Page 120 of I’m Dreaming of a New York Christmas

‘Yeah, about that: I didn’t tell you he’s mortally terrified of aeroplanes, did I?’

Anneka removed her hand from my arm and waved it dismissively.

‘Details, details,’ she said, as Mum returned from the toilet.

‘Right then,’ Mum whispered, joining us in the queue. ‘Who’s ready to waltz on through with these ginormous bags?’

‘Me,’ Anneka said decisively, thrusting her hand palm-down into the air in the centre of us.

‘Me, too,’ Mum said, slapping her hand on top of Anneka’s with a painful-sounding thwack.

I took a deep breath, heaved my backpack onto my shoulders and flexed my fingers before placing my hand on theirs with tender certainty.

‘Me, three.’

Chapter 26

A bump – followed by a polite ripple of applause for the pilot – jolted me out of what was probably the longest stretch of uninterrupted sleep I’d had in a week.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Heathrow Airport where the local time is eight ten a.m.,’ a nasally, male voice announced over the aircraft speaker.

Somehow, I’d slept through the entire flight home, my head resting on Mum’s shoulder, hers on Anneka’s, and Anneka’s against the inside of the plane, like three human dominoes that had toppled at the very first hint of a nudge.

‘Please remain in your seats until we’ve come to a complete stop and the seatbelt sign is no longer illuminated. And, finally, let me be the first person to wish you a very merry Christmas!’

A few people chirped ‘merry Christmas!’ in reply, while a few naysayers groaned. Mum was one of them, even though she’d yet to fully wake up.

‘Happy twenty-fifth, Mum,’ I said to her, as she rubbed her eyes and stretched, not unlike the small child who was sitting across the aisle from us with his parents. ‘Here’s your next dose.’

I took one of her hands and placed two black capsules into her palm, closing her fingers around them and squeezing. She grunted, but – for a brief moment – she clutched my thumb as I withdrew my hand, and squeezed it back.

‘I’ll be turning into a lump of coal with all this charcoal in my system,’ she said, as if the thumb-squeeze hadn’t happened at all. She swallowed the pills down with a gulp of water from one of those tiny bottles they give you on aeroplanes.

I smiled sleepily at Mum, reaching over her and shaking Anneka’s arm gently.

‘We’ve landed, Anneka,’ I said softly.

She scrunched up her face and squinted as she came to. ‘Ah, fuck, I slept through all the free food and drinks?’

‘I mean, technically speaking it’s not free because…’

Anneka glared at me with a glint in her sleepy eyes.

‘Yes, you missed all the free stuff.’

Anneka stretched herself awake while the aircraft taxied towards the gate.

‘Are you doing okay?’ she asked, once her body had shrunk back to its unstretched form.

I smiled, lips pressed together tightly. ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’

Ethan had sent me a ‘fly safe’ message just before we’d taken off, and I’d replied with a bland thumbs-up emoji in lieu of all the heart emoji variations my soul had wanted to send. Apparently, I’d regressed to the emotional maturity of a tweenage girl.

As the aeroplane engines faded to nothing, Anneka reached over Mum, who was focused on stuffing all the airline-branded eye masks, headphones and socks the three of us had been given at the start of the flight into her hand luggage, and squeezed my shoulder.

‘Good things are ahead for you, Flora. I can feel it,’ Anneka said.

I sighed. ‘If you say so.’