Читать книгу Hap - Lesley Beake - Страница 6

I am on the plane, on the way to away. It has taken all day for the closing of the suitcase and the checking of the ticket and the “Have you got everything?” and “Have you got enough money?”

Affirmative. All I want is to get away. Away to a place that isn’t the maddening heat of New York, which I never want to see again, ever.

We, the passengers, have eaten … well, been served some stuff on trays, and I had a bit of a soft roll and something that once was chicken. Nobody really wanted their dinner, but you always get it anyway on planes. The air stewards bring it around regardless, the ones that show you where to get your life jacket “in the unlikely event of landing in the sea” and mock-smile while they hand out the drinks.

We have struggled around in our too-small seats, trying not to bother the stranger next to us, and now the stewards have dimmed the lights and are trying to settle us down to our in-flight entertainment.

A film flickers in front of me now, on the screen that is too small to really see. I took the headphones off about a thousand air miles ago, because you can’t hear above the noise of the engines anyway, and now I slump, half awake, half nothing, hypnotised by the flicker and flash of an adventure somebody else is having.

And sometimes … sometimes in this half dream, my mind loses its tight control of what may not be remembered, and I begin to see the marble floor of my mother’s bathroom – her peach-coloured towels, the scent of her talcum powder and the glorious feeling of being un-sticky in the air conditioning – and I begin to hear his voice, the voice I may not let my mind hear …

My face is reflected in the dull plastic of the window. I wonder what is behind that faint image of me. Is it Africa yet? Have we crossed that sea where we are “unlikely” to need our life jackets?

I reach out my hand; I touch the wavering reflection that is me, Lucy.

“Please close your window shutter. The other passengers are trying to sleep.”

My mind weeps.