It's Not You It's Me (5 page)

‘F
light 624. Flight 624 to London via Singapore is now boarding. At this time we would like to ask that first and business class passengers, and passengers in rows 50 and higher please board first. Other rows will be called shortly.’

I stop thinking about Jas and Magnolia Lodge and wake up to myself. That’s me. My flight. I check my boarding pass, see that I’m in row 55, and get up hurriedly to board. As I leave I notice my coffee. I haven’t drunk a drop of that second cup.

I wait in line to swipe my boarding pass and collect my headphones, wait my turn for the flight attendant to tell me which side of the plane I’m on, wait for people to stow their bags. Finally I make it to my seat. An aisle seat, just like I’d asked for…but right next to the toilets.

Well, I think, I didn’t see that coming.

And, even better, I’ve been lumped with the oldest plane in the world. No personal TV screen for me, and the nearest communal one is miles away.

When I’m settled in, I check the in-flight magazine to see what movies I’ll be missing out on. Seen it, seen it, seen it and don’t want to see it anyway, so I’m fine. I try not to move on to thinking about the other downsides to flying on the oldest plane in the world—the fact that it might not stay in the sky. I ditch the in-flight magazine then, and memorise the safety card.

When I’m done, I crane my neck, looking out of the window to see if I can spot the viewing lounge, wondering if Kath and her husband Mark and my two favourite people in the world—their newborn twins, Annie and Daisy—have stayed to watch the plane leave. I’d offered to catch a cab out to the airport, but Kath had insisted that they take me—they were hunting for an excuse to go on their first big outing as a family and I was it. I squint, scanning the airport windows. They might still be here. I don’t think they’ll be rushing home after all the effort it had taken to get to the airport in the first place.

In order to see me off they’d had to get up early and practise assembling and disassembling what we’d come to call the mega-stroller of death and destruction. They’d been trying to reach the record time of a five-minute set-up, but so far couldn’t break the seven-minute barrier.

Frankly, crossing the carpeted airport floor, we’d looked as if the five of us were about to make a trek through the Himalayas rather than one of us was flying to London.

I still had to step back in wonder every time I saw that stroller. You couldn’t even call it a
stroller
, in my opinion. I went shopping with Kath and Mark to buy the thing and quickly became stroller-flabbergasted. First of all, there were whole shops devoted to the things. Just to strollers! Then there was the choice these shops offered. There were
strollers for running and strollers for shopping, and even strollers with little flags that you pulled along behind your mountain bike.

The one Kath and Mark finally decided on was the biggest smash-’em-up-derby stroller of them all. Hence the name—the mega-stroller of death and destruction. The mega—for short—was a double seater that, like eighties limos, seemed to go on for ever, with a tray down at the bottom that you could carry things in—like three weeks’ worth of groceries, if you had to—and all kinds of things that flipped in and out. It probably even had indicators and side mirrors that I hadn’t discovered yet.

I bought them a bumper sticker for it—‘This
is
my other car’.

Still, there obviously wasn’t enough room for everything in that stroller, because as we’d made our way towards Immigration, Mark had had to stop every so often to pick up the bits and pieces he was losing off the contraption as he went. A teddy bear here, a Teletubby there. Annie and Daisy had simply gurgled happily.

‘Here we are,’ Mark had said, pulling up the stroller in front of my stop. I’d given Kath a hug then. And Mark a hug. And Annie and Daisy a kiss. And then another kiss. And then another one.

I was going to miss the twins terribly. I’d prepared myself for it because I knew I’d got all too used to having them around for the last four weeks. The whole four weeks of Annie and Daisy’s lives. Not having them as my sun—the thing my eating and sleeping and just about everything revolved around every day—was going to feel strange. Very strange indeed.

I gave them both one last kiss. ‘I’m going to miss you guys,’ I said, taking one each of their tiny hands.

‘Ring me when I’m up at four a.m. feeding them and I’ll swap places with you,’ Kath groaned.

I looked up at her and laughed. She didn’t mean it. But then I took another glance. Noticed the bags underneath her eyes. OK, so she might mean it a little bit.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, giving Kath and Mark one quick, last hug. ‘Thanks so much. For everything…’

‘Stop it,’ Mark said. ‘We should be thanking
you.
You’ve been a huge help this month.’

‘Go on.’ Kath urged me over to the Immigration queue. ‘Have a good time. Enjoy yourself. And don’t think about…things. Just have fun.

‘And call us as soon as you get off the plane,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘OK, I will.’ I turned around and headed off. I didn’t look at the twins again, or I knew, just knew, they’d give me one of their silly googly smiles and I’d end up kissing them for ever. Such a sucker.

But that’s the way aunts are supposed to be, isn’t it? Well, honorary aunts, anyway. I’m really a cousin, but because of my age, and the amount I hang around them, I’ve been promoted to the glorious rank and title of Auntie Charlie. Or Auntie Charlotte, if they’re going to be a picky pair and insist on the name I was lumped with—after my grandmother—which I’m sure they won’t.

Because cool Auntie Charlie will make sure of that.

I’m planning on being the bad auntie, you see. The one who lets them have double ice-cream cones and takes them to get their ears pierced when they’re staying on holiday even though they’re not supposed to get them done till they’re thirteen. The popular auntie.

I did the bag in the X-ray machine thing, then made my way through uneventfully to line up and have my
passport stamped. Don’t turn back. Don’t turn back, I told myself.

So of course I turned back. Looked for the four of them. Saw them. Waved. They waved back. I waved a bit more, then turned back again to take a step forward as someone left the queue.

And that was it. When I turned around again I couldn’t see them any more.

Instantly I felt a pang of loss for a family that wasn’t really my own, but who treated me just as if I were.

Like this trip, for instance. A present from Kath and Mark. And, I guess, sort of from my mum. A present that I’d only received last night. They’d sat me down after dinner and given me the envelope.

‘For you.’ Kath had passed it to me without any great aplomb. Almost as if it were just a piece of mail I’d overlooked. ‘You don’t have any plans for the weekend, do you?’ she’d said.

I’d taken the envelope from her. ‘No—why?’

‘Open it and see.’

I’d opened it up…and then I’d almost died.

It was a plane ticket. And an itinerary. For me. For tomorrow.

Mark was standing beside Kath when I looked up again. I opened my mouth to begin to say something to them, but nothing came out. I tried again, opening and shutting it, my tongue suddenly feeling ten times larger than usual. Kath gave me a glass of water and, after drinking it in its entirety, I was able to speak again. Not much, however.

‘But, why?’ was all I could come out with.

So they told me. The trip was just something they thought I deserved. Something they’d heard me talk about—something they’d been thinking would be good for
me for a while and were waiting for me to get around to. But I hadn’t. So they had. It wasn’t much—not a big trip, they said, and they’d left the ticket home open, so I could stay on if I felt like it. They added that if I was wise I’d take it and run, as there wasn’t going to be much sleep going on in the house for probably quite some time.

Not much—not a big trip. I couldn’t believe they’d said that. Here they were, just having had not one baby but
two
, and they were paying large sums of money over to travel agents…for me. I had to come right out and say it. I was going to pay for it. I’d give them the money back. I’d meant to book something myself, but kept putting it off.

And that was when Kath spoke up, cutting me off. ‘It’s, um, from your mum, Charlie,’ she said. ‘She gave me some money for incidentals. Things you might need but that you might not know you need, if that makes any sense.’

The three of us had simply looked at each other, blinking, for a bit. Until, that was, Kath’s eyes slid over to Mark and she sighed. ‘And now it’s probably time for Mark to apologise for the trip he chose.’

Mark had got a very sheepish air about him then. ‘I thought you were meant to be having fun. And this looked like fun. To me, anyway.’

I checked the itinerary more closely. London and an open ticket back. Fantastic—just as I thought I’d read. Oh, but there was a tour attached. Wait…

To Oktoberfest?

Kath shrugged. ‘I’m afraid it’s non-refundable. I hope you like beer. And sauerkraut. And big fat sausages. For five days.’ She poked Mark with one finger as she said each sentence.

Now, I’m what I call a sad vegetarian—as in, the kind of person who lusts after large pieces of steak but can’t eat meat
directly after seeing actual live cows, lambs, pigs, chickens et cetera. I’d seen a truck full of chickens whizz past me on the highway not long before this, and a feather had landed on the windscreen. So I knew I was going to be vegetarian for at least a week or so. Or until someone offered me a plate of something that just looked far too good to pass up.

So, anyway, the sausage thing. It didn’t sound very appealing. And as for beer—I don’t drink the stuff. Never have. Oh, I’ve tried a few times, but I just don’t seem to like it.

But I waved my hands as if I couldn’t believe what they were saying. No, no. The trip was great. It’d be fun. Educational. I might even learn to
like
beer. And big fat sausages. And, um, sauerkraut.

Bleh.

Plus, it wouldn’t be all artery-hardening activities like sausage-eating. I’d get to see heaps of other things. Munich, for example. And the ticket home was open. I could do whatever I wanted. It’d be better than great.

And as I picked up the ticket and itinerary and turned them over in my hands, I realised that Kath and Mark knew me better than I knew myself. It didn’t matter where it was—around the corner would have been fine. I just needed to get away. To do something different. And if I had some fun along the way—well, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it?

Of course not.

‘Miss, can you fasten your seat belt, please?’ The flight attendant is standing over my seat staring at me as if I’m a loon. By the look on her face I think she might have asked me more than once already. Hastily, I grab the two ends of
my seat belt and buckle up. When I’m done, I have one last crane of my neck to check for Kath and Mark and the twins before I concede defeat.

Left with nothing else to do, I get my book out of my backpack and read right up until they begin the safety demonstration. When that starts I put my book down on my lap and listen carefully. I even get the safety card out of the seat pocket and read that too.

Like I said before, the oldest plane in the world…

I’m watching attentively as the flight attendant shows us how to fasten and unfasten our seat belts when I hear it. This
clunk…

And something lands on my lap.

I drop my safety card on the floor in fright.

I’m stunned for a moment, unsure of what’s happened. But when I look down, there’s a videotape in my lap. Instinctively I reach my hand up to my head as I realise that one side of it hurts. As I feel around, I notice there’s a little lump on it. No, hang on, a mid-sized lump. Wait a second—quite a big lump, actually. Quite a big lump, which is starting to throb.

‘Hey, are you OK?’ the guy in the seat beside me asks.

I turn to him. No, I want to say. No, I’m not. I’ve got a lump on my head. Not a little lump, not a mid-sized lump, but quite a big lump, actually. But I can’t get the words out. Instead, I bring my hand down off my head to see if there’s any blood.

There’s not. This is probably a good sign.

The flight attendant comes and crouches down beside me. She picks the safety card up off the floor and puts it back in the seat pocket in front of me. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s never done that before.’

I look at her blankly and she picks the videotape out of
my lap and holds it up. ‘It’s the safety video. It ejected out of the VCR stored above you. Is your head OK?’

I keep looking at her. ‘I’ve got a lump.’

She feels the side of my head. ‘Oohhh, you do too. Does it hurt? Do you have a headache? Should I see if we have a doctor?’

Too many questions. ‘It doesn’t hurt much,’ I say, before I realise what the implications of what I’ve just said could mean in today’s litigious society, and add a little disclaimer, ‘Yet’.

She pauses, thinking. ‘Well, maybe we should move you up to the front, just so we can keep a better eye on you. We’re about to take off, so I’ll have to leave you for a minute or two, but I’ll come right back, OK? Don’t go anywhere, now.’ She walks down towards the front of the plane.

As I watch her go, I wonder where she thinks I’d run off to. I mean, I’m on a plane, here. I don’t have too many options.

True to her word, she comes back as soon as we’ve levelled off. She gives me her arm to help me get up. ‘Jessica will keep an eye on you up front. Just tell her if your head starts to hurt, all right? Now, do you have anything overhead?’ She gestures at the lockers.

I shake my head, no, and she turns and starts walking back up to the front of the plane. I follow.

We keep going. And going. And going.

Then, suddenly, as she parts the swishy curtain that divides the have and the have-nots, the clean and the unwashed, I realise she’s putting me in business class. Excellent. But, no—wait. We keep going. We pass another swishy curtain. And we enter…first class.