This Could Change Everything(113)

Sometimes persuading someone to make conversation when they didn’t want to became a kind of personal challenge. Before he could plug himself back into his music, Clemency said brightly, ‘Doesn’t it always feel brilliant, having a glass of wine on a plane?’

‘It does.’ He looked pointedly out of the window.

‘I wasn’t late getting to the airport, you know,’ Clemency told him. ‘I had tons of time, which was why I spent ages in duty-free, and it wasn’t until I reached the checkout that I discovered I’d put my passport down somewhere and for the life of me I couldn’t think where I’d left it. Oh God, that feeling, though.’ She clenched her free hand and clutched it to her chest at the awful memory. ‘My heart was going like a train, I was trying to ask where it might have been handed in, and everyone in the queue behind me was getting annoyed because all they wanted to do was pay for their duty-free . . .’

For the second time Clemency’s voice trailed off, giving him the chance to join in and say, ‘So what happened next?’

Instead, after an awkward silence that seemed to last longer than Wagner’s Ring cycle, he replied, ‘But you found it.’

‘Yes. Yes I did.’ Clemency nodded and looked at the buds he was clearly longing to plug back into his ears. Carefully raising the tray in order to get out of her seat before lowering it again and resting her glass of wine on it, she said, ‘Excuse me,’ and escaped down the aisle.

How embarrassing to realise that whilst you’ve been merrily going through life thinking you were a perfectly nice travelling companion, the kind of person anyone might enjoy sitting next to, you might have been wrong. That you might, in fact, be the kind of irritating person other people dread being trapped with.

Chastened, Clemency stared at her reflection in the mirror above the tiny sink in the toilet cubicle. Oh dear, what a mortifying discovery to make. And that poor man, who had presumably been willing her to shut up and leave him alone instead of wittering on about her stupid passport . . . OK, she wouldn’t utter another word from now on, wouldn’t even glance at him.

Lesson learnt.

She left the cubicle and made her way back along the aisle. The man in the seat next to hers was gazing out of the window at the great swathes of cloud surrounding them. As Clemency lifted her glass of wine in order to raise the tray and sit back down, he turned and said, ‘Want me to hold that for you?’

Hold the front page. He speaks!

But she had no intention of breaking her vow. With a little I’m-fine shake of her head, she put her handbag on the floor in front of her, then went to raise the tray in order to—

Oof . . .

The jolt of the plane was both sudden and dramatic, eliciting shrieks of alarm from several nervous passengers. Having lurched to one side and bounced off the seat in front of her, Clemency ricocheted back and felt rather than saw the contents of the glass hit her chest.

The plane righted itself, the screams and panic subsided and order was restored. From the cockpit, the pilot genially announced over the tannoy, ‘Apologies for that spot of turbulence, ladies and gentlemen. If everyone could stay seated for the next couple of minutes and keep their seat belts fastened, we’ll just make sure there aren’t any more surprises to come.’

Clemency looked down at her pale yellow lacy cotton top, liberally splattered with red wine. The splashes were spreading, joining up into one vast purple splodge across her front. It was, of course, one of her all-time favourite items of clothing, because that was sod’s law, wasn’t it? You never got a drink thrown over you when you were wearing some ancient falling-to-pieces T-shirt.

‘Whoops, poor you,’ said one of the air stewards, hurrying down the aisle to check that everyone’s seat belt was fastened. ‘Sit down.’

‘Oh dear,’ said the man next to her as she sat.

Clemency glanced at him; he didn’t have his earbuds in. She did a tiny shrug and felt the wet material cold against her skin. Urgh.

‘I bet you wish you’d stuck with the lukewarm white wine now.’

This was like being in a silent movie. Clemency raised her hand briefly in a doesn’t-matter gesture and reached for the riveting airline magazine in the seat pocket in front of her. Time to read about the dazzling tourist attractions of Malaga.

‘Are you . . . not speaking to me?’

Ah, so he’d noticed. She turned to look at him, one eyebrow lifted quizzically. ‘Sorry?’

‘Are you deliberately ignoring me because you thought I was deliberately ignoring you?’ There was a hint of amusement in his voice.

‘Not at all,’ said Clemency. ‘I just thought you preferred not to be disturbed. I was respecting your wishes.’

Except it didn’t come out like that; it came out as wishies. Like fishies.

Oh God . . .

‘You were respecting my what?’ The corners of his mouth were twitching now. ‘My wishies?’

‘Wishes.’

‘You said wishies.’

‘I was going to say I respected your personal boundaries,’ said Clemency, ‘but seeing as we were sitting next to each other, I decided at the last minute to change it to wishes.’

‘But a bit of it got left behind.’ He nodded. ‘I like the sound of wishies.’

In an ideal world, she would have produced her own pair of earbuds at this point and fitted them into her ears. But her earbuds were in her big suitcase in the hold of the plane. Instead she said, ‘Good,’ and returned her attention to the magazine.