through the shower and change, throwing clothes and underwear into my suitcase dragged from the spare room, sunglasses, sandals. I know myself well enough to know that I don’t want to end up somewhere cold. Sunshine. I need to turn my face up to the sun and feel it coat my skin in hot, sticky warmth. Bag packed after a fashion, I drag it downstairs and hunt out my passport from the kitchen drawer. It’s in an envelope with Freddie’s, and for a few moments I hold them both against my chest, imagining us queuing at the airport with them clutched tightly in our excited hands. I daren’t look at his now; I need to stay in this frame of mind, the one that’s going to carry me all the way to a new place. I can’t wait it out until morning comes. I can’t wait even another hour, so I call a cab and drag my suitcase out on to the footpath and wait in the street. I push some money and a scribbled apology note through Agnes’s letter box; I feel obliged to ask her to watch Turpin even though he practically lives with her anyway, and he won’t give a damn if I’m not around. There’s no one else to leave a note for to alert them to my madness. I’ll message Mum and Elle when I’m sure where I’m going, but for now I lock the doors and fling myself into the cab when it pulls up, exhilarated. I can’t shake the feeling that someone or something will stop me, grab a-hold of my arm and tell me I can’t go, but no one does. I’m on my own. Captain of my own ship, albeit one who has no idea where she’s navigating towards.
I stand in the departures lounge and gaze at the board, bewildered. It’s only now that the first fingers of doubt begin to tap lightly on my shoulder. Truth is, I feel a bit unhinged, standing here in the middle of the airport on my own with a hastily packed suitcase, a half-empty bottle of pink pills and my passport. No one knows I’m here. I could turn round and go home, no one would be any the wiser. It’s tempting; I consider it. Everywhere I look there are couples and families, tired kids on iPads and hen parties making a beeline for the bar. I definitely don’t want to go anywhere there might be hen parties. I don’t know what to do so I stand still and let everyone move around me, surrounded by snippets of conversations, traces of duty-free perfume.
‘Okay, love?’ someone says, and I turn to see a security guard. ‘You’ve been standing there a while now,’ he says. ‘Need some help?’
He has a lived-in sort of face, as if he’s seeing out the last few years before retirement. I expect he’s asking me if I need directions to my check-in desk, but our conversation may as well serve a bigger purpose. He doesn’t know it, but he’s just become second-in-command on this ship.
‘I do, actually,’ I say. ‘Where would you go if you could go anywhere right now?’
Ted, whose name I know from his name badge, looks at me oddly, thrown by the question.
‘Home?’ he says.
I half laugh, desperate, because it’s the absolute wrong answer. ‘No, I mean abroad. If you could fly somewhere right now, where would you go?’
He eyes my suitcase and then me, assessing. What’s he thinking, I wonder? On the run from the police? Jilting someone at the altar? I belatedly hope I haven’t asked the least suitable person in the entire building for help; this guy could probably detain me. His hand rests on the radio on his belt, his thick gold wedding ring tucked into a well-worn groove on his finger.
‘Well,’ he says slowly. ‘I’d probably go for somewhere with a good internet connection so I could let someone know where I was when I got there.’
It’s fatherly; terribly endearing to this fatherless girl.
‘I will,’ I say, and then nod at the departures board again. ‘So, where?’
Ted sighs as if he’d really rather me turn round and go home instead. ‘You might be better seeing what’s actually available. Head over to the sales booths rather than the check-in desks.’
He points me in the direction of kiosks lining the far wall, illuminated in reds and yellows. ‘Oh, I see,’ I say. There’s quite a lot of them, a dozen or more, so I throw