before the gate was due to be announced, he barreled into the lounge with a carry-on suitcase and a newspaper. He’d been offered a column in the Times. He made light of it, but his shoulders were straighter, his expression lighter. I was glad that something good had come of it, for him.
They gave us five-star treatment on our flights home, complete with a counselor and a doctor who gave me a sleeping pill when I was too frightened to shut my eyes. When I woke, sweating and crying, Rowan talked me down off the ledge I’d climbed onto.
I wasn’t the only one to scream in my sleep or to shake uncontrollably when the pilot announced we were facing a little turbulence—please fasten your seat belts. I wasn’t the only one to look at my fellow passengers, making sure I recognized each one, that none of Missouri’s team had somehow slipped through the net.
My suitcase rounds the corner, and I step forward, but Rowan gets there first. “Let me.”
As we turn the corner into Arrivals, the noise is deafening. Camera flashes light up the hall with a dizzying intensity, and I’m glad of the sunglasses Rowan had suggested we both wear. It had felt foolish—like wannabe celebrities—but the onslaught is terrifying, and my instinct is to hide. Rowan steers me toward the exit, his hand firm and safe on the small of my back. There are shouts of over here!
I see Alice Davanti talking on her mobile. She skirts around the mass of reporters and heads directly for the exit. She’ll be going straight to the office, I expect, getting the scoop on the hijack of the decade. As the first hijacked passengers arrive back in Britain…
“Mina, will you be facing criminal charges?”
The room swims, a sea of faces moving in and out of focus. I feel myself fall. I’m back on the plane, I’m opening the flight-deck door, I’m seeing Mike’s face…
“Medic!”
A convenient collapse, one of the more unpleasant newspapers will call it. Overwhelmed by her heroic landing, another will say. I could have given them different headlines. TERRIFIED. HAUNTED. GUILTY.
Rowan helps me to my feet, and I brush off the enthusiastic first aider who has rushed to my side. Because I’ve seen something, among the chauffeurs’ boards and the journalists’ tape recorders, and it’s the only medicine I need.
The sign is painted on cardboard, Sophia’s careful letters filled in with red paint and glitter.
WELCOME HOME MUMMY.
Taped around the edges of the sign, overlapping like petals, are dozens of smaller pieces of paper. The notes I’ve put on Sophia’s pillow every time I’ve left her. She’s kept every single one.
I let go of my case, and I run. I run as fast as I can toward the sign, toward my daughter, toward home.
“Mummy!”
I pick her up and squeeze her so tight, crying into her hair, smelling her shampoo, her skin, the very essence of her. She’s crying, and I’m crying, and then I feel an arm around me and I know the weight so well; I know the feel of it so well.
“What took you so long?” Adam says softly.
I squeeze my eyes shut and force out the horrors of Flight 79 and instead focus on the familiar arms of my husband and on the soft body squashed between us. This is my family. This is my life.
“Sorry I’m late.”
FIFTY-ONE
THREE YEARS LATER | ADAM
“Let’s have a look at you.” Mina brings her face level with Sophia’s, and with a jolt, I realize she no longer has to crouch. Sophia’s gotten so tall. “You look perfect.”
“Daddy did my hair.”
“Clever Daddy.”
At Sophia’s insistence, I’ve been teaching myself via a series of YouTube tutorials. Today I’ve attempted French plaits, the parting beginning in the center and meandering first left and then right. The frizzy ends stick out below her ears, one big and one small.
“It looks great.” Mina grins at me, then drains her coffee and dumps the mug in the sink. It was six months before we could move back after the fire. The insurance covered everything, thank God, and when we finally stepped through the door, there was no trace of what had happened. The new kitchen was different, and we pushed a dresser up against the wall so you’d never even know there was a cellar. I thought I’d see Becca everywhere I went, but the three of us had spent so much time deliberating over the choices that now made up the ground floor of our house that