The Passengers(7)

‘Something made of tin.’

‘So if I wrapped up a tin of spaghetti hoops you’d be happy?’

‘Give it a try and see how long the proctologist takes to surgically remove it.’

‘What was on that modern list of anniversary presents you googled?’

‘Diamonds. Apparently, they’re still a girl’s best friend.’

‘I thought I was your best friend?’

You were, Heidi said to herself. Once upon a time you were everything to me.

She watched as Sam used his tie to clean his glasses. He hadn’t worn them when they’d first met, but then his hair and beard hadn’t been flecked with grey either and the skin around his eyes didn’t crease when he laughed. She wondered if he had watched her aging like she had him. Perhaps that’s how this had all started. Her genetics had been to blame. Her body was no longer as attractive to him as it once was when they were in the first flush of love. But wasn’t that what marriage was about? Not the ceremony or the grand gestures or the anniversaries, but standing by the side of someone come what may; growing older with one another and loving them regardless of all their faults. Till death do us part, she said to herself.

Heidi wondered what others saw when they looked at her. In her imagination, she was still a twenty-year-old girl with her whole life ahead of her. In reality, she was a forty-year-old mum of two whose once thick head of blonde hair was losing its lustre. Her teeth needed whitening and her jaw line was fast losing its elasticity. As gravity pulled it south, it took with it her freckles. Nowadays they were less like cute brown dots and more like fat ink blots. It wasn’t just her looks that had toughened over the years; so had her personality. Her job had made it harder for her to see the good in people. And she had forgotten how to cry either happy or sad tears. Sometimes she felt as if she were made of rock; break her exterior and she was just as solid inside.

‘Do you ever miss those days?’ Heidi asked suddenly.

‘Which days?’

‘The ones when we could drink and smoke and go out whenever we wanted to or bugger off around Europe on a city break without having to worry about the kids?’

‘Sometimes, like when they caught that stomach bug before Christmas and the house stank like a Roman vomitorium. But on the whole, no. The adventure we’re on is much more fun with them in it.’

‘If we can get a late cheap deal, we should take them to the South of France for a few days in August. Just pack up the essentials, programme the address, set off at night and sleep in the car while it drives us there. We could be in Lyon by the morning.’

Heidi knew what Sam’s response would be before he gave it. ‘We’ll see,’ he replied. When it came to trips abroad, he’d been ‘we’ll see-ing’ her for most of their married life. Every other Christmas he’d visit his mother at her flat in the Algarve. However, he always went alone.

‘So remind me, where are you taking me for our anniversary?’ she asked.

‘Oh for God’s sake, if you really want to know then I’ll tell you. But don’t start moaning later that I’ve ruined the surprise.’

‘Come on then. Spill.’

‘Okay, well, I’ve hired us a caravan in Aldeburgh for the weekend and I was planning to take an early morning breakfast picnic with us so we can start the day where it all began – under the rising sun.’

‘Aww, that’s lovely,’ Heidi replied, not meaning a word of it. Sam clearly assumed it to be a thoughtful, romantic gesture though. ‘It’s a really nice idea.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ he replied. ‘But then I remembered how my wife’s face tripped her up last year when I took her to the pub, so instead, I bought us tickets to a musical in London’s West End, followed by a slap-up dinner at a posh restaurant and a room in a Covent Garden hotel.’

Heidi knew it was never going to happen but she played along regardless. ‘Are you serious? Can we afford it? We’ve got James’s school ski trip coming up …’

‘Yes, we can afford it,’ Sam replied, and she recognised a hint of irritation in his voice for questioning him. ‘I’ve been putting some money aside for a while to pay for it.’

Heidi opened her mouth to say something else, then changed her mind. Instead, she held her newly painted white fingernails to the camera. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, but before Sam could reply, the picture went blank. ‘Sam? Have we been cut off?’

Meanwhile, inside her husband’s car several miles behind, Sam slapped the dashboard to encourage the screen to function again. He was paying the price for ignoring the car’s automatic reminders for its six-month MOT, software update and app to diagnose the problem. He hadn’t booked Heidi’s in yet either but she didn’t need to know that. There was a lot she didn’t need to know.

‘I can still hear you,’ he replied.

‘What happened there?’

‘We must have fallen into a Wi-Fi black hole.’

‘Then why is my GPS reprogramming itself with a different route?’

Sam placed his now-empty bowl of porridge on the seat next to him. ‘It does that sometimes, doesn’t it? You know, if there’s been an accident or problems ahead.’ Sam glanced at his own screen. ‘Hold on, mine is doing the same. What … where the hell it is taking …’