The Dilemma(36)

Sweat springs from my pores. I feel suffocatingly hot and begin tearing off my clothes, the button of my jeans too stiff for my fingers, tugging and pulling until I’m standing naked, the whole of me shaking. I pull open the shower door and almost fall inside. I reach blindly for the lever and water cascades down, drumming onto my head, filling my mouth, my nose, my throat until instinct forces me to take a breath. And all I can think is: Marnie’s safe, she has to be, Marnie’s safe, she has to be.

I push my way out of the shower, pull a towel around me. A blast of music comes from the garden, dragging me back to reality. I can’t carry on fooling myself. Marnie might not be safe. She could have made the flight that crashed. She had twenty-seven minutes to make the connection, not ten.

Unless she had to change terminals. I don’t know if there’s more than one terminal at the airport in Cairo but I can find out. I sit on the edge of the curved bath and type ‘how many terminals at Cairo Airport’ into my search engine. ‘THREE’ comes up, and I almost laugh, because it’s as if they’ve used big letters to reassure me. All I need to know now is that Marnie’s flight from Hong Kong arrived at a different terminal to the one that left for Amsterdam.

‘Please,’ I mutter. ‘Please let it be a different terminal.’

I find her first flight, the one from Hong Kong; it arrived at Terminal 3. Then I type in the flight number of the Pyramid Air flight, holding my breath while I wait to find out. It comes up – Terminal 2.

I close my eyes in relief. Even if the terminals are close enough to each other to walk, she would only have had twenty-seven minutes to get off her plane and make it out of Terminal 3 and into Terminal 2. She’d still have to find the gate.

My fingers move quickly on the screen, searching for more information on Cairo International Airport. I find the official website and read that terminals 2 and 3 are linked by a footbridge. OK, so how long would it take to disembark from one flight, find the footbridge, walk all the way across it to the other terminal, find the gate – and still be there twenty minutes before the departure time? Marnie couldn’t have made it.

I should feel reassured. But I can’t get away from the fact that if she had missed the flight, she would have contacted me. If news reports are getting through, the phone networks must be working.

I’m so damn scared.

I need to tell Livia. I turn to leave the bathroom, and catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror. I stare at my clammy skin, at the pulse beating in my temple – I can’t let Livia see me like this. I don’t want her to guess that something is wrong before I’ve made her sit down, before I’ve taken her hands in mine and have somehow found the words to tell her that Marnie, our daughter, could have been on a plane that crashed. First, I need to chase the fear from my eyes. And the only way I’m going to be able to do that is by believing there’s still hope.

I’m not going to call the emergency number, not until I’ve spoken to Livia.





Livia


The food looks amazing. I can’t stop walking around the kitchen, in awe of it all. My birthday cards have been moved to the sitting room and all the work surfaces are now covered with trays of delicious canapés.

‘This is lovely, Liz, thank you. It looks beautiful!’

‘And I can guarantee it tastes delicious too,’ she says, smiling at me, which I already know, because I tasted one when I first booked her.

There’s also food in the dining room – two whole salmon, a huge side of cold beef, platters of other cold meats, wonderfully coloured salads, the biggest cheeseboard I’ve ever seen, and a variety of desserts, which will be taken out to the marquee at different stages throughout the evening. And for when people first arrive, the trays of canapés. Liz and her team will be there to serve and clear away, which means I’ll be free to enjoy the evening.

I can’t help worrying about Adam. Expecting him to make small talk for approximately seven hours, because the party won’t finish until two in the morning, might be a bit much if he’s got a migraine. It won’t all be small talk but I need to make sure he doesn’t get stuck with Paula, as she tends to talk about her health in too much detail. I also need to steer him away from Sara, who has a habit of cornering people and showing them a stream of holiday photos on her phone. But if I know Adam, after a brief chat with everyone he’ll spend most of the evening with Nelson and Ian.

The house phone rings and I go to answer it, wondering if it’s Marnie, if she changed her mind about being off-radar so that she could wish me a happy birthday in person. But it’s Jeannie.

‘Hello, love, I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday,’ she says.

‘Thank you – but you and Mike are coming tonight, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, of course, we wouldn’t miss it for the world. You’ll be busy though and we might not get the chance to speak very much.’

‘I’ll always have time for you and Mike. You’ve been more of a mum and dad to me than my own parents.’

‘They’re the ones who’ve missed out. They’ve missed the joy of seeing their grandchildren grow up into lovely young adults.’ She pauses. ‘How’s Adam bearing up?’

‘He’s fine. He had a migraine earlier but he’s just had some champagne – Kirin gave us a bottle for the two of us to have before the party – so he must be feeling better.’