Karen was waiting in a bar in the departure lounge of the huge complex of Heathrow Airport, feeling transplanted from her natural environment. It all felt unreal from the moment that she stepped into that vast echoing space with the expensive refreshment areas, the cheap plastic chairs, anchored down where stranded tourists could slouch and fidget impatiently at the interminable delay. Overhead hung the vast overhead screens advertising a bewildering number of incoming and outgoing flights. It was like a huge railway terminal blown up many sizes. In the distance beyond the glass door of the bar, she had previously checked in with her luggage and had seen the duly labelled shapes slide away from her to be taken on board the aircraft. All it left her was her hand luggage consisting of an assortment of items including suntan lotion, the latest Harry Potter book she had seen displayed conveniently in the W H Smiths bookstall and likewise, a selection of magazines. Her sunglass case was perched on the top.
While she was waiting, she found it incredibly hard to switch off her busy mental timetable and deadlines and where that didn't crowd out her thoughts the twin images of Yvonne's generosity of heart and George's sad understanding floated through her mind.
To help her relax, she knocked back the generous measure of vodka and lemon in her glass to be ready for the flight and who knows what lay before her. In the bar, soft music played to relax the nervous traveller and because it was obligatory in any public place anyway. For once in her life, she started to listen to the music instead of shoving it in the background as she normally did on the pretext that she had more important things to do. This time, she had no excuse but to let the world flow past her eyes and ears and absorb everything her fast paced lifestyle had denied to her.
The lilting keyboards and the gentle rhythmic percussion broke in on her waking ears and that tender lullaby tone beguiled her thoughts away into the vision of faraway lands, the narrator's real generosity of spirit of imagining sights and scenes not seen. It could have been George in her mind's eye, who was playing the piano and singing the song to her from her office right in the heart of Knightsbridge. She would soon be flying into the sky, if not over her head but within spotting distance of the distant blur of London from way up in the sky. "Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes
They say Spain is pretty though I've never been Well Daniel says it's the best place that he's ever seen Oh and he should know, he's been there enough Lord I miss Daniel, oh I miss him so much."
A tear prickled her eye at the gentle selfless narration. She would be coming back to earth on her return but she needed this break. No one was objecting, not even herself.
Once inside the massive tube shaped area, she found the row of seats that pleased her and happened to be next to the window. It was a very long time since she had been up on an aircraft and she felt pale already compared to the sun bronzed self assured travelers hell bent on pleasure on their 18 to 30 travel package plan, complete with sun, sea and sex in abundance. Oh yes, she had forgotten the endless line of nightclubs with their attractions. Quite by chance, she had slid into an 'observing mode' of other passengers, what their clothes, mannerisms, and conversations told of themselves. She had not done this for a long time, to travel completely without ties. The last time she had flown was as part of a couple, with………….. A sudden nightmare thought hit her and Karen screwed up her eyes and her mind at the dangerous direction she had let her thoughts slide. She was pushing it away as desperately as once she was struggling to push him away. She was on the verge of hyperventilating while being painfully aware that the rest of the happy holidaymakers would be totally oblivious to her. There was one other person who she knew whose voice was now silenced and should stay forever silenced. He should not come back ever to haunt her and this man was not Ross.
"Good morning, passengers, you are flying with Captain Smith as your captain in the flight from Heathrow to Alicante. We shall be taking off in about fifteen minutes time."
Karen opened her eyes to look all around her at the anonymous line of passengers sitting next to her and the shuffling queues of late passengers looking for a seat. For once in her life, Karen blessed this bright empty voice, which interrupted her just in time to steer her away from such a dangerous train of thought by its sheer banality. It broke the spell in which she was in danger of being caught up. This was precisely what she was traveling to escape from. She drew several enormous breaths of sheer relief at the impeccable timing of the interruption. After all, she reasoned, as she started to calm down, she had not been factually correct. The very last time she flew was when she traveled on her own after her relationship with Mark fell apart and so did the idea for a holiday together. That was a tenser period in her life but was more dealable with. She was on her own then and she was on her own now. That gave her great cause for satisfaction, she thought, nodding to herself. She was a million miles away from that time in her life, so she reassured herself and she had her future to look forward to, not her past.
As she felt herself returning to normal, she allowed herself to be eagerly caught up in the here and now, in that heightened sense of anticipation of waiting for take off. Finally that rising pitch in whining jet engines and that sudden lurch told her that they were bumping along the runway. Suddenly her stomach lurched as the power of the engines finally blasted the passenger aircraft up off the ground and the cabin inclined upwards, climbing for height. She saw the ground gradually fall away from her and the rooftops and postage stamp gardens gradually diminish in size. She was away and there was no turning back from her destiny.
A couple of hours later, the plane descended at the other end of its trajectory and Karen sat back and indulged herself in the pleasures of the flight. It was strange to sit back while an attractive girl pushed the trolley of in flight catering and to reflect that, for once, she could surrender herself to someone else's responsibility. Looking at her from behind her sunglasses, she was able to eye up the girl without being noticed. It was a totally new experience to taste the excellently cooked meal, eaten off the fold down tray. A suddenly renewed curiosity about life made her look out of the round window at the intense blue sky and fluffy clouds. Looking down from the aircraft, they were pure white and floated gently past her at different layers except for the high thin tracery pattern at a dizzying height way over her head. She felt on top of the world. In intervals from this dazzling exposure to light, she rested her eyes , glanced at the magazines and made casual bland pointless polite conversation with the couple sat next to her who had seemingly traveled to every part of the globe. At least no life or death matters resulted from what she said or did.
The process passed in a blur by which she gathered her belongings and passed through the less grand and much used, slightly battered looking Alicante airport. What she remembered most was the sheer blast of hot air as soon as she stepped out of the departure lounge and the flurry of people milling about. This was definitely a foreign country where cars displayed different number plates and the traditional British religion of polite queuing went straight out of the window. Clumps of people were waiting to find their courier guides and the coach. Karen was lucky as Yvonne had sorted out Karen's transport in the same way that Atkins business was always arranged. Soon, she was traveling along the crazily narrow hairpin bends through parched, rocky mountainous scenery and past innumerable little stone cottages, bleached white by the eternal sun. The car swayed and lurched and the driver sounded his horn as an early warning device to the car coming round the blind corner from the opposite direction, oblivious of oncoming danger. Once Karen got over the initial bout of nervousness, she let it all flow over her as she did anything else. She was beginning to see that there were virtues in not striving for control.
At last, the car pulled up with a slight grating sound on the pebbly coastal road and a perfectly formed Spanish villa appeared before her eyes. This just had to be Yvonne's villa. The white painted bungalow was set off by green painted wooden shutters, designed to blank out the intense glare of the full summer heat rather than the way the large English windows were designed to beg the uncertain English sunshine to bless them. It is only this variable weather that creates the archetypal English conversation opener about the weather. What took her breath away was the sudden sight of the blue Mediterranean sea, stretching its gold glinted way into the distance with barely a ripple of wind on the water. To the side, a jagged headland descended its way dramatically down from the high cliff top to plunge into the sea. Open mouthed at the beauty, Karen stepped out in her loose sandals forward to where there was a clearer view and a delightful old fashioned village nestled in the shelter of the headland, utterly unspoiled by a rash of high rise hotels which civilization immediately clustered and overran any picturesque village as soon as it was discovered. The choice of villa was testimony to Yvonne's immaculate taste and that, in letting her borrow the villa, Yvonne knew what she was doing.
In broken English, the driver offered to help Karen with her belongings and his wife emerged from the villa. Karen stepped forward to be effusively greeted and treated as the honoured guest who was a friend of Yvonne and, as such, was treated to a guided tour of the villa. The villa combined what was best in the bare but functional and all the more attractive for it. The decorations were all the more beautiful in being set against the white paintwork and the exquisite tiled floors. The kitchen was a little home from home, which Karen took in at a glance and her bedroom commanded a perfect view of the bay that was therapy in itself. Out from a side door, lay the terrace and, stepped down the slope down the cliff lay the swimming pool at the back.
"But how do I get out and about? I can surely not ask your husband to drive me around. That would not be fair," Karen protested at the one flaw in the paradise that was being offered to her.
Smiling, the woman pointed out the little white Fiat runabout at the side of the house. Left hand drive though it was, if Yvonne can get herself around, then she can too. That offered her freedom to go where she wanted to go.
While she had steeped herself in the present for the first time in her life, she noticed that she was on her own. There was utter peace around her as she sat out on the terrace and basked in the heat. As time went on, she felt her skin start to feel warm and she realized that this was the first sign of incipient sunburn. She made her way inside to the deliciously cool interior and slipped off her shoes. Instantly, her feet felt deliciously cool to the touch and the still latent industrious side of her set to work to unpack her case, hang her clothes up in the built in wardrobe with slatted doors. She slipped her mobile into a desk drawer and clicked it off. She noticed with only faint surprise that this was the first time since she had bought a mobile that she felt safe in disconnecting herself from the world. A faint memory made her smile of Nikki's stern face telling her on no account to worry about what was happening to her prison or she would play hell with her. She smiled affectionately as only Nikki could talk to her that way. Pride of place on her little bedside table, she placed her book, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ready for some night time reading. She applied sun tan lotion to her face and her bare arms so that she would not become the archetypal English tourist to burn up red on the second day.
Karen strolled casually down the open staircase to the kitchen and helped herself to a bottle of wine from the well-stocked fridge. She inserted the corkscrew and levered off the cork. She poured herself a large glass of wine and she sat out on the terrace in the glorious sunshine and silently drank a toast to absent friends. She felt at peace with herself as everyone who mattered knew where she was and she was under long distance Atkins protection. That was good enough for her.