I'll Be Home for Christmas

Book 0: Roone

by Roisin Meaney

Genres: General Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A feel-good tale of magic, sparkle and new beginnings from No. 1 bestselling author Roisin Meaney, author of The Reunion, One Summer and The People Next Door.

It's three days before Christmas ...
Tilly boards a plane on the other side of the world. She's determined to reach Roone, a small island off the west coast of Ireland, in time for Christmas Day. Tilly carries a troubling secret and Laura, a woman she's never met, might be the only one who can help her.
Except that Laura has no idea that Tilly exists. And with five children, a mother-in-law stranded on the island and a husband with whom she's barely on speaking terms, an unexpected Christmas guest is the last thing she needs . . .
A storm is heading for the island, but will peace be restored before the snow melts?

(P)2022 Hachette Books Ireland

Release date: October 15, 2015

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 360

Sample

They said it had to be Matilda. They wouldn’t let her use Tilly. Nobody ever calls me Matilda, she said, but it made no difference.

It must be your official name, the woman with the shiny forehead in the passport office told her. Otherwise you run into all sorts of trouble.

What kind of trouble? Tilly asked – what was so bad about wanting to use the name everyone knew her by? – but the woman just shrugged and went on fanning herself with one of her leaflets.

Red tape, she said eventually when Tilly didn’t go away, which made it no clearer. So Matilda Walker was what they put in her very first passport, beneath a small photo of a rather bewildered-looking Tilly.

Just as well her date of birth was there too: nobody would have believed she was seventeen in that photo. Just be natural, Lien had said, and don’t smile, you’re not allowed to smile, which suited Tilly fine – she couldn’t remember when she’d last felt like smiling. Don’t scowl like that either, Lien had added, you look like a terrorist – and while Tilly was doing her best to appear serene and composed and not at all threatening, the camera flashed and there she was, thirteen going on fourteen. Not nearly old enough to be travelling to Brisbane on her own, let alone Ireland.

That’s quite a trek, Lien had said when Tilly told her. You’ll be going literally halfway around the world. Lien had got her first passport when she was a few months old. She flew to China with her parents every January to visit the relatives who hadn’t immigrated to Australia with her grandparents in the 1950s. Like Tilly, Lien had been born in Australia, but they could hardly have looked more different.

Tilly was five foot eight inches tall; in her stockinged feet Lien barely made it to five foot. Tilly’s skin was pale as blancmange, and sprinkled with small butterscotch-coloured freckles; Lien’s was more clotted cream with a hint of hazelnut and not one single freckle, just a solitary dark mole a finger’s width from the left side of her mouth.

Tilly’s hair, the precise biscuity shade of Ma’s shopping basket, waved and kinked its way down to the middle of her back, resisting every attempt to straighten it; Lien’s glossy shoulder-length bob was the rich brown-black of a coffee bean, and impeccably behaved.

But it was the eyes that really set them apart. Tilly’s were the bluish-green of an acacia leaf, slightly pink-rimmed along their almost horizontal lower edges and fringed all around with pale lashes; Lien’s were bitter-chocolate lozenges set in dark-lashed creamy ovals, whose outer corners tilted deliciously upwards. Lien was exotic; Tilly was homespun.

You’re more exotic than me, Lien insisted. Ireland is much further away than China. But Tilly wasn’t talking distances – and even if she was, she didn’t feel remotely Irish.

Up to six months ago all she’d known about Ireland was that it was famous for Guinness. She knew a lot of people with Irish connections, she had classmates whose parents had both been born there, but the country hadn’t held any particular interest for her – why would it? – until she’d discovered her own connection with it.

Since June she’d been finding out more, like the fact that it was the third largest island in Europe, and it had a tomb that was older than the Pyramids, and the longest river in the British Isles, and that its currency was the euro. And that some parts of it – the Cliffs of Moher, the Giant’s Causeway, the Killarney lakes – were considered pretty spectacular.

She also knew that it was going to take her roughly thirty-three hours to get to Ireland from Brisbane, via Singapore and London. Well over a day and a half for her total journey, if you added in the three-hour bus trip from home to Brisbane airport, and however long it took – a couple of hours at least, she reckoned – to get from Kerry airport, her final touch-down, to the island of Roone, which was Ireland’s most westerly point.

According to Google Maps, Roone had the wonky diamond shape of a stingray, and was all of seven miles long and four miles wide. Hard to get your head around a whole island being that small, when you lived on a landmass that covered well over three million square miles. Hard to imagine a place so tiny, when Pa’s fifteen-thousand-acre farm wasn’t considered particularly big by Australian standards.

And yet Roone had a year-round population of approximately three hundred, if the Internet was to be believed. She tried to imagine a whole community of people living in that minuscule place on the very edge of Europe, surrounded by the sea, locked in on all sides by water.

Tilly had been to the sea once in her life. It had happened seven years ago, when Lien’s mother had piled a group of them into her station wagon and driven them to the coast for Lien’s tenth birthday. The journey had taken forever – over three hours of straight-as-a-pin road, nothing to look at for most of it but miles and miles of flat scrubland, nothing to do but play endless rounds of I Spy and Twenty Questions – but the sight of the Pacific Ocean, when it finally opened up before them, instantly made up for the tedium of the trip.

The vastness of it, the rumbling music it made, its briny scent and myriad colours left Tilly speechless and spellbound as she stood on the shore stretching her stiff limbs and taking great gulps of the salty air. The wet sand, when she pulled off her sandals and ventured closer to the water’s edge, sucked at her bare feet. The roll of each wave as it sped to the shore hypnotised her: each crashing, shattering climax, flinging spray onto her face, was a new marvel.

She dipped in a foot: it was cool and wonderful. She looked out over the expanse of water, at the billions, the trillions of gallons that lay between her and the horizon. She thought of the huge ships that had been lost at sea, and the thousands of lives that had literally been swept away by tidal waves, and she felt as insignificant as a tick.

She imagined crossing the sea, sailing off in a boat and travelling across the miles and miles of water to America’s west coast. She pictured a Californian girl of roughly her age, standing right at that moment on an American beach, looking out at the Pacific just like Tilly. Both of them with their eyes fixed on the same ocean, the same water. She stood ankle-deep in it, feeling the tug as it pulled away from her, waiting for it to come rushing back, swallowing her feet. She remained there until Lien’s mother called her for the picnic.

Lying in bed that night she licked her arm and tasted salt. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the low, murmuring sound the ocean had made, the wet splash of its spray on her face. In the days that followed she was hungry to see it again. She pestered Ma and Pa to take her and Robbie, but Ma and Pa weren’t the kind of people who drove for three hours to look at a lot of water. Anyway, Robbie was still a baby, not even one yet: the trip would have been wasted on him.

On a place the size of Roone, you’d be bound to hear the sea wherever you were. The smell of it would be in the air, day and night. It would cling to your clothes, seep into your dreams and flavour them. By day you’d round a bend in the road and there it would be, spread out before you like a carpet.

Ma and Pa didn’t know she was flying to Ireland. There was an awful lot Ma and Pa didn’t know, and an awful lot more Tilly had been praying they’d never find out. But they had found out. They’d been shocked and bewildered when the truth of what had happened, or a large part of it, had finally dumped itself at their door, and now she had to get away before they discovered the worst bit.

Bali, she’d told them. Nadia’s folks have a house there, she’d said. They’re spending Christmas in it and they’ve invited me to join them. I think it would do me good to get away from here for a while. After everything, I mean.

Oh, she’d been despicable, playing on their sympathy. Lying to them again, knowing they still trusted her, despite everything, knowing they wouldn’t check up to make sure her story was true. The blind, stupid faith they still had in her, even after she’d been exposed as a liar, and worse.

I can pay my own way, she’d told them, which was the only bit of her concoction that wasn’t made up. She’d waitressed at Nadia’s family’s Indonesian restaurant in town all last summer, and when school had started again they’d kept her on for Friday and Saturday nights. She’d saved over two thousand dollars, enough for a return flight to Ireland with a small bit left over for pocket money.

Nadia was in Tilly’s class at school. The two girls were friendly, but not nearly as friendly as Tilly had made it sound. Nowhere near as friendly as Tilly being invited to join the family for Christmas.

But it was a safe lie. The family was going to Bali: since the first week in December there had been a sign in the restaurant window telling everyone that it would be closed for ten days over the holiday period. Not that Ma and Pa would see it – they didn’t believe in eating out: they were perfectly happy with Ma’s beef pie or Pa’s barbecued ribs – but on the off-chance that any of the neighbours noticed it, and then got chatting to Ma, Tilly’s story would be backed up.

Bali was just about close enough, Bali she would get away with, particularly when she was footing the bill. Ireland, not a chance. No way would Ma and Pa be able to get their heads around Tilly travelling all the way to Ireland on her own, no way would they agree if she told them she wanted to go there. A short trip was one thing; halfway around the world was something else entirely.

But she was going. She’d bought her ticket, opting for the cheapest route she could find, and she’d got her passport and holiday visa. In five hours or thereabouts she would be stepping onto her first plane and travelling more than ten thousand miles, and ten hours back in time.

And the minute her cab pulled up outside, her journey would begin.

‘Send a text message when you arrive. You be sure now.’

She turned from the window. Ma sat at the table, her face grey with exhaustion.

‘You didn’t have to get up,’ Tilly told her. ‘There was no need.’

It was three o’clock in the morning and pitch black outside, and the heat covered them like a wet blanket. Ma had gone to bed at half past nine like she always did, and presumably slept, and dragged herself awake to see Tilly off.

‘I wanted to get up,’ she said. ‘First time for you to leave.’

Ma had never flown anywhere, or Pa. Never left Queensland, either of them, as far as Tilly knew. She looked at the worn, honest face that was so familiar to her, the faded flowery robe, the tightly coiled rollers in the brown hair sprinkled with white.

‘You’ll have a good time,’ Ma went on. ‘It’ll be nice for you, with Nadia and her folks.’

She was forgiving Tilly. Every word offered absolution.

‘No need to call,’ she said, ‘just a text message to say you got there in one piece is all.’

‘OK.’

Strictly speaking, the mobile phone belonged to Pa. It had come as a free gift when he’d invested in the new harvester a few years back, but he’d never once gone near it, so they looked on it as Ma’s. Most of the time it sat on the dresser – the idea of it being mobile seemed to have got overlooked somewhere along the line – but once in a blue moon Ma would use it to send Tilly as brief a text as she could get away with.

Get sugar, Tilly might read – and more often than not, there would be a half-full bag still in the cupboard when she got home. Ma seemed to think the phone would shrivel up and die if she didn’t give it an airing every now and again. It would come in handy now though.

‘My texts mightn’t come through right away,’ Tilly said. ‘Don’t worry if you’re waiting a while. Sometimes that happens.’

The flight to Singapore took a little over eight hours, two hours longer than the one they thought she was getting to Bali. As soon as they touched down she’d text Landed, all well. She wouldn’t say any more than that. It wouldn’t be a lie if she didn’t say any more than that.

‘No need to reply,’ she told Ma. With a ten-hour time difference, the less communication there was between them, the less chance of Tilly’s deceit being discovered.

‘I don’t like you getting that bus in the middle of the night,’ Ma said, not for the first time. ‘Pa woulda drove you to the airport.’

‘No need, the bus is fine.’

She’d told them Nadia’s family had no room for her in their car, that they’d asked her to get the bus to the airport. If Pa drove her there he’d go in with her, and if he went in he’d see no Nadia and family waiting to meet her, and no flight to Bali at eight o’clock.

‘Woulda drove you to the bus station, at least.’

‘Taxi’s fine, Ma.’

Just then she heard the double clunk of a car driving over the cattle grid, and seconds later there was her cab, pulling up outside. ‘Well,’ she said, reaching for the handle of her suitcase.

Ma’s embrace was awkward, and over quickly. She’d never been a comfortable hugger. ‘Look after yourself,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about us.’

They’d given her two hundred dollars. Pa had handed it over the day before. ’Tain’t much, he’d said, but it’ll help. The tightly folded notes smelt of tobacco, like him. The sight of them had caused a guilty dip in the pit of Tilly’s stomach. They were giving her money, after what she’d done.

I don’t need it, she’d told him, I have enough, but he pressed it into her palm and that was that. Two hundred dollars was around a hundred and fifty euro. She’d change it when she got to Ireland.

‘Happy Christmas,’ she said to Ma.

‘We’ll miss you now,’ Ma said – but they wouldn’t miss her, not really. They had their own children, who so far hadn’t caused them anywhere near the trouble Tilly had.

She walked out to the car. The heat flung itself at her, it leapt in her mouth and caught in her throat. She hefted her case into the boot that the driver had popped open. She slid into the back seat and met his eyes in the rear-view mirror.

‘OK,’ she said, slamming the door, waving out at Ma.

Leaving all the bad stuff behind. Leaving it behind for good.



It was halfway through the morning, three sleeps before Christmas. The day was damp and chilly, and had been pretty unremarkable so far. Gavin Connolly was making his way home in his small white van, having finished his Tuesday deliveries. He was trundling along the coast road that encircled Roone’s twenty-eight square miles, lifting a hand to the walkers and cyclists and other motorists he encountered, as every driver did on the island.

As he drove, he hummed a tune he’d heard issuing from Maisie Kiely’s radio just a few minutes earlier, the one about Mary having a little baby, all glory hallelujahs. Mary Somebody the singer was called too, English, he thought, the song washing over him as he’d handed over Maisie’s usual order of seven good-sized potatoes, half a dozen carrots, three onions and two litres of apple juice, along with an extra request this week for parsnips and Brussels sprouts. ‘I could set my clock by you,’ Maisie said, the same thing she told him every Tuesday morning.

It was while he was passing by the second largest of the island’s beaches that the day stopped being unremarkable. He glanced to his right and saw what he always saw at this time of year – grey sky, silver sea, wedge of shortbread-coloured sand with ribbons of seaweed in various shades of green and purple and brown strewn across it – but for the first time since coming to live on Roone he felt compelled to stop. No, more than that: he felt an almost overwhelming urge to get out of the van and make his way down to the beach and walk across it to the edge of the sea.

He stopped humming and pressed down on the brake pedal and tapered to a crawl. He travelled another fifty yards before pulling in by a little lane and turning off the engine. He sat in the silent van, contemplating the sea and trying to figure out why it had suddenly become irresistible to him.

It made no sense. Despite packing his bags in Dublin three years earlier and relocating to a small island on the other side of Ireland where he was surrounded by beaches, Gavin wasn’t generally given to spending much time on them. To put it bluntly, he didn’t much care for them, these strips of sand or pebbles, or a mix of both, that featured so prominently on Roone.

He wasn’t what you’d call a swimmer. He knew how to do it, if thrashing about with arms and legs and managing not to sink could accurately be described as swimming – but he had no real interest in the exercise, and so far he had successfully evaded Nell Baker’s offers to teach him properly.

To tell the truth, swimming had largely lost its appeal since he’d fallen into the sea while disembarking from lobster fisherman Willie Buckley’s boat on his first trip to Roone as a holidaymaker, an incident he’d been anxious to put behind him as quickly as possible – not that Willie and his buddies were inclined to let him forget – but the memory of it insisted on returning to him on the infrequent occasions that he poked his big toe into salt water after that.

Of course, beaches were more than simply launching pads for a bout of swimming. At the height of a good summer, Roone’s sandy borders were largely hidden under the oily limbs of reclining tourists, every one of whom seemed to be in search of the obligatory holiday tan – but, blessed as Gavin was with the pale, freckly complexion typically associated with the Irish native, lying in the sun for any length of time, whether slathered with factor 50 or not, was a practice he considered both unaccountably boring and vaguely dangerous. Besides, a tan was completely beyond his skin’s capabilities, so he never bothered trying to acquire one.

Which left the option of a beach walk, barefoot or otherwise – but while he was an avid walker whenever he got the chance, Gavin’s terrain of choice was a country road or lane where he could be sure of a relatively smooth surface underfoot, rather than a beach full of undulating rows of compacted sand, or pebbles that tended to collapse under each footfall.

All things considered, he tended to keep as much distance as he could between himself and the outer edges of Roone. Whenever Laura and the children were gathering buckets and spades for a day on the beach, Gavin made himself scarce. All the more reason, then, for him to sit in his stationary van on this particular December morning and wonder why he was feeling such a magnetic pull towards the sea.

And yet he couldn’t truly claim to be altogether surprised. After three years of living full time on the island, he was familiar enough with Roone to know that things often happened there for which no logical explanation could be found.

Wasn’t he harvesting apples from one of the trees in their orchard all year round, and wasn’t their juice renowned throughout the island for curing insomnia and psoriasis – and, if Betty Geraghty was to be believed, corns too?

Wasn’t there a sign that read The Statue of Liberty 3,000 miles stuck into the ground just beyond the cliff barriers and pointing towards America on the island’s west side? Hadn’t it been there for as long as Roone’s oldest resident could remember, and nobody at all able to say who had erected it? Hadn’t Kerry County Council taken it down more than once, only for it to reappear before the week was out, until they’d finally given up and left it there?

And hadn’t Maisie Kiely read his wife’s tea leaves last year and predicted Poppy’s arrival, despite Laura’s laughing protestation that two sets of twins were more than enough for any mother? A third girl, Maisie had insisted, peering into the depths of Laura’s teacup, and so it had come to pass – along with the dreadful other development that Maisie hadn’t foreseen, that none of them had seen coming.

But Roone was unique, no doubt about it – and, like the rest of its year-round residents, Gavin had become accustomed to, and had come to respect, the many whimsies of the island.

No breeze at all, the sea like a mirror this cold, calm morning, its surface sprinkled with the usual fishing trawlers, the last of the brightly coloured holiday craft having disappeared around the end of September. Little plashy harmless waves rolled onto the sandy shore, a hundred yards or so from where he was parked. If you wanted proper breakers you had to go to the far side of the island, where the Atlantic had full rein.

Nobody about at this hour, too early for the group of half a dozen over-sixties, the hardy souls (Maisie Kiely included) who walked the beach end to end each afternoon practically all year round, unless the weather was particularly shocking. And no sign this morning of seventy-something Con Maher, retired creamery worker, who peeled off his clothes and pulled on his ancient, bagging togs and raced into the sea for a three-minute dip every single day of the year. Con had probably been and gone by now.

Gavin wound down his window and took a few mouthfuls of the sharp, briny air – now that he did like, so wholesome and clean it tasted, far cry from what had been filling his lungs every day in Dublin. He closed the window and got out, banging the door shut behind him and leaving it unlocked as he ambled down the narrow lane that led to the beach.

He made his way to the water’s edge, hopping over the long, curly swathes of seaweed, skirting the occasional salty puddles, leaving a series of damp prints in his wake. Only half listening – because by now it was so familiar – to the rattling suck of the sea as it drew away from him, the moment of anticipation as it paused, the rushed exhalation of its return. The elemental moon-directed never-ending movement of the tide, the background music of his past three years. Keeping to its routine, as reliable as Con Maher.

When he was within a yard of the water he stopped and dropped to a squat, puzzling again as to what impulse had led him there. It occurred to him that it might have been his own subconscious, not in any particular hurry to get home, wanting to delay it for a few minutes.

Such a tragic state of affairs, when up to a few months ago the home he’d created with Laura and their children was his favourite place in the world, the place he couldn’t wait to get back to anytime he had to leave it. Now his overriding emotion each time he returned home was wariness: these days, it seemed he couldn’t do or say anything right as soon as he set foot inside the place.

It wouldn’t last, he kept telling himself. It would pass, this troubling time they were going through. It would pass, it would have to, and they’d be happy again.

A gull gave a sudden scream high above him: he lifted his gaze to follow its swoop across the sky, and a soft drizzle began to pat his face. First rain in over a week, if you could call it rain. He eyed the dark clouds moving in over the horizon, coming to replace the cauliflower-coloured sky that currently covered Roone. A storm on the way, according to Annie Byrnes’s bones, far more accurate than the Met Office when it came to predicting the weather.

A bad one, Annie had said, here this side of Christmas. We’ll be battening down the hatches, she’d told them. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too bad, hopefully it would be over before Christmas as well. No sign of it yet, though, the clouds the first indication of more sinister weather, but Annie’s bones were rarely wrong.

He glanced down to check his watch. Better not stay too long: Laura would be wanting her nap. He got to his feet, wondering what way he’d find her today, then catching the thought and flinging it from him, reminding himself of all she’d been through since March. Have patience, give her time.

He gave a final sweep of the beach – and there the small thing suddenly was, not half a dozen yards off to his right. Part in and part out of the water, each soft, incoming wave nudging it onto the sand, each pull back causing it to roll helplessly towards the sea again.

Here it was, the reason he’d been summoned: here was what he’d been sent to find. He knew it as surely as if someone had said it aloud.

The object was soft and floppy, no corners or angles to it. There seemed to be a broken quality about it, as if someone in a fit of rage had dashed it into the sea, wanting to put an end to it. In those first few seconds, while he was still far enough away for recognition to be uncertain, the sight of it gave Gavin a heart-flick of fright.

Everything about it – the shape and colour of it, the soggy bump of it onto the sand, the way it tumbled and rolled back – suggested to him a far more dreadful delivery from the sea than the usual offerings it threw up: driftwood, lengths of bleached bone, fragments of ragged clothing, rusted umbrella spines, remnants of burst footballs, battered rubbery flip-flops, skeletal kites, dented sun-cream bottles, tattered remains of lobster pots.

This was different. This was nothing like any of them. Gavin stepped cautiously towards the limp bundle, skin crawling with apprehension, wishing all at once that Laura was there with him – she was formidable in an emergency – but of course she was at home with the children. He looked to right and left again. He willed someone to appear but nobody did. He was completely on his own.

Up close, his fears were confirmed. No mistaking the lifeless little shape now, no chance he’d been wrong. It lay face down, small limbs splayed on the sand, out of reach finally of the receding tide. He crouched beside it, sick with dread. He forced himself to reach towards it, abdomen clenched, toes curling in their runners. He touched it: its cold clamminess made him shudder.

He turned it over.

It wasn’t a baby.

Relief washed through him. He gave a grateful bark of a laugh. He picked up the sodden rag doll – the precise size of a newborn but, aside from its rubbery head, made of cloth after all. No skin or bone or blood here, no silenced little heart. Its painted mouth smiled up at him, undimmed by its time in the sea.

‘Hello,’ he said aloud. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’ Round pink cheeks, black strokes of lashes above the oval blue eyes, little brown dots of freckles dancing haphazardly across the snub nose. White hair standing up in stiff spikes. ‘Thank God,’ he told it. ‘Thank God you’re not what I thought you were.’

He squeezed it out as best he could. Salt water spilled from its padded limbs and squat little torso, from the pink knitted dress that was miraculously still in one piece. Couldn’t have been that long in the water, a few days at the most, he reckoned. Fallen from a boat, maybe, or left forgotten on a rock and washed out to sea. And now washed back in again.

All the way home the doll bobbed and jumped damply from the rear-view mirror he’d draped it over. They mightn’t fancy it, any of his girls – the twins had a pile of dolls already, and Poppy was practically joined at the hip to her rabbit – but he couldn’t have left it there on the beach. If all else failed, they’d give it to Charlie.

He reached the house that he still thought of as Walter’s, probably because they’d named it after him when they’d opened the B&B. Walter’s Place, they’d called it, since everyone on Roone still referred to it as that. He turned into the driveway, whistling the tune that was back in his head. He parked in front of the shed and got out, bringing the doll with him. He walked around the side of the house and entered the way he always did, through the scullery and on into the kitchen.

His wife turned from the stove. She looked closed up, like she always did these days, and he yearned once again for the gregarious, big-hearted woman he’d fallen in love with. His two-year-old daughters, seated in front of bowls of banana chunks at the table, yelled, ‘Daddy!’ in perfect unison, like they did each time he reappeared, whether he’d been gone for two minutes or most of a day. Poppy, propped up with cushions in her playpen, flapped her fat little arms at him, crowing in delight. His daughters, at least, were pleased to see him.

He held the doll aloft. ‘Look what I found,’ he told them all.

‘Where is she?’ Laura asked.

He turned, waggled the doll at her. ‘Right here. Found her on the beach.’

Laura gave him a scathing look. ‘I’m not talking about that.’

It took him a second, two seconds. He lowered his arm slowly. The smile slid off his face.

‘Blast,’ he said.

He’d forgotten his mother.



She slept on the plane, although she hadn’t thought she would, so keyed up she’d felt as she’d boarded the steps and threaded her way down the narrow aisle to her window seat. When the plane had begun to move she’d been horribly fearful, not knowing what was ahead, what to expect. The sudden forward rush on the runway had her gripping the armrests – was that supposed to happen? The tilt as the plane left the ground made her squeeze her eyes closed, not daring to look out at a view gone topsy-turvy – but once they levelled off, once the cabin crew began to move around the aircraft, she forced herself to relax.

She kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, not inclined to engage with the man next to her. She had no book, and no appetite for the magazine that poked from