I sense abut.
‘Like, what you say actually makes a huge amount of sense.’ She quirks one eyebrow. ‘Except yousoclearly don’t believe a word of it.’
‘What?’ Surely I’m not that transparent. I reallywentfor it there. I really believed that I was transmitting extreme sincerity.
‘However,’ she continues, ‘since yourwordsdid make sense, I will take comfort from the fact that if I go down I’m going down withyou, and I will now focus on reading my book and not worrying about anything, because in the event that we do crash I will join eternity with you, the lovely pilot and—’ she lowers her voice to a very quiet whisper ‘—the woman behind us.’
‘Great, then.’ My lips are twitching again, which for no good reason at all I find a little irritating.
‘Yep. So feel very free to continue with your very urgent whatever-you-were-doing.’ She flaps a hand in the direction of my phone as though she’s dismissing me, which is a little rich given thatsheinterruptedmewith her flying phobia chat.
‘Thank you,’ I say with as much sarcasm as I can muster.
‘No worries.’ She bestows a sunny smile on me like she’s doing me a favour, and the very annoying thing is that I feel myself slightly respond to the smile.
I shouldn’t be annoyed; I should just be pleased that I can now return to my emails.
I’m beginning to type out a response to the tricky message I was considering earlier, when the woman behind asks Flavia through the seat gap about the book she’s reading on her Kindle, which she couldn’t help noticing and has been considering reading herself. She wonders whether Flavia would recommend it, and would be very happy to share book recommendations herself.
And Flavia, possibly trying hard to wind me up, smiles at me and says, ‘Don’t worry, we won’t disturb you,’ and begins a normal-volume, wide-ranging conversation about books with the woman, right in my ear, clearlygreatlydisturbing me in regard to the possibility of me getting any work done at all.
Fortunately, I have noise-cancelling headphones. I don’t like wearing them, and I’ve read that research shows that they aren’t good for people, but I do always bring them for eventualities such as Flavia.
Very quickly, I have all sound drowned out and am working away. All is well now. I keep the headphones on, I only glance a few times at Flavia, who’s still deep in conversation with her new friend, and I’m able to get a lot of work done.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her. She jiggles a bit. She reads a bit. She watches a film. Eventually, she nods off.
I do have to say that, given that she’s such a nervous flyer, I’m very impressed that she’s so stoical. I’m also pleased: I’m tired and she’s been keeping me awake with all the jiggling, plus I felt like I should keep an eye on her given her flying phobia. Once she’s asleep I’m able to go straight to sleep too.
A few hours later, as the sun comes up, I’m woken by quite severe turbulence.
Two seconds later, Flavia jerks awake and attaches both her hands to my arm in a vice-like grip, before whimpering, ‘Make it stop.’
Half of me wants to laugh and half of me feels very sorry for her.
‘Itwillstop,’ I say, as soothingly as possible.
And then there’s an announcement. A very bad one: we are told to assume the brace position for a crash landing on water.
‘Youdickhead,’ hisses Flavia. ‘Your stupid statistics. Completely wrong. You lulled me into a false sense of security. We’re going todie. And I’m going to have to join eternity with a cynical, conservative, jedalikelawyer.’
‘AndIam going to have to join eternity surrounded bychaos.’ I indicate her strewn belongings and do not bother to ask what she means by the wordjedalike.
We stare at each other for a moment, before I shake my head and say, ‘Let’s brace. Just in case. It might actually help.’
We both go into the brace position, but on my way down, something occurs to me. I really don’t think we’re over water. I put my head up for a second to check out of the window, and no, we aren’t. I think that the announcement must have been a mistake. Also, if anything, the turbulence is settling. From just above my knees, I turn my head in Flavia’s direction. She has her eyes squeezed shut and her lips pressed together.
‘I feel like this is a mistake,’ I tell her. ‘There’s no water nearby.’
All around us, people are screaming, saying prayers, trying to leave voice messages for loved ones. It’s a truly awful bedlam.
I hope desperately that the announcement that theyshouldhave made – there really is no water anywhere in sight – was a less terrible one.
‘Fuuuuuck,’ says Flavia from between her knees. Apparently what I said did not help at all.
And then there’s another announcement apologising hugely for the first one and saying that they just meant to inform us that there’s turbulence but that everything is alright and that they just wanted to remind us to fasten our seatbelts.
Flavia sits up very slowly and looks at me.
