When We Land
In the Caribbean for whatever reason, I promise I will never clap. I'll roll my eyes with you at the people who do.
Harry hated it when his children cried in public – he hated it when they cried at all, of course – but he particularly hated public tantrums. He could feel the glare of people as they walked past, judging his parenting skills – it was even worse when he was on his own without Nikki, they may as well have shouted out "Look, it's Daddy time, with the hopeless Dad who usually leaves the parenting to his wife.". He wasn't a hopeless Dad (at least, he hoped not) and he most definitely did not leave all the parenting to his wife – he knew Abby's favourite food, colour and animal, even though they changed weekly – he helped with Peter's ridiculously irregular sleeping patterns and all the other crap.
To Harry, the only thing worse than a child crying in a public place, was a child crying on an airplane.
He'd always looked sympathetically at the poor parent who had to sit there, trying to get the little brat to shut up, watching as they turned redder and redder out of embarrassment, as more passengers began glaring at them.
He never thought he'd be the one getting glared at.
Peter had stayed awake for the whole flight, demanding that his Daddy entertained him and watched movies with him – as there was only one Disney film to watch, this soon became monotonous, and Harry eventually mastered the technique of sneakily watching a film on his own screen out of the corner of his eye. He kept snatching glances at a sleeping Nikki, who was sat in the other aisle seat on their row of four, with Abby curled up sleeping across her lap. He wanted to demand that they swap the children around, so he could sit next to the nice, peaceful one.
Harry breathed a sigh of relief as Peter's head slowly began droop, until eventually he was sleeping. His bliss didn't last for long, though; he groaned as he noticed that they only had 5 minutes until they began their descent into Johannesburg – there was no way his son would sleep through the landing.
Sure enough, 10 minutes later, Harry found himself attempting various methods of subduing Peter's screams. He tried shoving a dummy in his mouth (even though, technically, Nikki was trying to wean him off them); he had an incredibly animated conversation with Mr Fluff Bear; he attempted bouncing him up and down on his knee; and, rather reluctantly, he even resorted to his silly face routine. In public.
The plane dropped lower and lower, and at the point where the pressure caused his ears to pop, Peter somehow managed to crank up the volume even further. Harry looked towards Nikki, pleading with her to take him – she handed him another dummy to replace the one that Peter had thrown far away, and tried to look as sympathetic as possible. As Harry tried putting the new dummy into his son's mouth, the lid of the cheap bottle, which they'd bought at the airport, fell off in the scuffle. Sticky juice spilt all over Peter. Harry cursed himself for having forgotten the trusty Tommee Tippee cup at home.
As he felt the wheels touch down onto the tarmac, Harry couldn't imagine his situation being any worse. Then there was applause. People were bloody clapping. He looked towards Nikki, who, predictably, was sat with both hands firmly on either hand rest, resisting the urge to shout for everyone to shut up. He smiled.
Then Peter wailed.