‘Me too.’ The one nearer her thumb waswaynicer.
Lily narrowed her eyes. ‘You don’t actually think that, do you? I’m not a toddler.’
‘Well, I do prefer that one.’ He pointed. ‘But they’re all nice?’
‘You have terrible taste in lipstick, it seems. I’m getting the middle one.’ As she took her purse out to pay, she turned and grinned at him over her shoulder, a wide smile just for him.
Another breathless moment.
Twenty-One
Lily
Lily did her strap up very carefully. She’d definitely read somewhere thatallflight crash survivors had been properly strapped in when the crash happened. Then she unstrapped herself and took her denim jacket off and did the strap back up. Fear always made her hot. Apart from when it made her freezing cold. Maybe she should put the jacket back on.
‘You okay?’ Matt looked like he was preparing toenjoytheir flight. He’d always done that. He was looking out of the window at the runway. He’d still be happily looking out of the windows even when they were billions of feet up in the air over hard land. Or hard water. Water was very hard apparently when you landed on it from a long way up.
‘Fine,’ Lily managed.
‘Hey.’ Matt reached his arm round her and squeezed. ‘Statistically this is pretty much the safest way of travelling. I mean, I know I say that every time…’ like the last eight years had never happened and they still travelled together regularly ‘… but it’s true.’
‘Also statistically: if you fall out of the air from a really long way up, you pretty much always die. Just saying. It’s too all or nothing.’
‘I mean, so’s being hit by a car or getting a very serious illness. I think we just have to live life in the moment and not worry about the things we can’t do anything about, and just focus on the things that wecando something about. Like, if you leave the house on time and there’s an unexpected traffic jam and you’re going to be really late for ahugeclient meeting, there’s literally no point stressing because there’s nothing you can do.’
‘But youalwaysused to get stressed about being late for work.’
‘I know. And then a couple of years ago I had an epiphany in a traffic jam, which was caused by a lorryload of melons tipping over three cars in front of me, and I’mwaymore chilled about lateness now.’
‘How long did it take to clear the melons?’
‘Literally an hour and half.’
‘Melon melons or watermelons?’
‘Water.’
Wow. So weird. It was like something Matt said had just chimed inside her. She was genuinely feeling kind of zen right now. She looked at him and smiled.
‘What?’ He was smiling back.
‘You’re cool.’
‘Why thank you.’ His smile grew and he leaned over and kissed her cheek. ‘Come on. Let’s choose a film to watch.’
They were busy arguing over whether to go for a classic James Bond or a just-released psych thriller ora romcom, when Lily realised that the cabin crew were halfway through their start-of-flight instructions.
Oh God. What if there was a crash and they didn’t know what to do? She could feel her heart rate picking up and her palms getting clammy. Would Matt notice if she took some very deep breaths and a couple of puffs just in case?
She risked a half-second glance away from the cabin crew to focus on him. He looked up from the film list and smiled at her.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, totally fine,’ she said, switching her focus back to the evacuation demonstration. Actually, maybe there was no need to always pretend that she was okay in front of Matt. ‘Actually, nottotallyfine,if I’m honest. I might just take a couple of puffs. My chest’s a bit tight.’ She took her blue inhaler out. For the first time ever in front of Matt. In the past she’d have been skulking in the loos to use her inhaler.
Matt waited until she’d finished and then took her hand, pointed at the film list and said, ‘What about if you choose now and we go to the cinema next week and I choose?’ Okay. So all good. He wasn’t going to comment on her inhaler. Well, of course he wasn’t. Why had she ever thought he would? And if he had, would it have mattered?
‘That’s an excellent plan.’ She picked up the film list. She didn’t need to watch the rest of the demonstration because, realistically, there wasn’tgoing to be anything different about the emergency doors and oxygen masks on this flight from any other. And they needed to get going with the film soon so that they could watch the whole thing during the flight.
