Helen’s heels clip-clopped across the polished surface of the airport terminal’s floor, her small case trundling along behind her, the wheels skipping over every chip in the tiles. She passed shop after shop: fashion accessories, books, electronics. It had always struck her as bizarre how airports were like small town centres with no permanent residents. Everyone was just passing through. A nice metaphor for life, she thought.
She thumbed the passport in her jacket pocket, thankful — not for the first time — that she’d managed to secure her new identity before passport and identity restrictions in her new home country had been tightened. She was sure it wouldn’t be foolproof; Jack would find a way if he wanted to. The fact that it was a genuine passport meant there’d be a paper trail, but she’d made sure there was no link between her old identity and her new one.
She’d kept her forename — that was important to her. Getting used to an entirely new name would’ve been too risky, especially if she’d not responded to it or — worse — had spun round whenever someone said the word ‘Helen’.
She backtracked slightly and wandered into the bookshop, stopping to look at that week’s top ten fiction bestsellers. It was the usual depressing mix of chick-lit and fantasy, with the odd promising title thrown in. She picked up one called The Stones of Petreus, a novel about a man who fakes his own death and ends up roaming the world, becoming embroiled in a criminal conspiracy. It wasn’t her usual style of book, but looked well-written, so she took it to the counter and bought it, before heading back into the main departures lounge and sitting on a cold metal bench.
People-watching had always been a hobby of hers. She liked to try and guess who people were, what they did for a living, where they were going. The holidaymakers were always pretty clear: the t-shirts, shorts and sandals in October gave it away. So too were the business passengers, suited and booted with laptops out, or mumbling into their mobile phones. But it was the others who interested her. The people who were flying out for funerals, to visit sick relatives, to research books, to build a school in Ghana. She was one of those too, she supposed. This was certainly no holiday for her.
She looked up at the departures board and scanned down to find her flight number. It was still showing nothing, but the flight four slots before hers had started to board, so it wouldn’t be long. She shuffled to get comfortable and opened the first page of the book.