Follow Me Down (18 page)

He didn’t stop, the vein in his neck throbbing as he looked over his shoulder, reversing his car back up the narrow road towards Crofton. In a fit of panic, I opened the door. It flew open and he slammed on the brakes so hard, I jerked forward, and reached for the dashboard again, the holdall tumbling off my lap onto my feet.

‘What are you doing?’ He leaned across me and pulled the door shut.

‘Let me out!’

He stared at me. ‘Adamma.’

I stared back. ‘I thought you were taking me to the airport?’

‘That wouldn’t be appropriate.’

‘Why?’

He put his hands back on the wheel. ‘I’m taking you back to Burnham.’

‘I have to go to the airport! I have to see my father!’

‘I’m sure Mrs Delaney has made the proper arrangements.’

‘You don’t understand.’ I shook my head. ‘I have to go now.’

He closed his eyes and sighed. ‘I know you’ve had a horrible shock, Adamma, but you can’t run off to the airport by yourself. How are you going to get there?’ He waved a hand at the windscreen. ‘Are you going to run all the way there?’

‘If I have to. I can’t sit around Burnham all day waiting for the car.’

‘What time is it coming?’

‘Six o’clock.’

‘Six o’clock?’ He wavered then. ‘Why on earth is it coming so late?’

‘My flight isn’t until ten o’clock tonight.’

‘Ten o’clock? Goodness.’ He took his glasses off and wiped them with the end of his tie. ‘That is an unbearable amount of time to wait.’

‘I know.’ I stopped to take a breath. ‘I just want to be at the airport. At least if I’m there, I’ll feel like I’m doing something, like I’m closer.’

He thought about that while he put his glasses back on, then said, ‘Of course. That makes perfect sense. I’m sure Mrs Delaney will think so too.’ He put his hands back on the wheel. ‘Let’s go back to Burnham and explain that to her.’

I wasn’t listening. ‘What’s that?’ I pointed at the windscreen.

He stopped and leaned forward, peering at the sky. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Oh,’ he said, sitting back again, looking a little bewildered. ‘It’s snow.’

‘Snow?’ Panic rushed through me again. ‘We have to go to the airport now.’

‘Yes, but—’

I interrupted, my voice suddenly too loud, too hard. ‘What if it gets worse?’

‘It’s just a few flakes.’

‘Now it is. What if we’re snowed in by six o’clock?’

He started to protest again, but my cellphone was ringing. ‘It’s my mother,’ I gasped before I’d even pulled it out of the pocket of my blazer. I swallowed a sob and answered it. ‘
Nne m, keekwanu?
’ I said in a rush, breaking into Igbo.

She was in a cab to JFK airport and as hysterical as I was. I didn’t recognise her voice, it was too high, too quick. She kept breaking into English to bark at the cab driver, telling him to go faster, to take Second Avenue, there would be less traffic. She sounded so far away and I thought of the three of us – me, my father and her – scattered across the globe, trying to get back to one another.

I’d never thought about it before, about how much time we spend apart. Even when we go on vacation, one of has to leave early – there’s an emergency at the embassy or I have to get back to school or my mother has to teach a class – so I’m used to travelling on my own. I enjoy it. I catch up on the television shows I’ve missed and when I have to stay in a hotel by myself, I order room service and eat it in bed, which I’m never allowed to do at home. It had never felt like a hardship until then, on the phone to my mother, the two of us separated by miles of wire. But when she asked me how I was, I lied and told her I was fine. ‘
Adi m mma.
’

I held my breath as she told me what she knew, that someone had tried to carjack my father at a gas station and when my father refused to hand over the keys, the man shot him. Other than that, all she knew was that he was in surgery.

‘Poor Papa,’ I breathed.

‘He shouldn’t be on his own,’ she murmured and I don’t know if she meant to say it out loud, but I felt it like a needle in my heart. My chin trembled and I pressed my lips together. I didn’t want her to have to hear me cry.

When she got to JFK, I heard the cab driver muttering the fare. She told me she’d call me back and I had to swallow another sob before I told her that I loved her. ‘
Ahuru m gi n’anya, nne
,’ I blurted out before she hung up.

It was a moment or two before the dizziness passed and I could lift my head, and when I did, Mr Lucas was driving down the narrow road. When he got to the bottom and turned left out of Crofton, I managed a small smile. ‘Thank you.’

He didn’t look at me, just nodded. ‘You’d better call Mrs Delaney.’

‘OK.’

My phone buzzed then, then again and again as the news about my father spread and everyone got in touch to check I was OK. I read each text message before I called Mrs Delaney – in case any of them were from my relatives in Nigeria – but it wasn’t until Mr Lucas drove past Scarlett’s huge cake-coloured house that I realised that none of them were from her. I got one from Olivia, sending her love and asking if there was anything she could do, but that was it and I shouldn’t have been so surprised; I knew what Scarlett was like, but that didn’t make it right and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t make an excuse for her.

Mrs Delaney was relieved to hear from me, but was far from amused. When I told Mr Lucas that she wanted to speak to him, he seemed reluctant to take the phone and when he did and his cheeks went from pink to red, I realised that she was telling him off. I felt awful, it wasn’t his fault, and when I offered to take the phone to tell her so, he mouthed, ‘It’s OK.’

Eventually, she let him respond and they began discussing the logistics of getting me to the airport. I could only hear his half of the conversation, but it sounded unnecessarily complicated. He had to give her his full name, his registration number, the make, model and colour of his car, then tell her what time he thought we were going to arrive at the airport. When he ended the call and handed me back the phone, he looked exhausted and I apologised.

‘I’m so sorry, Sir. The embassy are mad strict about security.’

‘It’s not just them. Virgin Atlantic are just as strict. I had no idea travelling first class was so difficult,’ he said with a smile that drooped when he saw that the snow was getting heavier. He turned on the windscreen wipers and when they began sweeping back and forth, he caught himself, turning to me with a brighter smile. ‘Mrs Delaney is going to call back shortly with directions and a code. It seems Virgin’s First Class lounge is contained in an underground bunker somewhere at Heathrow!’

I bit my lip, turning to look out the window at the snow settling in clumps on the hedges that lined the narrow road. When my gaze flicked to the rear-view mirror, I looked at the road rolling away from us, the tarmac dusted with snow and the tyres of his car leaving two black lines, like the ones they’d left at Crofton.

He began apologising, fiddling with the various knobs on the console until the fan on the dashboard in front of me blasted heat, hot and fast, like a hairdryer. ‘Sorry. As much as I love this old thing, Triumph were yet to discover heated seats when it was made in the seventies, but we should be there in an hour or so,’ he said over the scrape of the wiper blades. ‘I hope they don’t frown at my car when I drop you off.’

‘It’s fine. Just drop me outside Departures.’

He chuckled. ‘Are you ashamed of my car, too?’

I didn’t laugh. It was such a British thing to do. If he could, he’d be making tea, no doubt, and, while I appreciated the effort to distract me from the searing pain I felt each time I thought about my father, it was taking every crumb of energy I had not to collapse into a sobbing heap so I just wanted to focus on not doing that.

So I looked out at the road, at everything going from green to white. When we moved onto the freeway, relief gave way to dread as the snow got heavier, sticking to the cars rolling past us. After a few minutes, they began to slow until all I could see was a string of brake lights ahead of us and I felt panic fizz up in me again.

We weren’t going to make it.

Mr Lucas must have known what I was thinking, because he patted the dashboard and said, ‘Don’t worry, Adamma, she’ll get us there.’ I couldn’t look at him, a hand on my stomach as it knotted at the thought of my flight being delayed, or worse, cancelled. He must have known I was thinking that too, because he persisted, ‘A concierge from the airline is going to meet us and escort you to the lounge. You can wait there until your flight leaves. At least you’ll be comfortable. They have a masseuse, apparently.’

I turned to glare at him. ‘Can I have a facial, too? Maybe I can get my hair done. Look nice and pretty for my dying father.’

He stared at me for a moment, the corners of his mouth falling into a straight line. When he turned to look back out at the road, I felt awful. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ he said, his tone suddenly sharper. ‘I know you’re upset.’

But it wasn’t OK and, with that, I felt a curtain drop between us.

By the time we got to the airport, it was snowing heavily. The concierge had to dash from the door to the car, his head dipped, fat flakes settling on the shoulders of his black suit. Mr Lucas kept the engine running. It made me feel wretched, but it was probably for the best; he hadn’t said a word except to enquire after my father when my mother called again, so if he’d gotten out of the car with me, I might have tried to hug him in a clumsy effort to apologise and make things more awkward.

‘Have a safe flight, Miss Okomma,’ he said with a tight smile. ‘I hope your father is out of surgery soon and makes a speedy recovery.’

I started to apologise, the words tumbling over themselves as I tried to force them out, but before I could open my mouth, the concierge opened the car door and let in a gust of cold air. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Okomma,’ he said with a smooth smile.

My heart sank. I glanced at Mr Lucas, my jaw juddering with panic, but before I could speak, before I could tell him how sorry I was for being so rude when he’d been trying to help, the concierge reached down for the holdall by my feet. I watched him and when he stood up again, standing to attention with his hand on the top of the open car door, waiting for me to get out, I began to shake and turned to look at Mr Lucas again. He wasn’t looking at me, his hands wringing the steering wheel, obviously waiting for me to get out.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said in a breathless rush, and immediately dissolved into tears. I didn’t mean to, it seemed to just
spill
out of me.

My outburst must have surprised him too, because he let go of the wheel for the first time since he’d clambered in next to me back at Crofton. As he turned to me, he clearly didn’t know what to do with his hands and I tensed, sure that he was going to touch me, but instead, he asked the concierge, ‘Can we have a moment, please?’

I heard the concierge close the door and as soon as he did, Mr Lucas leaned towards me and said all the right things. He told me that it would be OK, that my father would be fine, that he was in the best hands. He reminded me that I used to live in New York, that planes take off in worse snow, that my aunt would be at the hospital soon so my father wouldn’t be alone. He smoothed each of my nerves as I sobbed and sobbed and as soon as I’d caught my breath, I thanked him.

‘Will you be OK, Adamma?’

I wiped under my eyes with my fingers. ‘I kind of have to be.’

I probably should have lied, flashed him a brave smile and told him I’d be fine, but I didn’t have the energy. It was all I could do to keep breathing. He thought about what I’d said, his eyebrows knotted, then sighed. ‘Here,’ he said, reaching across me and opening the glove compartment. He rooted through it for a second or two, before pulling out a red biro and a receipt. He scribbled something down and stared at it, his lips pressed together, then handed it to me. ‘This is my mobile number.’ He waited until I looked at him, then leaned a little closer. ‘If you need anything, call me, and I’ll come straight back, OK?’

I nodded. ‘Thank you,’ I said softly, and he smiled at me.

He got out with me, walking around the front of the car to greet the concierge who darted back through the snow towards us. He put his hand on his shoulder and lowered his voice as we walked towards the glass doors, but I still heard him, ‘I don’t know if the airline has explained the situation, but Miss Okomma has had an awful shock. I hate the thought of leaving her to wait alone for her flight, but I can’t wait with her unless I’m flying, too, so I need you to keep a close eye on her.’

‘Of course, Sir.’ The concierge nodded.

He turned to me and took off his glasses, the snow catching in his eyelashes. ‘You’re going to be OK, Miss Okomma. And if your father is half as stubborn as you are, then he will be too.’ He smiled and I couldn’t help but smile back.

‘Thank you, Sir.’ It was almost impossible to say it around the lump in my throat, but I think he heard me. ‘I’ll text you when I land.’

He nodded. ‘And I’ll let Mrs Delaney know.’

When the concierge opened the glass door for me, he smiled and asked if there was anything he could do. I turned to watch Mr Lucas’s car roll out of view, then sighed. ‘I just want to go home.’

The First Class lounge was busier than I had expected. It wasn’t full, but there was a buzz; half of the tables were taken and there was a string people sitting at the bar. Some sat sipping coffee, flicking aimlessly through magazines, while others muttered into their cellphones, asking their assistants to look into alternative arrangements if their flights were delayed. A group of women sat around one of the tables, laughing and clapping, clearly drunk on champagne, and it should all have been comforting – the noise, the heat and bustle of other people – but I still felt alone, the hours before my flight departed suddenly stretching out in front of me like an endless black road.

The staff were more than attentive, a stream of glossy men and women in neat red uniforms stopping to ask if I needed anything when I retreated to the Viewing Deck to watch the snow fall onto the runway. I appreciated the kind smiles and the urges to eat something, but after half an hour, it began to wear thin, so I asked for a glass of Diet Coke and some potato chips just so that they’d leave me alone.