets it back down, slowly, as if she just realised what she did. Her cheeks glow red and she tosses her hair back, covering the embarrassment. ‘Cali, find out.’
‘Why me?’ I hiss.
‘You’re good with people,’ Joss replies, and we all take a short moment to process the irony of this conversation, between these people. ‘Present company excluded,’ she snorts. ‘Sorry, too soon.’
My face is hot and my hands are all sweaty and my legs and knees are jelly from crouching, so I clamber up while whispering, ‘I can’t just go and ask her why she’s on the plane. I’m not an air marshal.’
‘Fine, I’ll ask her.’ Joss stands.
‘No.’ I block her. ‘I’ll ask her. In a while. I don’t want to make it too obvious we’ve all just been talking about her.’
Joss shrugs and stalks back to her seat without another word. I dawdle beside Luke for a moment. I want to keep talking to him but I seem to have forgotten every word from the dictionary again. So I make a sound which is a little bit like ‘bye’ and stroll back to my seat.
Despite every effort to concentrate on the episode of The Office I’ve put on my TV screen, I can only focus on my interaction with Luke. I replay it again and again, tweaking myself so the imaginary version says cooler things or holds his gaze for a little longer. In some versions I’m a rock star and tell him how he hurt me and that I’m better without him and that our week together should never have happened. In other versions he leans down and kisses me and tells me he’s thought about me every second of every day.
I’m lost in my thoughts and making a sultry kissy face towards Steve Carell on my screen when the man next to me waves his hand in front of my eyes. I pull off my headphones.
He sighs. ‘I think this lady wants your attention. She’s been saying the word “Cali” at you for a minute or two.’
‘Oh!’ Ember is standing beside my row, pulling on the sleeves of her sweatshirt, her eyes scanning the plane. ‘Hi, Ember?’
She turns back to me and I see her properly for the first time. Her face is free of make-up, her skin lightly tanned and sprinkled with freckles like she spends most of her days outdoors, even in the winter. Now she’s taken off the baseball cap, I can see that her hair is lighter, tousled, and pulled up in a messy ponytail.
Ember opens and closes her mouth a few times but I can’t bear the silence so I fill it with, ‘So, how are you? What’s new? Your hair looks gorgeous.’
‘Um, thanks. I mean, so does yours.’
‘This old thing,’ I say and laugh too loud, and even the man next to me shifts in his seat with second-hand embarrassment.
‘Can I talk to you for a second?’ Ember asks.
‘Sure, go ahead.’
She looks down at the people in my row who she’s talking over. ‘Could we . . .’
‘Oh, yes, sorry.’ I unclip my belt and stand up. ‘Sorry, could I just? . . . Thanks . . . Sorry.’ I follow her down to the back of the plane where we stuff ourselves into that little gap between the loo and the galley, a small window showing the first signs of white-frosted Canadian mountain peaks passing below us.
‘Hi,’ I say to her for the third time this flight. ‘So . . . what brings you to Canada? Do you know about, um—’
‘About Bryn getting married? Yes.’
‘Oh good. That’s why you’re here?’ She shuffles, darting her eyes like she’s working out the right answer. ‘I mean, not to marry her, I know you aren’t the bride,’ I say, laughing. That didn’t seem like a cruel laugh, did it? Oh God, I didn’t mean it like that. I better clear this up. ‘Not that you couldn’t be. Or couldn’t have been. I just mean it’s not your name on the invite.’
