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Chapter 3

Wrong Shots

‘Excuse me.’ The ‘Sunny Tours’ director was trying to visit his tour people in seats all over the plane. He was giving out envelopes.

Meanwhile, there was a fuss in the seats nearby.

‘No! Not right! The passenger pointed with a sparkly, gold ringed finger.

Not us!’ On her lap was a big, silver envelope. Some photos spilled out.

‘Wrong photos?’ Amy peered curiously across the aisle.

Just before take-off, the tour director had given out some of his envelopes. Obediently the tour group had sat still until the seatbelt sign went off. Then they started to open their silver edged photo envelopes from the airport FAST-FOTO shop. The woman nodded, very upset. Her gold ring was so sparkly and looked very new. Her partner’s gold ring looked new too. Their hand luggage was hot pink. So were the bags of most of the group. Further down the aisle, there were cries as the envelopes were opened. Someone had made a mistake. A mix up!

‘A baby!’ With no hair! It is not ours! We have no baby yet.’

One couple had 24 photos of the same bald baby. Obviously it was not theirs. From the row behind, a girl with greenish hair leaned across, smiling.

‘Honeymooners. And they’ve probably only just had the wedding in Australia. Cheaper than Tokyo. Even a cup of coffee there costs $25.’

Amy nodded. Mum had told them that too. Since the flight was going to Tokyo, that meant Green Hair must have been in Japan before. She was so tall. Her elbows and knees stuck out so much even when she was sitting. She looked a bit like a grasshopper, Christopher decided. With her see-through green top and wispy skirt, and green streaks in her blond hair,she was the right colour for a grasshopper. But why was her hair greenish? Christopher puzzled. Perhaps she swam a lot in chlorinated water?

‘Hi. I’m Tess. I’m an art student. But I prefer to develop my own photos. Or use digital shots. Don’t want to get mine mixed up with someone else’s, like them.’’

Tess explained that she had just travelled around Europe learning from all the famous paintings in the galleries. Sometimes she tried to copy them, so she’d improve her own painting..

‘But if you’re a backpacker it’s hard to carry canvas to paint on. So, in Amsterdam, I used to draw in chalk on the pavement. And people would throw coins.’

‘Like a busker?’ asked Amy. Tess was a great talker. You didn’t even need to ask questions. ‘Mmm. It was a good way of paying my rent,’ smiled Tess. ‘And getting some commissions to paint murals on shop walls. Sometimes I had to get a permit from the council.’

Christopher liked the fact that Tess could paint. He was going to be an artist, later. To fill in time now, he decided to sketch all the passengers as if they were wildlife. He sketched quickly. Tess was a grasshopper. That Japanese woman passenger could be a butterfly with her brilliant coloured clothes.

The man in the red cloak was a beetle. And the courier with the silver chain was a chameleon, a lizard who changed colour according to the surroundings. William was a dragon fly.

‘What sort of insect am I?’ Amy peered over his shoulder.

‘An ant. A nuis-ANT’ He laughed loudly.

Annoyed, Amy turned to look at the next unhappy couple who were opening photos of a beautiful Chinese vase. ‘Wrong ones!’ they said.

Tess leaned across to look more closely. ‘That’s a Ming vase. Very expensive.’

She was very, very interested.‘Could I have a closer look please?’ She examined the vase photo closely. ‘One like this is rare. Usually they’re found in pairs on ancestor shrines in Asia. But if one gets broken, sometimes the family sell the other one if they’re really desperate for money. I wonder who this photo belongs to? They must have the original vase.’ She seemed unusually excited.

The Japanese couple were not impressed by Tess’s knowledge of Ming vases. They just wanted the wedding photos of themselves.

Christopher asked, ‘Where did you learn all that?’

Tess shrugged. ‘It was necessary for my job.’

‘Which job?’ asked Amy. For once Tess didn’t answer. She just looked very closely at the pattern on the vase in the photo. The long ceramic beads around her neck fell across the photo.

Was something hidden inside the waist-length beads, Christopher wondered.

Meanwhile, the honeymoon couples weren’t happy. And their tour director was very, very upset.

Amy peered at her neighbour’s photos. As far as Amy could see some photos were of a board game of some sort. Up close. Others were of people dressed in old fashioned costumes. One was an old man standing in front of a country town sign, holding a sword. Amy realised that someone had made a mistake. She looked at the real honeymoon couple sitting side by side in their just-bought jeans,AUSTRALIA T shirts and Doc Martens. No way were they the people in the photos.

Nobody could look THAT different in cloaks, big dresses and a suit of armour! In the photo, there was even a big, old sword. It looked like a photo of a dress-up party. Just then a mist started to form in the cabin. It started near the crew’s serving area and started to spread, like a fog.

‘Look!’ Christopher didn’t need to point. Amy could feel it. The cloud hovered above the seats. Christopher coughed. ‘What is it?’ Other passengers cried out as the cloud reached them.

Amy wasn’t keen on the growing cloud either. Was it a real cloud? Had something gone wrong with the plane? Was there a hole somewhere? Was it letting real cloud into the aircraft? Was the plane going to crash? ‘Attention please. This is Captain Richards speaking. Due the technical difficulties we will be returning to Sydney. We will resume our flight to Tokyo as soon as possible. Fasten your seat belts please.’

Amy hoped that they didn’t crash ON Sydney!