I put it in my biscuits, quite a lot of it in fact, so it would look suspicious if three of my batches had the right flower on them, and the foxgloves ones were plain.
They’ll know it was me. But they can’t arrest me.
I’m only nine years old.
Our taxi moves forward, then stops again. Dad sighs. “It would be quicker to walk.”
“Sophia’s exhausted,” Mum says. The window is open, and I can smell the dirty fumes from the cars around us choking the streets. “If we miss the train, we’re definitely eating. I’m ravenous.”
“I’ve got my biscuits,” I say, as though I’ve just remembered. I open my rucksack and take out the paper bags. One for each of us.
“What would we do without you?” Dad grins. I smile too, but my heart is going pitter patter pitter patter. I wonder how long it takes to die from foxglove poisoning. I wonder how much it hurts.
We munch the biscuits, and our taxi moves another tiny bit.
It’s done.
I feel better now. Sometimes you have to do something bad, to stop more bad things happening. Just like Rowan did.
“These petals are just lovely,” Mum says. She leans across to see Dad’s and then mine. “Oh—you gave Rowan your favorite ones.” She looks at Dad and laughs. “She wouldn’t let me pinch one!”
“Well, it was nice of him to look after me during the trial,” I say. “And he told me loads of interesting stories. He lives on his own, and I don’t think he has anyone to make him biscuits. And I really, really wanted him to have the purple ones.”
My parents exchange a glance that says bless! and I know they’re thinking how much they love me. What a good girl I am. “You’re very kind.” Dad puts an arm around me and squeezes me against him. I look at them both, and I give them my sweetest smile.
“That’s okay. I think he deserves them.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Sometimes an idea for a book floats around for a long time before it’s ready, like a seed germinating in the ground, waiting for just the right combination of sun and water. Like lots of writers, I keep a notebook of ideas, many of which never take root. Within the first few pages of that notebook are a handful of phrases. Flight attendant. Hijack threat. Save the child, or save the plane?
Some time after I wrote those words, I saw an article about the preparations for the first direct flight from London to Sydney. At that point, the longest flight I’d ever been on was thirteen hours, and the thought of adding another seven filled me with horror. I couldn’t help but think of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, where passengers are trapped on a snowbound train with a murderer in their midst. The idea of being thirty-five thousand feet in the air with nowhere to hide terrifies me, so naturally I decided to spend a year writing about it.
I love travel, and I’m very lucky that my job requires me to do a great deal of it. Lately, though, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of the flights I take, prompting me to evaluate whether each trip is truly necessary from a business point of view. I take trains where I can, and I try to offset my travel by making numerous small changes at home. Every little bit helps. I often sit in airport lounges, watching my fellow passengers and second-guessing their reasons for travel. Whether or not a flight is “necessary” is a subjective question, and in writing this book, I wanted to take a look at some of the perceptions and judgments that surround air travel and environmentalism. As I wrote, COVID-19 hit, and slowly countries shut down. Planes were grounded, airline staff furloughed or laid off completely. The skies cleared. Last year, I visited thirteen countries; this year, my diary is empty. It has been both unsettling and inspiring to write about an anti-aviation movement at the very moment the industry ground to a near halt, and I have been struck by the positive environmental impact evidenced in such a short space of time. It is impossible to know how the world will look in the future, but I’m quite certain it will change the way we travel forever.
I’m aware that—to put it mildly—the environmental activists in my novel are not heroes. They are fundamentalists, and fundamentalists are rarely sympathetic. So why write about extremists rather than the