bun with the band around my wrist. And he smiles, just on that single side. It’s infectious, and I smile back. Our journey could have been a whole lot brighter if moments like this weren’t so far apart. Just that morning, I’d woken up in a cheap youth hostel beside a pub already swarming with students drinking pints for a pound. My heart had been totally broken, and it’s Jim who has been by my side.
‘You know what would be cool?’ I say.
‘What’s that, love?’
‘If we met by chance in say, a few years from now … a good chance, like—’
‘Like if I drove into the back of your brand-new BMW?’
‘Ha ha. You really should leave your mysterious empire and go into comedy, Jim.’
‘I’m thinking about it.’
‘But, what I’m trying to say is, it’d be cool if we met and I wasn’t a heartbroken wreck, and you weren’t hanging on death’s door with alcohol poisoning. We might have a shot at being friends. Maybe.’
‘It’s definitely crossed me mind that you were sent from hell to torture me.’
‘Oh, me too. Likewise.’
I hesitate, but decide to reach out my arms towards Jim and his shaggy tattered hair, his thickening stubble. A small chuckle escapes from me first, then another followed by him, and he steps forward, accepting my farewell embrace. He’s all skin and bone beneath that dated old fleece he’s been wearing all day, his long arms wrapping firmly around my small back. I thought he’d feel damp, kind of cold, as his appearance presents. But he’s warm, like a gentle fire burning beside a thick woollen rug. I squeeze him tight. God. I could’ve done with a decent hug like this hours ago.
‘Well, if we don’t meet by chance again,’ Jim says, not fully breaking away, his hands resting on my lower back. ‘I hope that heart mends. It’s wasted on that lying bastard scumbag. You’re worth more.’
Breathing in a little through my nostrils, I swallow the lump that’s popped up in my throat. Tiny tears prickle around the corners of my eyes and I wonder why more people in my life can’t decide to say such nice words to me.
He’s leaving, backing away, except he reaches one arm out and I presume he’s about to give my shoulder a gentle punch, say something along the lines of ‘hang on in there, kiddo,’ then I remember he isn’t an American jock. Instead, he squeezes my shoulder and moves his hand towards my face, and with absolute tenderness, strokes the patch below my scar and says, ‘All the best, love.’
At the check-in, a new line of passengers starts to form, ground staff now at the desks. That brief stillness within one of the world’s busiest airports has come to an end, and hustle returns to greet bustle. I sigh, preparing myself for the long, lonely night ahead of me as Jim gives one wave, a single salute, and walks away. The sliding doors to the terminal’s entrance are opening and closing with haste, a gush of angry wind slipping through and blowing in lingering dead leaves, a discarded sandwich wrapper, a loose luggage tag. Jim takes a quick step backwards when the wind sends a hit his way, before continuing onwards, forwards, outside.
‘Jim!’ I call, and follow him, my bags trailing behind.
He stops, turns around.
If any words were about to fall from his lips, they would be, ‘What now?’, except he just looks too jaded to speak.
‘I need your bank details,’ I tell him. ‘So I can transfer the money I owe you.’
‘Right,’ he says, as if he’d forgotten, which is hard to believe after the almighty song and dance he’d made out of it earlier. ‘You got a pen?’
‘I do, with my art things. I have a pencil case.’ I crouch down and start to unzip one of my suitcases. ‘Not this one. One moment, let me look in the other one …’
‘Zara …’
Another gush of wind attacks, the shrill whistle of its roar loud and strong.
‘Oh, Jim. You can’t drive in that atrocious weather. You’re pooped. It’s dangerous.’
He raises an eyebrow and if I could read his mind, I’d guess he was wondering why I’d changed the subject. But I’m not backing out of our deal. I have a better idea.
‘I need to get home,’ he says. ‘To bed.’
‘Reverse that. You need to get to bed. Then go home.’
‘I can’t—’
‘You can. Look, I’m not sleeping on an airport floor, so I’m going to have to get a hotel room,