The Passengers(6)

She balled her fists to contain her excitement – her comeback was imminent, she could feel it. It wasn’t going to be by playing aging grandmothers in soaps. It was by being herself, beamed into homes, vehicles, telephones and onto tablets every night of the week.

Sofia removed the mirror from her handbag again and checked her make-up from all angles, dabbing, smoothing and contouring where necessary. Then she took another painkiller and washed it down with a swig of brandy.

‘This is it, Oscar,’ she said proudly as she petted his head. ‘Mummy’s on her way back to the top. Just you wait and see.’

She held her smile firm and looked directly into the camera, and for the first time in years, she wasn’t afraid to stare at her own image as it appeared on the screen before her.





Chapter 4





SAM & HEIDI COLE


‘Are you sure your parents have kept the date free?’ asked Sam. ‘Your mum’s hopeless when it comes to remembering she’s volunteered to babysit.’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Heidi replied. ‘I’ve already put the date into the family calendar so she’ll get a text alert every day in the run up to it. What about you? You’ll definitely be back in Luton by then?’

‘Uh-uh. Should be.’

‘So when are you going to tell me what you’ve organised?’

‘I’m not. Like I keep saying, it’s a surprise.’

‘You know I hate surprises.’

‘Most women love them.’

‘Most women aren’t police officers, and in my job, surprises are rarely a good thing.’

‘Then let this be the exception. For once, have some faith in your husband.’

Heidi wanted to laugh but she held herself back. Instead, she finished filing her fingernails and recalled last year’s effort – a fish supper at their local pub. Money had been tight so she hadn’t vocalised her disappointment. Many months later, she had stumbled across the real reason why they were struggling financially. But she had chosen to keep it to herself.

She checked the destination time on the car’s dashboard – it would take another twenty minutes before she reached it. She needed something to distract her from her anxiousness about what was to come next. So she decided to paint her fingernails. She opened her handbag and removed three shades of white polish.

‘Which one should I use?’ she asked, holding them up to the dashboard camera.

From the console in his own car, she watched as Sam looked carefully at each of them. ‘The white one,’ he replied and heaped another spoonful of warm porridge from a Tupperware pot into his mouth. Heidi hated it whenever she was a morning Passenger in his vehicle – it either reeked of milky oats or well-cooked bacon.

‘Which white one?’ she pressed and watched Sam hesitate, as if his instinct was warning him this was a test.

‘The one on the left.’

‘Well remembered. That’s the one I chose for our wedding day.’

‘I could never forget.’

Heidi knew her husband was lying because so was she. She had worn a baby-pink polish that day. Recently, she had found herself testing him more and more frequently over the most minute and innocuous of topics, just to see how much he was prepared to fabricate.

‘This colour always reminds me of sitting with Kim and Lisa in the nail bar,’ she continued, making it up as she went along. ‘We drove the owner mad trying to decide which shade to pick. Kim kept telling me to go with the ivory to match my dress but I wanted something with a little more sparkle.’

‘You made the right choice. You looked amazing.’

Heidi tried to read his smile, quietly hoping it was genuine. She remembered him waiting at the church altar, turning his head when the organist began to play the opening bars of Wagner’s Bridal Chorus and how he dabbed at his eyes when he caught sight of her. Even now, after everything, she would do anything to relive those early, fairy-tale moments from their relationship again, even just for a moment.

‘Do you remember where our first date was?’ Heidi asked.

‘Of course, in that fish restaurant in Aldeburgh high street.’

‘No, that was the second night.’

‘I don’t count the first night because that’s when we met.’

‘That’s right, you were on the stag weekend from hell.’

‘Bob’s best man had booked us all two static caravans in a park populated by pensioners and the only club in town closed at eleven. Then I saw you and your friends walking back to the campsite and, the next thing I know, we’d spent the night swigging from a bottle of Prosecco, watching the sun rise over the beach.’

Heidi felt a warmth spread across the surface of her skin, mirroring how she felt when Sam had leaned in to kiss her for the first time. Back then, and following the collapse of her parents’ marriage, she didn’t believe in happy-ever-afters. And not for a moment had she assumed she could fall in love so hard and so fast. The warm feeling dissolved as quickly as it had appeared. She blew gently on the fingernails of one hand before she began painting the other.

‘Who’d have thought back then that one day we’d be celebrating our tenth anniversary?’ she asked.

‘I did because I’d never met anyone so on my wavelength like you were. There’s no way I was letting you go. And while I remember, aside from a hacksaw to remove the ball and chain, what are we supposed to buy one another to celebrate?’