“Fancy a brew to take up?” Carmel holds a tea bag over an empty mug.
“Go on, then.” It feels weird to take a break now, just a few hours after starting, and even weirder to know that when we wake, we’ll still have hours to go. Below us, people will get up, go to work, come home, and go to bed, and all that time, we’ll be in the air. It feels impossible, almost otherworldly.
Unlike Erik, who hasn’t cracked a smile since we boarded, Carmel is lovely. Only twenty-two and about to move in with her boyfriend, who she clearly worships.
“He works in the City,” she’d told me proudly as we sat in the jump seats, ready for takeoff.
“What does he do?”
She blinked. “He works in the City.”
I’d tutted at myself. “Ah, yes, you said. Sorry.”
She makes the tea, and I reach into the hatbox next to the galley for the small paper bag Sophia made me promise to bring on board. “Don’t open it till you’re flying,” she’d told me. She’d come into my room as I was packing, used, now, to the sight of my case open on the bed.
I unfold the paper. It’s one of the flapjacks we baked together on the weekend, and the syrupy scent makes my mouth water. One of the corners has been nibbled, and I touch the ragged edge where my daughter’s pearly teeth have been.
Beneath the flapjack, spotted with grease, is a piece of paper. For my mummy, love from Sophia xoxox. I show Carmel, and she clasps her hands to her chest.
“Bless! Your daughter?”
I nod.
“Oh my God, cute or what? I can’t wait to be a mummy. Bet you do all sorts of stuff with her, don’t you? Painting and crafts and all sorts.”
“Mostly baking.” I hold up the flapjack. “Lots and lots of baking. She made these practically on her own. She’s only five.”
“Amazing.”
I pull off a piece of flapjack and put it in my mouth, putting the note in my pocket and wrapping up the rest to have upstairs. I start wiping down the galley, getting everything straight for the next team. Someone’s left an auto-injector pen lying on the counter in the galley, and I pick it up so it doesn’t get swept into the rubbish.
“Any idea who—” I stop, my attention caught by a slightly scuffed label on the pen. A small white rectangle with a hand-drawn smiley face and a printed name.
Sophia Holbrook.
“Milk and sugar?” Carmel asks.
What’s Sophia’s EpiPen doing here? The smiley face tells me it’s the one from her rucksack—Adam’s simple but effective solution for keeping track of which pen lives where—and the label is undoubtedly the same as those with which I painstakingly named her shoes, lunch box, and water bottle.
I think back to this morning, after I’d dropped Sophia at school. I changed into my uniform at home. Even if the pen had been in my jeans, there’s no logical way it could have transferred from one pocket to another. Did I put it in my work handbag when I got to the airport? Years of doing this job has made me a creature of habit; my passport and ID live in my work handbag, along with hand cream, lip balm, a purse full of currency. I don’t keep an EpiPen in my work bag; why would I? Sophia is never with me.
“Earth to Mina. Are you alright?”
“Sorry. Just milk. Thanks.”
I drop the blue plastic pen into my pocket. There’s no other explanation. I must have brought it on board.
How else could it have gotten here?
SEVEN
6 P.M. | ADAM
“Becca build a snowman with me,” Sophia says, the lack of question in her tone less about my daughter’s command of language and more about her character. She isn’t asking me; she’s telling me.
“It’s nearly teatime. It’s dark outside,” I start, but her face clouds over, and I think, Sod practicalities, and sod sensible parenting. Why shouldn’t I be the one to make her smile for once? “I guess we can have the outside light on. It’ll be an adventure! I build excellent snowmen. The trick is to—”
“No. Becca and me build a snowman.”
“Fine,” I snap, as if I’m Sophia’s age. Salt doesn’t sting any less the more you rub it in. Is parenting supposed to hurt like this? And when it does, are we just supposed to take it?
Becca’s in the kitchen, poking at a lasagna she’s taken out of the oven. “Is this veggie, do you reckon?”