“She also needs to stop arguing with me when I say a piece isn’t good enough and has to be rewritten,” Mattie said.
Nell smiled, although it failed to ease the tension in her shoulders. “That’s our Rosie for you. Always so headstrong.”
“She adores you. Apparently, you put her back on the straight and narrow after an unfortunate shoplifting incident. She said you were firm but kind, and that’s stayed with her.”
Nell was beyond touched. To have had that kind of impact, to know she’d made a difference, meant everything. Oh, Angie hadsaid so many times, but for Rosie to have told the story to Mattie made it more real and sincere.
She listened as Mattie talked in detail about a professor who worked in biodiversity protection and other people she’d met at the conference. It was a fascinating subject, one that Nell felt strongly about, and she was looking forward to seeing the report that Mattie made on it. “When will your piece air?”
“Early next week.” Mattie cricked her neck back and forth again, clearly trying to ease a kink in it. “What I’m really looking forward to is waking up in bed with you on Christmas Day. We can unwrap each other.”
Christmas. All the trimmings. Food galore. Presents. She’d need to think of something special for Mattie to open on their first Christmas morning together. Decorations. Maybe a small tree with fairy lights. Some candles. She’d pass on the festive toilet cover though. “We could have a stroll along the beach to work off our dinner.”
“I can think of hotter ways to do that.”
Nell laughed. Mattie’s swagger was back, and Nell’s spirits soared higher than a jumbo jet. Christmas would mean lots of firsts this year. Nell becoming her true authentic self and spending the festive period with the woman she’d fallen for. She’d rip the plaster off and come out to her family. Already, she could imagine their unflattering responses, but that would be bearable with Mattie here. Spending five days together would give them a chance to fill in some of the gaps in their knowledge and understanding of each other. Yes, she wanted to talk seriously about Mattie’s emotional well-being, but that would work better when they were in person, rather than forcing the conversation on a virtual call when they were staring at each other through a screen. She grinned. She had some hardcore Christmas shopping to do.
Chapter 30
Berlin Brandenburg Airport was heaving, and Mattie scowled as she stood in line at passport control. Granted, it was three days before Christmas, which made it one of the busiest times of year for international travel, but she was in a hurry. She checked notifications on her phone for the nth time. Still no response from the text she’d sent to Nell from the cab on her way here.Damn. The queue shuffled forward, and she showed her documents to the official.
“Danke schön,” she said, when he gestured for her to go through the gate.
Once inside the departures lounge, she found a quiet corner and swiped to Nell’s number in her contacts list. Her call went straight to voicemail. “Hi, it’s me. Hope you’re okay. I need to speak to you urgently. Can you call me when you get this, please?” Fingers crossed that Nell would pick it up soon. Time was running out, and Mattie absolutely had to speak to her before boarding the plane.
Mattie unzipped her padded jacket, feeling overwarm in the heated hall. Had she packed everything? Travelling light was one thing, but she still needed all the essentials. She wandered past a row of brightly lit shops decked out festively, clearly targetingthe last-minute-presents’ crowd. Nell’s Christmas present was tucked safely at the bottom of Mattie’s carry-on bag. No way was she entrusting it to the luggage hold. She needed to buy some chocolate, that was part of her survival kit. Antacids, toilet paper, and antibacterial gel too.
Shopping completed, she checked her phone again. Nell still hadn’t read the earlier text, so the chances were that she hadn’t heard the voicemail either. Why wasn’t she responding? It was a work day, but usually she’d check in during her lunch break. Maybe she was in a long meeting, or she had no signal. Wait, hadn’t Nell said she was in court today? Or was that tomorrow?
On the departures board, the status for Mattie’s flight flicked from “wait in lounge” to “boarding.” She groaned aloud as she reluctantly headed for the departure gate.
She hovered at the back of the line of passengers. Once she was air-bound, she’d have to switch off her phone. The queue to board moved quickly, and she was almost at the front all too soon. Time had run out. She’d have to leave Nell another voicemail. Her mouth was suddenly dry. “Hi, sweetheart, it’s me again. I really wanted to tell you this in person, but I can’t get hold of you, and they’re making a last call for passengers for my flight, so I need to get on it and—” She dropped her head into her free hand.Stop babbling and get to the point. “I’ve been seconded to cover the earthquake disaster in southern Turkey so, um, it means I won’t be able to spend Christmas with you. I’m so sorry. Please, know that I’ll be thinking of you. I know I’m letting you down, and you might hate me for this. It’s just that I’ve been desperate to get back to reporting on a major story like this, and I couldn’t turn down the opportunity. I wish there was some way?—”
An airline attendant waved at her. “Last call,” he said, his fixed smile and corporate politeness covering up any irritation he might be feeling at her prevarication.
“Oh, fuck, I’ve got to get on the plane. I’ll miss you.” She ended the call, threw an apologetic glance in the attendant’s direction, and headed for the aircraft.
Vibrations from the airplane’s engines hummed through Mattie as she sat buckled in her seat, the belt heavy across her lap. She couldn’t breathe properly because her lungs ached, and they hadn’t even taken off yet.
“All set?”
She switched her gaze from her phone to Moeen. “Huh?”
He frowned, his bushy eyebrows meeting in the middle. “You look a bit spaced out.”
“I’m fine.” She gestured at her phone. “Just cancelling plans.”
“Tricky?”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t the first time she’d blown off family or friends at Christmas. Sure, it was awkward and inconvenient timing, but they all knew what the score was. Work came first. She had no control over world events and natural disasters. She sucked in a breath. She hadn’t felt this fucking awful about ditching a big party or Christmas celebration before. Why now?
Moeen secured the seatbelt across his lap. “Did you get a chance to read the email from Ed?”
“No, not yet.” Shehad, but her brain had been too fixated on working out how to let Nell down rather than reading her location manager’s message. She knew from experience that it’d be long and detailed. She reached for her tablet. “I’ll look now.”
“Travel from the airport’s going to be challenging. There are huge cracks in the main highway and the infrastructure is trashed. Ed said he and the rest of the first team there haven’t witnessed anything on this scale before.” Moeen whistled through his teeth at a picture on the screen.
Mattie called up the same photos on her own tablet. Bloody hell. The early-morning earthquake, measuring a magnitude of 7.8, had struck Turkey’s southern province. The figureswere unfathomable: tens of thousands of people dead, millions homeless. Entire cities had been destroyed, becoming little more than huge mounds of rubble. A week after the initial event, the country was still struggling to grapple with the scale of its impact.
