Leaving behind the patch of countryside the bypass intersected, she entered Gatwick’s network of roundabouts, Jacuzzi showrooms, electronics factories, out-of-town warehouses, hotels and – finally – the airport itself.
She had been a first-class air hostess working long-haul flights when she and Mick met. The first-class bit mattered, and ‘we got it together at fifty thousand feet’ was a conversation opener she still used. Most of the passengers in first class then were men, and she got on with men – even growing up without a father. It was women she didn’t like. Mick once called her a misogynist and it was true. She knew how to make men happy. How did you make a woman happy?
As soon as the plane wheels used to leave the tarmac – wherever she was in the world – she not only felt herself breathing again, but felt pleased to be breathing again. She never got claustrophobic in the pressurised cabin’s few cubic feet of reconditioned air and she never worried about dying. It was being on the ground she was afraid of: gravity. Anything that sucked you in or down or tried to anchor you in any way. She started taking as little time off between flights as regulation allowed and spending more and more time in hotel rooms in foreign cities with curtains shut and phials of sleeping pills, trying to defy gravity. As long as she had movement, as long as she had altitude, she was fine. It was her ground life that was going all autistic on her. Then Mick came along, and he changed all of that. Mick changed all of her.
When she told her mother, who was a scientist researching food dyes, that she was thinking of becoming an air hostess, Monica had just smiled at this new fatality in her life and said, ‘I suppose everybody’s got to do something.’
Then, two weeks later, Dominique got a phone call from her on a busy Friday night at the pub she was working in, and Monica told her she had an interview with someone running training sessions for Laker Air the next day. Which made Dominique feel, when she got accepted on the training programme, that the whole air-hostess thing had been her mother’s idea in the first place; that her whole life so far had been her mother’s idea. Even Mick; even Mick’s love for her; even her happiness – and Dominique being happy or not was the last thing on earth her mother cared about. It was just that happiness was part of the plan Monica had formulated for her daughter in the absence of academic success, because that’s what normal people were: happy. So she presumed.
Dominique stood for a while at the Arrivals barrier watching passengers from the Florida flight, jetlagged, walk through the automatic doors, thinking she should have done what Mick wanted and taken the girls on this last flight with him. Why hadn’t she just gone? She was about to leave her post by the barrier and get a coffee when she saw Laura, whom she used to fly with on Laker Air in the late Sixties.
Laura had always had long hair, but now it was cut short, close to the scalp. Her legs looked long and brittle and her knees too pronounced, but Laura was still flying. Dominique felt herself pause, trying to decide whether she wanted to talk to Laura, who was still flying, or not. Whether she’d ever liked Laura, who was still flying, or not.
‘Dominique. My God. Dominique.’
‘Hey, Laura.’ Up close, Laura felt taller than her, slimmer, and better smelling. The short haircut pronounced her cheekbones and shoulders. Dominique wondered how she was looking under airport strip lighting. ‘Just landed?’
Laura sighed. ‘Just landed.’ She parked the small suitcase on wheels by her side and kept hold of the two duty-free bags.
‘They’ve changed the uniform,’ Dominique said.
‘The uniform?’
She nodded at Laura’s navy suit and Laura looked down. ‘Oh – I’m with BA now.’
‘Since when?’
‘This was my first flight with them. To Delhi.’ She looked down at her suit again. ‘You don’t think it’s too dowdy?’
‘Dowdy? No.’
The two women looked at each other, trying to simultaneously absorb and keep at arm’s length their different lives.
‘God – isn’t it awful what’s happening to Laker?’
‘Well – you got out in time.’
‘Just. It’s the people with families I feel sorry for. God,’ Laura said again, suddenly exhaling. ‘It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?’
‘It has – can’t remember how long exactly, but – yes.’
‘Yeah, ages. God. So. You’re here waiting for Mick?’
Dominique laughed without knowing why. ‘He should be around somewhere – the screen says his flight’s in Baggage Reclaim and people are already starting to come through.’ She wished she didn’t sound so vague. It made it seem like her and Mick didn’t really speak any more, like one didn’t really know where the other one was; like they often missed each other.
And sure enough there was Laura laughing and saying, ‘It sounds like you lose your husband a lot.’
‘Not too often.’ Vague.
Laura nodded with her lips partly open. ‘I was in Mick’s cabin crew on the Barbados flight a month ago. One of my last flights on Laker Air.’
Dominique didn’t know what to say to this. Why were they talking about Mick? Laura gave the sleeves of her sheepskin coat a couple of tugs. ‘Where were you?’
‘Where was I when?’
‘Barbados – you should have been in Barbados.’
‘Well, I wasn’t.’
Laura paused. ‘Have you ever been?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve never been?’
‘No.’
‘Well, the next time he flies to Barbados, you get him to book you a seat on the plane,’ Laura said sympathetically. ‘I know it’s difficult with the kids and everything … how many have you got?’
‘Two.’
‘… But you should go. You really should. Barbados is …’
‘Laura!’
They were standing in the shadow of a second air hostess, who Laura didn’t introduce.
‘This is Mick’s wife. Mick Saunders.’
The other girl nodded.
‘I used to fly too,’ Dominique put in, ‘a long time ago.’
The girl nodded again.
‘When did you give up?’ Laura asked.
‘Well – I didn’t really give up – I got married,’ Dominique said, looking for the first time at Laura’s left hand, which was ring-less. She held on to this, and the fact that up close there was a food stain on the lapel of Laura’s jacket.
‘So,’ Laura said heavily, ‘there you go.’
‘There you go.’
‘Well. I’ll probably see you again. Give my best to Mick.’
‘I will,’ Dominique said, hands in pockets. ‘Bye.’
‘Bye,’ Laura replied, steering her friend away.
Dominique was thinking of going to the Laker Air desk and getting them to phone through and find out where Mick was when Laura parked her case and came running back.
‘I meant to say – I saw Mick go up to the observation deck.’
‘The observation deck?’