Girl on a Plane (2 page)

She glances down at the man's watch she always wears halfway up her arm. “You'll have to put your foot down,” she says, “or we'll miss the flight.”

“Anna's going to miss her flight!”
the boys chant over and over, until Marni hushes them. We judder down the potholed dust track and out onto the tarmac road. And we're off under the blue Bahraini sky, tilting as we circle the roundabout to take the airport road to Muharraq.

The hot wind, smelling of goats, drains, and exhaust fumes, buffets in through the open windows. Marni's scarf tails dance wildly, as if struggling to escape. The king palms lining the road shiver and toss their heads, trying to shake off the sea breeze. Suddenly there's a whiff of cardamom, reminding me of the glasses of tea the shopkeepers offer in the souk.

“Must be well over a hundred degrees out there already,” Dad shouts above the noise of the broken exhaust. And I feel beads of sweat gathering. They trickle down my spine and pool in the small of my back.

As we cross the causeway to the airport, everyone in the car goes quiet. I know this quiet. It's full of dread, the dread of us being separated. We're all thinking the same thing: it's all change again. None of us wants it, but what can we do? I feel a terrible heaviness, the sort you get just before tears come.

When we finally park, Dad grabs my case, and we run in a straggle across tarmac softened by the intense heat. And I think how the impression of my footprints will be the only thing left of me in Bahrain.

Marni pulls open the swinging doors to the departures hall, Dad heaves my case inside, and I feel a cold blast of air-conditioning. We slow to a walk, stop panting, and start to fit in with the quieter throng milling about on the concourse.

“Salaam alaikum,”
Dad greets the man wearing a turquoise BOAC uniform at the check-in desk. Marni passes over my ticket. The man tears out the duplicate flight page and gives it back. I watch my case being weighed. I'm here and not here, in a daze, feeling condemned.

“Now, don't you go losing that, will you?” Dad says, handing me the ticket. His teasing is meant to raise my spirits. When I don't answer, he looks down at me again, his gray eyes questioning.

“I'm fifteen, Dad. Done this loads of times,” I say flatly.

“I know.” He smiles and puts his arm around me. “But you'll always be my little girl.” I can smell his Old Spice after-shave. I look for the patch under his bottom lip that he always misses when he shaves. There it is.

The boys stand on either side of Marni, solemn as statues.

“You're lucky, Anna,” Mark says. “You don't have to wear a stupid Unaccompanied Child label anymore, like we do.”

“No.” I ruffle his sun-streaked hair. “I'm a big girl now.”

“Unaccompanied Child.”
Sam says it slowly, looking up at Marni. “Like we're
orphans.
”

She's stung. “Well, you aren't, and you know you aren't. You all know exactly why this is necessary—​and how horrible it is for all of us.” Her voice breaks slightly.

“Come on now, you boys.” Dad is all forced cheeriness. “Let's wave Anna through the gate.”

A blond girl in front of us, older than me, clings to her mother, weeping. Her mother pats her back once, very quickly, as if she mustn't, as if it's no longer allowed. They move, walking as if through deep sand, toward the gate, where her sister stands palely by their father.

I hate this next bit more than anything. Marni says to do it very quickly. No point dragging it out. So I walk up to her. She puts her arms around me, and for a moment I'm in that soft, safe place where I can always be just me, with the smell of her, her lipstick, her Pond's cream and Je Reviens perfume.

“Stay safe, my most precious girl,” she says, stroking my head instinctively just above the ear, as she always does. Then she kisses me and pushes me gently away. I turn, tears streaming, to hug the boys. They come both together, their arms tight around my waist. Then I hug Dad quickly and walk away.

I turn once, see the boys' tears, Dad's frown, and Marni's terrible, distorted smile. And for a moment I waver.

“Go!” she says. But I stay, trying to absorb them, burning them onto my mind's eye. Then I turn away and walk, holding up one hand, waving without looking.

The tall boy in front of me in the line waiting to board looks constantly back over my head. He's ashen faced with tension. I hand my ticket to the man at the gate, show my passport, heft my shoulder bag, and walk past the neat, smiling stewardess.

My bag thumps against my thigh as I walk out across the tarmac to the waiting plane. It's a white VC10 with a high tail and
BOAC
written in huge navy-blue letters down its body. I've never flown completely alone before, not without the boys or a friend. Anxiously I recheck the ticket in my hand.
BOAC,
it says across the front.
All over the world, the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation takes good care of you.

A camel just beyond the perimeter fence wobbles in the heat as the plane's engines rage briefly. There's a surge as we begin to move forward, then I'm thrust back in my seat as the tarmac races. I feel the slant and lift as the front wheel, then the back wheels, leave the ground, and I imagine them spinning as the earth falls away.

The plane circles over the gray-gold desert, spotted with date palms, and climbs into the blue. When it drops in a pocket of thin air, everyone gasps—​then there's a ripple of nervous laughter.

I think of Marni standing below in her silk scarf and dark glasses. She'll wait till the plane is a tiny speck, then she'll take the boys' hands. They'll ask for a Pepsi on the way home, and she'll say yes because she'll be waving them off soon.

I sit back, resigned to being on my own for the next seven hours. It'll be early afternoon when we land. London's two hours behind Bahrain. The pretty stewardess who greeted us as we boarded comes to offer the little boy on my right a child's pack of crayons and a coloring book. Her badge says
Rosemary
.

They've obviously put the kids traveling alone all together. I'm about four rows back from the curtain into first class, between two boys. On my other side is the one who was in front of me in the line. It's not ideal, but it's better than on the way out, when I was squeezed next to a massively overweight man with bad breath.

I pull the safety card from the seat pocket in front of me and look at the diagrams: the emergency position, how to break open the windows, how to slide down the chutes into the ocean—​only, obviously, after removing your high heels. I shove it back in my seat pocket and stare out the little round porthole at the empty sky.
God, I really am on my way.
No going back now. No more bikinis and flip-flops. No more water-skiing or skinny-dipping off dhows, or barbecues on sandbanks in the middle of the sea.

But this is grim. I need to think about something uplifting. Marni has a habit of throwing negative thoughts away. Literally. She did a classic yesterday after I'd packed. She came into my room, jangling the car keys, and said it was time to go shoe shopping, compensation for going back to school. I jumped up and followed her to the car. “Imagine having to wear my hideous school lace-ups for the next three years,” I said as we drove.

“Awful,” she agreed. “They really wouldn't look out of place on a parade ground. But, come on, let's not think about school lace-ups, let's throw the thought of
them
away.” So we both wound down our windows and threw the imaginary shoes out. It's what Marni always does to get rid of troublesome things like coughs, annoying thoughts, bad-tempered people.

Not easy in here, though . . .

I pull the flight magazine out of the seat pocket and start flicking through it.

“It's full of crap,” the boy on my left says suddenly. “I just looked.”

I smile quickly at him.
Glossy brown hair, sporty, seventeen?

“Going back to school?” His voice is almost a drawl.

“Yes. Just to catch up on some sleep.”

He laughs.
Strong white teeth.
Not sure I want this right now.

“Which school?” he says, pushing his bangs out of his eyes.

I grimace. “St. Saviour's, Barchester. All
girls.
”

“Sounds great.” His hands lie relaxed on his thighs.

“For you, maybe,” I say.
I've met ones like this before. A charmer.

“Mine's all boys, in Bristol.” He brushes the end of his nose with his fingers, as if a fly had just landed there.

“Nice.”

I look over at the small boy on my other side. He's about nine, the same age as Sam, wearing an Unaccompanied Child badge and staring out the window, a big square cake tin cradled on his lap. I nod at the tin. “That your lunch box?” It has holly and a snow scene on it.

He looks up at me with solemn brown eyes. “No. It's my terrapin.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” His nose is sprinkled with freckles, and he has short ginger hair with an off-center cowlick.

“You taking it back to school?”

“Yes.” He says it quickly before looking back out the window.

“Can I see it?” I ask gently.

He hesitates, then prizes off the lid. Inside, in a slop of water filled with pondweed, is a little striped green and yellow terrapin about the size of his hand. It tilts its pointed snout and stares crossly at me.

“Oh,” I say. “Nice markings.” The boy looks up at me gratefully. There's something fragile about his heart-shaped face.

“Will it be OK in there?”

“There are holes in the top”—​he points to them—​“so he can breathe. Dad made them.”

I smile. “What's his name? I mean the terrapin, not your dad.”

“Fred.”

I lean down. “Hello, Fred,” I whisper at the fierce little snout. Fred slowly lifts one striped leg free of weed, his slit eyes brimming with disdain.

“You're so lucky,” I say. “I wish I could have my dog here on board. I had to leave him . . .” I trail off, overwhelmed.

But then, not wanting to upset the little boy, I pull myself together. “Did anyone say anything when you checked in?”

“Dad asked them. They said it was all right.”

“That's good. I saw an Arab at the airport once with a bird of prey on his arm, you know, with a hood on, and a bell . . .”

“Christ!” The older boy next to me is staring rigidly ahead. The curtain between first class and the main cabin has been thrust aside by a young Arab.

He's holding a gun.

The plane's roar fills my head.

The man's eyes are wild. The gun in his hand shakes. “Sit in your seats!” he screams. We sit, still as stone.

I'm in a film, on a movie set. I must be. It can't be real . . . I . . .

The man is sweating. He twists his mouth to wipe it with the back of his free hand.

But the gun, the gun . . .

Someone behind me cries out. The man waves his gun wildly in his direction.

I shrink down in my seat, stare at the hands in my lap. They're my hands, my real hands. There's the freckle on my finger. If the gun goes off, we'll all be sucked out. Oh my God! Oh my God!

My heart thunders. I close my eyes, hear shallow breathing.

Suddenly the intercom crackles overhead:
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Gregory speaking. I'm sorry to have to inform you that we've been hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”
There's murmuring, then silence.

Hijacked?
Like those other planes. But one of them blew up. Tom said so at the party on Monday night. Fear rages in my gut. We're all going to die.

A deep Arab voice takes over.
“Your captain says he is sorry! But we are not sorry! We are the PFLP. We are trying to free Palestine!”
There's a pause.

The captain returns, talking slowly, as if speaking to foreigners.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you're all all right. I have been asked to tell you that we have a hijacker in the cockpit as well as the one in the cabin. They're insisting we fly to Beirut to refuel, then to their Revolutionary Airstrip in the Jordanian desert.”
He pauses.
“It's very important that we all stay calm and obey these people. So please stay in your seats. It'll take about an hour to get to Beirut. I'll keep you informed of developments, I promise, as soon as I know more. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I repeat, please stay calm. I'll speak to you again shortly.”

Sweat trickles from the gunman's temple. His hand still shakes as he waves the gun over and back.

I mustn't move. No one must move.

The boys on either side are dead still, the little one curled up against the window. The silence in the cabin is all wrong. The color of bile.
He's going to kill someone.
I close my eyes. Try not to panic. My mind flits and darts—​and then begins to drift . . .

This has nothing to do with me . . . I'm in a dream . . . I know it's a dream . . . I don't know how I know . . . I don't care.
Somewhere inside . . . a tidal wave of fear . . . it hasn't hit yet . . . but it's coming.

And in the stillness, in the yawning, white silence, I feel a terrible calm.

So this is what happens when you're going to die . . .

Die?

I snap back.

He's still there, turning his head like a tortoise, this way and that, his close-set eyes flicking around the cabin. The gun swings and points. Fear fills my throat. Tears rise. The boys on either side are hardly breathing. I don't move my head. I just see their hands in their laps, the edges of my maroon shoes. The ones Marni bought yesterday.
I'm going to die in them.