Chapter Fifty-Eight
My apartment isn’t welcoming. It doesn’t feel like home. All I can see is him—standing in the kitchen, lying on the sofa, draped across the bed. Despair seeps into my bones and I wear a hole in the carpet, pacing the bedroom floor.
The sun eventually rises—the traitor—the skies clear and lapis blue. It makes me think of home. Leaves me wondering what’s happening on my side of the world. As light spans the whole of my room, I wonder how many women will be kept from their sleep by heartbreak tonight. Do they pace the floor asking the same?
Suddenly, inexplicably, I long to be in my mother’s arms, long for her to coat me in the reassurance of home. I want her to protect and cosset me, like she did when I was small, while I tell her in great, gulping sobs how much I hurt. How I’ve been wronged.
I could go home, I have time. Not that I’m foolish enough to think I can be honest there. I can’t ignore that she sent Shane to Dubai, but I can cope with it. I can even survive seeing him, because he means nothing to me.
What I can’t handle is being here. Seeing Kai. Seeing his faithless face, listening to him lie. Panic flares inside, halting me in my steps.
I’ll die if I have to see him. Die... or throw myself at his feet.
I pick up the phone.
‘Welcome to Emirates Airline,’ the automated message greets. I use my credit card and buy a seat for tonight. I’m going home.
I arrive at the airport in my car—the gift from Kai—glad for the first time since last night that I’d driven it home. Not that I had a choice. I didn’t have any cash for a cab. I abandon it in the wrong car park, confident, unhappily, in his ability to pay the fine.
Then I wonder how long it’ll take him to find it, because I won’t be driving it back.If I come back at all
I don’t have any carry-on, just a case filled with God only knows what. Uggs, shorts and assorted tops, I think. Toiletries and underwear—plain cotton—I can’t face the finery of lace. My recent introduction to designer clothing leaves me with nothing but distaste. It stays in the closet. I can’t think about those things, let alone look.
Irony of ironies, I’m running back to the place I ran from.
Trudging mindlessly through the terminal, I’m jostled by people and bags, but nothing registers. I walk from one end to the other without seeing a thing. I know I need to pull myself together, need to get through this flight. Get away. Gain some distance. I wander back through the throng, planning to buy gifts, silly souvenirs for my family. That I’m returning doesn’t mean I’ll tell, but I have to look normal and normal people bring gifts.
I drift into an area selling Middle Eastern themed trinkets and buy my stepfather a shisha or a water-pipe, along with some apple flavoured tobacco. He doesn’t smoke, believing it to be a sign of weak character. He doesn’t approve of anything foreign. So I buy this as a symbol of both, a silentfuck youto sit and gather dust in the corner of some room. I choose a heavily embroidered tablecloth for my mother. This at least, I know she’ll like.
I find the pharmacy next, buying something to help me sleep, wishing it was as easy to buy something to make me not feel.
Queuing at the gate, I switch on my mobile, resolutely ignoring the inbox as I hurriedly text Niamh.
Family SOS. Don’t worry. I’ll be back before you know it. Get me on my email. x
I switch off my phone as it starts to ring.
‘You may switch on your cell after take-off, madam.’
A member of the airline’s crew offers me this smiling advice. She hands back my torn boarding card as I enter the cabin. For a moment, I think she called me madman. She wouldn’t be far wrong. I’m the antithesis of her well-groomed self. A mess on the inside as well as out; mismatched clothes and wild hair compliment my mismanaged heart.
‘There’s no one I need to speak to,’ I mumble as I stuff the phone into my purse.
Pulling the meagre pillow to the window, I pick up my earphones and stick theleave me alonetag at the top of my chair as the captain’s voice catches my attention as he makes his pre-flight announcement.
‘...take a moment to introduce the crew,’ drawls an accent from home, ‘...we hope to make your flight a pleasant one.’ The voice evokes endless blue skies, eucalyptus and pine. ‘... so if you’d care to sit back and relax, it’s almost time to push some clouds past those windows and some service down the aisles.’
I smile for the first time in what feels like forever. Only an Aussie could put it quite that way. It’s like a sign that I’m doing the right thing.Going home to heal.
Tears taste like salt and despair. Despair that lies in my throat, curled in a stinging ball. Despair that courses down my face, taunting me. Reminding me of him: the salt of his skin, his salt on my lips.
My room is dark and almost silent but for the fan rotating above my head. Summer has arrived early in my absence and the air, heavy and suspenseful, heralds a coming storm. Getting from the airport to the house was a blur. I remember the airport, the glaring lights after the dead slumber of the flight. I recall walking into the airless night, the cicadas calling their welcome.
And now my room is hot, too hot for clothes. But I wear them anyway, like I can’t bear to be naked, like it’ll somehow remind me of him. I lie in the heat, willing on the storm.
Closing my eyes, I finally sink into the darkness.
‘What time did she get in?’
