I woke with a whopping great snort to a pitch-black hotel room and a rapping at my door. Did I oversleep? Had I missed my flight? Was I about to be murdered? At least the murderer was polite enough to knock, especially since apparently I’d been too hot at some point in the night and thrown off my PJ bottoms. Where the hell were they?
Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock. ‘Olivia?’ someone hissed.
Not wanting to show off my own full moon, I hauled myself from the bed and wrapped the sheet around my lower half like a meringue wedding dress skirt, and shuffled towards the door. Maybe it was surprise room service. Mmm, I could definitely eat a Philly cheese-steak right now . . .
‘Who is it?’ I yawned as I opened the door, negating the point in asking.
Abigail stood there, twitching about like a baby deer, wrapped in a dressing gown and an air of distress.
‘Abi, hello . . . ’ I peered past her and down the deserted corridor. ‘You didn’t bring any room service with you, did you?’
‘No,’ she said in an almost whisper. ‘Did you order some? Do you want me to go and check for you?’
‘No, don’t worry about it. What’s up? Isn’t it the middle of the night?’
‘It’s seven a.m. My boyfriend’s still up at home watching weather reports because the snow is really bad in England, and he just called me because look.’ Abigail held her phone up to my face, and I squinted in the bright light. When I could focus a big red word jumped out at me. CANCELLED.
Abigail scuttled past me and into my room, tapping away at her phone.
I closed my door and followed her back inside, pushing yesterday’s knickers towards the edge of the room with my foot. ‘Cancelled? Our flight? That’s a pain. We’ll squeeze onto the next one, I’m sure. At least you’ll get to see New York in some proper, thick snow.’ I wondered if it would be unprofessional to climb back into bed with Abigail still in the room. Given my business-up-top, party-down-below state of undress, I concluded that yes: it would be unprofessional, and a touch sex-pesty.
‘No, here’s not the problem.’ Abigail hurled open the curtains to show nothing more than some flittery-fluttery snowflakes that wouldn’t look out of place at a Disneyland Christmas. ‘It’s the UK, it’s snowbound.’
‘Well that’s impossible. This is England we’re talking about, not Alaska. Maybe Scotland and the north, maybe London, are actually snowbound, but if all else fails I’m sure the south-west will be clear enough and I think some flights go from New York into Bristol. But it’ll be fine, I bet we’ll just get on the next flight. Now why don’t we meet at breakfast in half an hour or so and we’ll come up with a game plan . . . ’ I led Abigail towards the door, but she whipped back around at the last minute and my toga-skirt wobbled precariously.
‘I don’t know, my boyfriend said it’s all over the country – he said over fifty per cent of flights are cancelled.’
Over fifty per cent?
I felt like Kate letting go of Leo after the Titanic sank. Only Leo was my holiday leave and I was stuck with my workmates rather than on my own, like lucky Kate. An image of myself floated into my mind: coming in through my door, kicking off my shoes, dumping my suitcase in the hall to be unpacked a few days later and not having to hear or see any workmates for two peaceful weeks. And then it floated away, into the dark, drifting like a snowflake.
I held back a sigh. As the acting-manager, people expected me to have all the answers and come up with all the solutions and figure it all out, and as tired as I was it looked like that still had to be on me for a bit longer than expected. ‘OK, well . . . let me get dressed and then we’ll round up the troops and find out exactly what’s going on. From someone at BA, not from your boyfriend.’
I gently shoved Abigail out of my room and then flopped down on the bed, a sense of foreboding creeping over me. If I couldn’t get everybody home for Christmas, would that mean we’d have to spend it together? I couldn’t organise Christmas. I didn’t know how – walking in a winter wonderland was foreign to me. And I didn’t have the strength, or energy, to do it for the people I’d been counting down the days to have distance from. All I wanted for Christmas was to be home, alone.