A Beautiful Forever - By Anderson, Lilliana Page 0,8

for work.”

She nods her head, looking slightly impressed, “It’s good that you have everything mapped out.”

“What about you?”

She laughs, “I obviously didn’t think this through as well as you did. I have a room booked for a couple of weeks at a cheap and probably very nasty hotel. I'll look for work when I get there.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“A little bit of everything,” she tells me vaguely. The flight attendant comes past us again and takes our trays.

I check my watch. We only have another half-hour before we’re due to land. My leg starts bouncing up and down - fuck I’m nervous.

Paige

The seatbelt sign pings and lights up, as the captain’s voice comes over the speakers to tell us that we’re making our descent into London’s Heathrow Airport. He thanks us all for flying with him, and tells us that it is overcast and cold, which will be a bit of a shock to the system. We’re all used to Sydney’s summer weather.

“Here we go,” Elliot says to me as he clips in his seat belt.

I nod and take a deep breath to calm my nerves. I desperately need this fresh start away from everything that defined me up until now. When you get kicked out of home at 15, you fall into a lot of different situations in an effort to take care of yourself. People have very long memories and love reminding you of what you once were.

When I get to London, I will be Paige, the girl from Australia. I don’t need to be any more than that.

Chapter 4

Elliot

Waiting at the baggage claim I look around to see if I can find Paige, I lost her at some point as we went through all of our passport checks. I manage to spot her as she hauls her bag off the carousel and starts to wheel it away.

“Paige!” I call after her. She stops and looks around for the source of her name, eventually spotting me.

She smiles at me, and I feel lucky all of a sudden. “Hi Elliot, have you found your bags?”

I look at the crowded carousel and shake my head, “No, not yet, I just wanted to say bye I guess. Maybe see which direction you're headed, we could share a cab?”

She shakes her head, “There’s no need. There is a shuttle bus that takes me to where I’m staying.”

My hopes deflate as I realise this is good bye. I’ve really enjoyed her company. “Oh, well… maybe I’ll see you around some time.”

She laughs, “I doubt that Elliot, London is a lot bigger than Sydney - it was nice to meet you though. Good luck finding yourself.” She lifts her bag and starts to walk away, waving over her shoulder at me as I stand here doing nothing.

“Yeah, you too,” I call after her as I watch her walk out of my life.

Paige

My room is tiny - I can maybe take four steps in one direction and only three in the other. There’s a small wardrobe, a minuscule desk and chair as well as a single bed with a polka-dot quilt on top. The carpet is royal blue, and the walls are stark white. It's clean and doesn’t have any funky odours hanging about, so for that I’m thankful.

I drop my bag at the foot of the bed and lay down, the jet lag already seeping in and dragging my eyes closed. I sit up, not wanting to fall asleep and ruin my night by being wide awake. With no TV in my room, I would actually like to spend it sleeping.

Reaching into my bag, I find the folder of papers I had printed out before I left Australia. I’m a trained hairdresser, so I made a list of salons to call about work in an area close to the city, that I thought I might be able to afford to live in. I’d done some research on share accommodation but got really confused with what the different ‘zones’ meant. I’m planning to go and have a look around to see what’s what tomorrow. But for today, I’ll make phone calls to enquire about a job; I have limited funds so a job is high priority.

Leaving my room, I head for the hotel shop, sucking in my breath when I'm blasted by the cold air the moment I open the main door to cross the small courtyard. Still hugging myself against the cold, I purchase a prepaid phone card and return to