Chapter 4
Looking up at the departures board, I scan the place names and find my flight to Jersey. The word alone has so many connotations for me. I can’t hear it without thinking of my parents’ story, the prologue to my existence. Is it strange to feel nostalgic for a place I’ve never been to? Mum used to say we’d go together one day, but she was always juggling so much and there was never a good time.
Now that I’m undistracted by my friends, I begin to worry how unprepared I am for this weekend. Suki insisted I go straight away, so we could get the staycation article up on the site next week. The sponsor liked the idea of promoting a ‘September sun getaway’ while it’s still September. I don’t have a firm angle yet, though, and I haven’t managed to map out what I need to make the coin story work, to make it ‘feel contemporary’.
With everything being so rushed, I also haven’t had time to dwell on how I feel about going on this trip. Will stepping into the footprint of my parents’ story bring me closer to them, or am I just going to find it upsetting?
My mother is still so tangible to me. We shared a lifetime of memories and my grief for her is still so ragged it gives her solid edges – I can conjure her voice in a quiet room. I can picture the way she would open her arms to hug me when I walked through the front door. When I pass the Rooibos tea at the supermarket, I see her slim frame standing by the kettle, jiggling a teabag up and down by the string.
With Dad it’s different. He died when I was three, so I don’t remember him. I only have a few things left that link him to me; the coin, of course, then there are several photos, his old watch that I never take off, a library of his favourite books, and his treasured LP collection. When I was sixteen, I spent all my pocket money on a record player so I could listen to his music just as he had. I’m probably the only twenty-nine-year-old in the world today whose favourite bands are Genesis and Dire Straits.
There is too much of Mum to ever be condensed into a box full of things, but all I have of Dad are second-hand memories and these objects he left me. If I let go of what he treasured, I worry his blurred edges will fade until there is nothing left of him at all.
A woman bumps into me, her apology breaks my reverie, and I realise I’ve been standing, staring at the departures board for a good ten minutes. Now I must run so as not to be late.
It is less than an hour-long flight to the small island off the north coast of France. I’m travelling with hand luggage, but at the gate a man tells me, ‘Madam, we’re going to have to ask that you put your bag in the hold.’ I feel myself bristle. When did I become ‘Madam’ rather than ‘Miss’?
‘It’s definitely regulation size,’ I protest. ‘I actually bought this case specifically because it adheres to the dimensions on your website …’
‘I know, ma’am, but we have a very full flight today, so we’re asking people to check wheeled cases into the hold. There’s no charge; you’ll get it back as soon as you land.’
The man gives me an insincere grin that puckers his smooth, perma-tanned skin. Obediently, I shuffle out of the queue to open my case and extract what I need for the flight. I take out my mother’s Jersey photo album – too precious to stow in the hold – and Tiger Woman so I have something to read on the plane. Just as I’m trying to close my case, someone bumps me from behind, and my open washbag flies into the air. A value pack of fifty non-applicator tampons hits the floor and explodes across the lounge in a spray of white bullets. My cheeks burn as I fall to my hands and knees to retrieve them. The man who bumped me bends down to help. Why did I bring so many tampons with me for one weekend away? I’m on my fourth day; I should have just decanted the amount I was going to need – always decant, woman!
‘I’m sorry, that was my fault,’ says the man.
I turn to look at him, glance away, and then look back, as I realise I’m looking at the most handsome man I think I’ve ever seen in real life. He has soft brown hair, green eyes, a tall, broad-shouldered physique, and the kind of well-sculpted face that commands attention. He is wearing blue suit trousers and a crisp white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Our eyes meet, and he holds my gaze. His easy smile suggests someone who thinks the world a wonderful place, which no doubt it is when you look like him.
‘I was in the way,’ I say, shaking my head and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. Am I drooling? I think I genuinely just drooled. Well done, Laura, Beethoven the slobbering Saint Bernard is a really sexy look.
I try to retrieve the stray tampons as quickly as I can. Of all the things that had to fly out of my bag, it had to be the tampons, didn’t it? The lounge must be on a slight slope, because the seemingly never-ending supply are now rolling down the aisle between the seats. I scurry around on my hands and knees, doing my best to fish the strays from beneath people’s feet as they carry on reading their newspapers, too British to acknowledge that sanitary products are being flagrantly bandied about in public.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ I mutter.
When I stand up again, I see the beautiful man standing with a fistful of tampons he has helped to retrieve.
‘I think we got them all,’ he says with a dimpled grin.
Hardly daring to look at him, I take them and stuff them straight into my handbag. My forehead feels damp with sweat, my cheeks burn. Clocking my embarrassment, he says quietly, ‘Don’t worry, I have sisters.’
I give him a pained thumbs-up, too mortified to form words as I hurry back to the desk with my bag, hiding my face behind my passport. All the cool, flirty body language I could have gone for, and I went for the thumbs-up.
On the plane, I’m next to an empty aisle seat. If life worked like it did in films, this would be the perfect opportunity for a meet-cute. I wonder if people ever really meet that way. Maybe I should do a special edition of ‘How Did You Meet?’ and interview couples who all met on planes. As I’m thinking this, a burly man with a sweaty face and bum bag stops at the end of the row, indicating he is the person I have won in the seat-buddy lottery.
‘Cheer up, love, might never happen,’ he says, my face clearly betraying my profound disappointment with the seating plan, ‘and it never hurts to smile.’
I clench my teeth. He has uttered an expression that I loathe with a vengeance, and over the last two years I have heard it more times than I can count. It is an intrinsically sexist comment – if a man were looking contemplative or perplexed, would another man say to him ‘cheer up, mate, might never happen’? Would he be instructed to smile? No, he bloody well would not.
Bum Bag Man attempts to talk to me throughout the flight. He asks me where I’m staying in Jersey and keeps ‘accidentally’ brushing my leg with his hand. I curl into the corner of my seat, plug in my earphones to listen to No Jacket Required, my favourite Phil Collins album, and bury my face in my book.
Tiger Womanis full of exactly the kind of meaningless empowerment metaphors I imagined it would be. The first chapter is all about ‘reclaiming your roar’. I quote, ‘Do tigers worry about the volume of their roar? Do they play the pussy cat so as not to offend? They do not. The patriarchy forces us to turn down the volume, but we must roar and roar loudly, if we want to be heard.’ It’s the kind of language that makes me roll my eyes, but then I imagine turning to Bum Bag Man and roaring at him to stop touching my leg, rather than cowering politely behind my headphones and a book, and the thought brings a smile to my face.
All the optimism and excitement I felt as I packed my bag this morning has vanished, like air wheezing from a punctured tyre. The news that Vanya will really be moving out has thrown me; I thought it might take her months, even years to get organised with a mortgage. Everyone is moving on, growing up. Vee makes our flat a home; if a stranger moves in, it will just be a flat again. When I was twenty-five, I thought I would have achieved so much by the time I was almost thirty. But what have I got to show for the last four years? All that has changed is that the men who chat me up are now in their fifties and wear bum bags.
When we land, I dart off the plane as fast as I can, grab my black bag from the conveyor belt, jump into a taxi at the rank, and ask the driver to take me into town. All I want now is to be alone in my hotel, unpack, wash off the plane, and then order alcohol-based room service.
‘Your first time in Jersey?’ asks the cab driver. He’s wearing a plaid flat cap and has a wild brown beard, flecked with grey.
‘Yeah,’ I say quietly, all out of small talk. There should be some kind of code to politely convey to a cabbie that you’d rather not make conversation.