This Could Change Everything(112)

She looked down at the hand and saw that it was clutching instead a handful of perfume card samplers, each one sprayed with a different scent.

And that was the moment absolute calm turned to horror and panic.

‘Just in time,’ said the female attendant as Clemency hurtled towards the departures desk. ‘We were about to close the gate!’

Clemency couldn’t speak. She wanted to fall to her knees and gulp air into her burning lungs, but there was no time; she was already being ushered out through the sliding doors and across the tarmac towards the waiting plane. Her drag-along case was banging against her ankles, perspiration was trickling down her spine and her mouth was dry as she struggled up the clanky metal steps, still hyperventilating. Oh God, she could only imagine the colour of her face. She must be puce.

The male flight attendant greeted her with a wink. ‘Nice of you to decide to join us. Welcome on board.’

You know that little inner surge of triumph you get when you’re on a packed-to-the-gills plane and everyone’s boarded and the seat next to yours is magically still empty . . . until at the very last minute someone else gets on and you realise you won’t be enjoying the luxury of having an empty seat beside you after all?

This, Clemency knew, was the feeling currently being experienced by the passenger occupying seat number 45A. As she made her way towards 45B, she could almost hear the thud of disappointment and his accompanying sigh of resignation.

Oh well. His hopes might have been cruelly dashed, but on the upside he had excellent cheekbones and a beautiful mouth. During her flight over here, the guy in the seat next to hers had weighed almost as much as the plane itself and had been eating tuna sandwiches, so this one was already a marked improvement.

Still getting her breath back, Clemency smiled broadly at him. ‘I know, I’m sorry, I’d be disappointed too.’

This was the man’s cue to relax, to notice that as far as seat-neighbours were concerned he could do an awful lot worse, and to gallantly offer to lift her heavy case into the overhead locker.

Except this didn’t happen. Instead he acknowledged her with the briefest of nods before returning his attention to the phone in his hand.

Then again, she had looked better. Maybe a red-faced, perspiring twenty-five-year-old gasping for breath wasn’t his cup of tea.

Case stowed and locker closed, Clemency collapsed into her seat, wiped her face and hands with a tissue and examined her left foot where the wheels of her carry-on case had repeatedly bashed against her ankle. She exhaled noisily. ‘I can’t believe I almost missed my flight! I always make sure I leave loads of time so nothing can go wrong. All these years and it’s never happened before . . . but I suppose the thing is, something always can go wrong. Like today. You can’t imagine how I felt when . . . umm . . .’

She trailed to a humiliated halt when she realised the man was determined to ignore her. Nothing, not a flicker; he clearly wasn’t interested at all.

He might have a beautiful mouth and excellent cheekbones, but he had no intention of engaging in conversation with the stranger at his side.

Fine. Clemency ostentatiously took out her own phone and began to check her emails. Because look at me, I’m really busy and important too.

Half an hour later, once they were flying at 36,000 feet over the Pyrenees, two cabin crew brought the drinks trolley down the aisle, and her travelling companion removed his earbuds in order to speak to them.

‘I don’t believe it.’ Clemency laughed at her own stupidity. ‘I’m such an idiot!’

The man turned to look at her. ‘Sorry?’

‘You! Those things!’ She gestured to the earbuds in his right hand. ‘I was chatting away to you earlier and you completely ignored me, so I stopped talking because I thought you didn’t want to be disturbed. I couldn’t see the wires from here because of the way you were sitting and your collar covered them up. But I can’t believe I didn’t realise the reason you were ignoring me was because you had headphones in.’ Giddy with relief, she added, ‘Well, I suppose I was in a bit of a state, what with almost missing the flight . . . my brain felt as if it’d been whizzed up in a blender . . . Ooh dear, sorry, that sounds a bit—’

‘Red wine, please,’ the man said to the blonde flight attendant.

‘Certainly, sir. And you, madam? Would you like something from the trolley?’

It was free. Free wine! Why would anyone say no? Except Clemency had observed on plenty of occasions that some people, for mystifying reasons of their own, did sometimes say no.

Ha, not her, though. She said, ‘I’d like white wine, please. Oh . . . is it cold?’ Because sometimes it wasn’t.

The flight attendant wrinkled her nose conspiratorially and said, ‘Not very, I’m afraid.’

‘I’ll have red, then.’ Clemency smiled. ‘Nothing worse than lukewarm white wine.’ The next moment, seeing that her travelling companion was about to put the buds back into his ears, she added, ‘I think I deserve a drink, to celebrate not missing this plane!’

‘There you go.’ The attendant passed them their mini bottles and plastic glasses, along with two airline-sized packets of cheese biscuits.

‘Lovely. Thank you.’ Clemency filled her glass, raised it towards the man next to her and said, ‘Cheers!’

‘Cheers,’ murmured the man, before glancing back at his phone.