camera and saw a hijacker standing there, a blade to the throat of someone they love, they’re forbidden to open that door. Sophia might be in danger, but it won’t make a difference to Cesca and Mike. There are too many lives at stake.
The cockpit door clicks open, and I step inside. There’s nothing but blackness through the vast windscreen, and I have a sudden feeling of falling, of tumbling down Alice’s rabbit hole, spinning out of control…
“Hey”—Mike glances at my name badge, well used to traveling with strangers—“Mina, how’s it going back there?”
For that second, everything is still okay. I want to make it last, to draw out the moment before all our lives change. They’ll notify air traffic control as soon as they know. There’s a silent code to tap in. 7500. Hijack in progress.
What happens then is out of our control. An emergency landing at the nearest airport or an escort from fighter jets away from highly populated towns. In a volatile airspace, there’s even the risk of being shot down: a controlled explosion seen as a favorable option to letting a plane crash.
I swallow hard. That’s not my call to make. My job is to keep the passengers safe, not the plane. My job is to tell Cesca and Mike that we have a hijacker on board.
“All good,” I say. “Except…” My pulse thrums, and I finish my sentence in a rush. “There’s a young boy in business who’s desperate to meet one of you. A real aviation geek. Any chance you could pop through?”
In 2015, the copilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 locked his captain out of the flight deck and flew the Airbus A320 into the Alps. Everyone on board was killed. The response from airlines was mixed: half immediately instigated policies stating that pilots could never be alone; the other half made no such change, instead looking at how they could preempt the mental health issues that had surely led to such a tragedy.
World Airlines made no policy change.
“His mum’s a bit of a cow,” I add. “She’s knocked herself out and left the kid to fend for himself the whole flight.”
“I can’t stand parents like that,” Mike says. “It’s not a bloody crèche.”
“I’ll go.” Cesca stands, stretching. “I need a pee anyway.”
I don’t thank her. I can’t speak. My mouth is desert dry, my lips sticking to my teeth, and as I walk out of the flight deck with Cesca close behind, bile burns my throat.
I’m a mother.
I have no choice.
TWENTY
9:30 P.M. | ADAM
My head is thick, the combination of wine and painkillers making me nauseous. I swill out my wineglass and fill it with water, blinking hard as the glass goes fuzzy around the edges. My ribs hurt, and the pain around my kidneys is a constant reminder of the kicking I had.
I’ve got to find a way out. I’ve got to pay what I owe to the loan shark and get his gorillas off my back, then I’ll deal with the banks. Once the debt stops getting bigger, I know I can start making it smaller again.
All you need is one big win, says the devil on my shoulder.
I press my hands harder into the draining board.
I’ve always liked a flutter. Nothing regular, just a bet on the Grand National and the occasional trip to the dogs with the lads from work. A tenner here, twenty there. When Mina and I got married, we gave lottery tickets as wedding favors. We won the jackpot when we met, read the cheesy writing on each envelope. Here’s hoping you’re as lucky as us! Mina’s aunt scooped a hundred quid; a couple of people won a tenner. It was fun, as it was supposed to be.
For ages, that was all it was. Mina and I would play the lottery whenever there was a big rollover. They’d email you if you won, but we still sat and watched the live show: it was the anticipation we loved as much as anything.
“Who would you tell first?” Mina would say.
“Nobody. I’d help people out secretly. Like a fairy godmother but hairier. And no one would know until I died, and then they’d make me a saint.”
Mina threw a cushion at me. “Bollocks. You’d be at the Lamborghini showroom the very next day.”
“Fair point. Red or yellow?”
“Yellow. We might as well be vulgar as well as flashy.”
We never won. Never even matched three numbers. And in the beginning, it didn’t bother me. The chances were so tiny—it was