the roaring in my head subside than something else takes its place. An alarm—the whomp whomp whomp of a warning siren and lights flashing from the instrument panel.
Panic grips me once again as I read the message on the screen.
We’re no longer on autopilot.
FORTY-SEVEN
Don’t run, you’ll fall.
Past the park, up the hill. Wait for the green man, not yet, not yet…
Now!
Cat in the window. Like a statue. Just the tiniest tip of his tail moving. Twitch, twitch, twitch.
Another road to cross. No green man, and no lollipop lady—she should be here…
Look both ways. Not yet, not yet.…
Now!
Don’t run, you’ll fall.
Postbox, then lamppost, then bus stop, then bench.
Big school—not my school, not yet.
Bookshop, then empty shop, then the ’state agent where they sell houses.
Now the butcher’s shop, birds hanging from their necks in the window. My eyes squeezed shut so I don’t have to see theirs staring back.
Dead. All dead.
There’s dead on the plane—the man on the radio said. Daddy talked so I wouldn’t hear, but I did hear. I did. And now the birds are looking—I sneaked a look, and they’re staring at me, staring as I get near, and I don’t care what Mummy says I have to shut my eyes and I have to run as fast as I can because of the birds and the bad people and Daddy in the ground and—
Smack!
Hit.
Hard and hot and stinging. Tears on my face. Blood in the snow.
The ’state agent, then the butcher, then…then… Then where?
It’s all different. Dark and covered in snow and shadows in shop doors I don’t want to pass. They’re still staring at me, the birds with their black bead eyes like ink poured in their heads. There are dead rabbits in there too—I’ve seen them. And the three little pigs’ feet. All of them watching from the shop. Waiting for me.
Snow on my slippers. Snow on me, on my dressing gown, on my pajamas.
So cold, so so cold.
Where now?
FORTY-EIGHT
30 MINUTES FROM SYDNEY | MINA
The plane starts to bank, the siren as loud and insistent as the panic in my head that tells me this is it—this is the end. I can’t breathe, a sudden, overwhelming claustrophobia made worse by the endless sky taunting me through the windows.
Whomp whomp whomp. It goes on and on, drilling into a head already full. Eleven years of bitterness, of anger, of the raw sense of failure that followed me home from training school and never left. If only I hadn’t swapped flights with Ryan, if only I hadn’t gone back to work after Sophia arrived, if only I hadn’t frozen that day eleven years ago. If I’d trusted myself, trusted my instincts. If I’d made a complaint, stood my ground. If only. This wouldn’t be happening.
Whomp whomp whomp. There must be a hundred switches in front of me, their unfathomable names etched in tiny white letters. FLIGHT DETENT. STAB TRIM. VERT SPD. F/D ON. One of them is the autopilot—but which one? I try to make myself look systematically, one row at a time, but my eyes dart around, losing my place. I can’t see it. It’s not there.
I pull on the headset. “Charlie!” There’s no time to waste on call signs and radio etiquette, and the siren’s loud enough to speak for me.
“I hear you, Mina—that’s the autopilot.” He could be telling me the kettle’s boiled, his voice is so calm. “Look at the top strip of instruments, right below the glare shield.”
“Charlie, we’re dropping.” In front of me is a large screen that shows an artificial horizon. Slowly, the plane is dipping to the left; the altitude readout on the right-hand side is dropping steadily. Nine thousand eight hundred, nine thousand seven hundred… Sydney stretches out beneath the sunrise.
“To the right of the top panel—”
Nine thousand six hundred.
“VERT SPD, V/S, HOLD.” I read the litany of white letters, all the time waiting for the plane to tip headlong into a dive we’ll never come out of. “A/P ENGAGE?”
Nine thousand five hundred.
“A/P ENGAGE. There are three buttons—you want the left one. L CMD. Press it.”
I press it. Instantly, the siren stops, the warning lights extinguished. I still don’t trust myself to breathe.
“Are you okay, Mina?”
“I—I think so.” My hands are shaking. “I don’t know what I did, Charlie.”
“It’s okay.”
“I had a panic attack. I didn’t mean to turn it off. I didn’t think—” I let go of the transmitter, my words as confused as my thoughts. I don’t remember what I touched, only that I had to be