I’m quickly flicking through my catalogue of great dates with Hamish when he yawns and brandishes his eye mask again.
‘If we don’t get to catch up again, it’s been good to see you, Nina,’ he says benevolently, pulling the mask over his face and GOING TO SLEEP.
I stare, wide-eyed and in shock.
He’s done it again! Cut me off for the sake of yet more sleep. How much slumber can a grown man possibly need, I wonder furiously. As Hamish gently snores away, I cast my gaze about the plane in desperation. How has this gone so spectacularly wrong? How have I squandered my chance at a beautiful reunion with the man of my dreams? And why does he seem hell-bent on ending our conversation?
I shake my head crossly, sending wild curls all over the place.
In front of me, my TV screen shows our journey over Indonesia and out across the Indian Ocean. Just a casual five-hour hop to fill. Again.
I close my eyes, resolving to figure out why I feel like this is the world’s longest episode of déjà vu. Because of course I’m not actually time-travelling, am I? I did not die at Perth airport thanks to a speeding luggage buggy. Firstly, that would be the most deeply uncool of deaths. Untimely end via airport buggy? Surely that’s not how I’m actually meant to leave this mortal coil. I’d imagined something much chicer and more exciting.
RIP Nina Moss, tragically crushed under the weight of the massive diamond she bought herself after becoming a trillionaire CEO.
That’s definitely going to be more my vibe.
Or maybe something simpler.
RIP Nina Moss, died because she was just too fabulous.
Being ploughed down by an errant buggy is one hundred per cent not how it’s happening. They remind me of those golf buggies you see whizzing around golf courses and, much like Jennifer the divorcee in my dream, I don’t even like golf! Those visors are a crime against fashion, for a start. It must have been a very vivid dream. That’s all. Besides, as I look back on everything that has happened today, I realize that I’ve already done a lot of things differently to the dream I had. As well as feeling, by now, utterly exhausted, I have also managed to change the course of the dream in many respects. So I decide to keep up that good work. As long as I avoid any speeding luggage buggies at Perth airport, I’m sure I’ll be just fine, I decide as exhaustion overcomes me and I pass out in my seat.
My mind is one-track as we land at Perth. I’m like a meerkat, head scuttering around looking for wayward buggies at every turn. Hamish, once again glued to his phone, has wandered off in his own little world. That’s okay, I decide, because there will still be time to at least swap numbers when we’re through passport control and out the other side. I decide to dilly-dally in the loos, eating up time to make sure that the vehicle of my doom will have passed by the time I emerge from passport control and baggage pick-up. I spritz my face with a refreshing spray to wake myself upa bit, and whack on some more deodorant, by now positively fantasizing about stepping into a hot shower once we’ve checked in.
I emerge from the loo to find Callum’s tall frame leaning against a pillar and realize with a jolt that he’s waiting for me. By now I’m too on edge to mutter much more than a curt greeting. When he drops his passport, as I suspected he would, and I inevitably go to pick it up for him, I’m too distracted to poke fun at the picture of him with a man bun. Not that it matters, he’s in razor-sharp get-shit-done mode too as we march through security. I don’t blame him. After all that long haul, even those of us who didn’t spend most of it madly deciding they’d developed psychic abilities-slash-travelled through time must be ready to get settled into their Australia trips.
‘Ha ha, time travel,’ I chuckle to myself as we’re handed back our passports and head to pick up our bags.
I need to get to the hotel, drink some water and maybe try meditating. Or take up running. Or, my preferred option, listen to some vintage Britney Spears reallyreallyloud.
‘Oh baby, baby,’ I start to sing quietly as Callum pulls my suitcase off the carousel and we make our way to the exit. I’m deliberately moving slower, with measured purpose now. On high alert.
He hums the tune too, eyes straight ahead.
Hearing Callum humming is surprisingly cute.
‘A Britney duet—’ I’m smiling as the sound of screeching tyres interrupts me. The next thing I know, Callum is flung across me and we’re a tangle of limbs as my head hits the airport floor with a thud. My ears rush with pumping blood and I can feel something warm and wet trickle around the base of my skull.
Someone’s turned the television off again.
EIGHT
‘Over and over and over and over and over,’ sing Hot Chip, as my chosen alarm song blares into action. Again. I sit bolt upright, heart hammering, and immediately reach for my phone. Same date. Same time. Same dark bedroom and pre-dawn alarm call.
*Screams into the abyss*
This cannot be happening? How am I here,again?
It’s now completely and utterly undeniable that I am, in fact, trapped in a time loop. Brushing things off as potential psychic ability or ‘vivid dream’ will no longer wash, I realize, picking up my pillow and physically screaming into it, so as not to wake Penny.
As I go through the motions of my early morning, totally on autopilot by now, I wrack my brains to try and figure out how this could be happening. Science was not my strong suit at school, damn it, but I do know that time is officially linear and the idea that people could travel within it would definitely not be supported by physics boffs.
Doctor Who, yes. Real life, no.
All to say: I simply cannot explain this set of circumstances. Reasoning this return to Monday is way out of the realm of my average-grade brain, and I suspect it would be something of ahead-scratcher for even the brightest of physicist minds. Like, for example … I pause, rubbing my own head as I try to conjure up some famous physicists. See! I don’t even know their names, let alone how to reason my way through this palaver myself!
I squeeze my hands into fists. I think I can officially call it. This is the worst Monday ever. Oh to be that buoyant, happy-go-lucky Nina of two Mondays ago, so filled with enthusiasm for the day ahead. Poor, simple lamb. That Nina had no clue that she would soon be trapped in a time loop, reliving a long-haul flight to Australia over and over again until, what, the end of days?
