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Beth was a hopeless international flier. Time dislocation wrought weeks of bad sleep long afterwards. Her gastric and respiratory health usually deteriorated as well. She thought it might be something to do with the air con on long haul flights. It was why she and Luc had stuck to Europe for the majority of their trips.
She’d tried different approaches – sleep medication, the anti-jet-lag diet and knocking herself out by drinking copious Tanqueray-and-tonics to try and blindside her body clock. None of them worked, and she always woke in the early hours feeling oddly removed. Maybe as that feeling had attended her since opening her eyes in hospital, she would feel normal when she got to LA. She doubted it, particularly as her very reason for flying there was so surreal.
She wondered if the person who had emailed her really expected her to rise to the bait. Was it merely a piece of amusement for them? She envisaged being stood up at the Crescent Bay Oyster Shack. But there was no way she could live with herself if she didn’t at least attempt to make contact with the person who called himself or herself Allegro.
She thought of Jody waving her off after he’d dropped her in departures and the uneasiness on his face as she’d left. It was the same expression he’d had when she’d arrived home with her hair shorn. He still didn’t believe she was thinking straight. Had brain trauma impaired her rational thought and left her unstable? Her old logical self wouldn’t have been on this flight. She’d concealed her reasons for the trip from him because she’d known exactly what he’d say. Was this what Luc used to do – running hard to forget who he was?
The stewardess arrived at her aisle seat. Thankfully, the middle one was unoccupied, so she had plenty of elbow room. A woman in her sixties slept soundly at the window. Beth had thought she was going to chat to her the whole way, but her grunting snooze started before take-off. Three hours later, she still hadn’t woken. Beth felt slightly jealous.
The stewardess looked over to Beth’s companion and thought better of it. “Refreshment?” she softly asked.
“Just a soda water.”
The stewardess handed her a can and a fresh cup full of ice, and moved to the row behind her.
Beth had quickly researched flying when pregnant online and discovered that there were no major disadvantages, unless she had blood pressure issues. Her morning sickness might make the trip even more uncomfortable than usual. She was frequently nauseous on flights. Perhaps one would cancel the other out – or, more likely, join forces.
Should she really be subjecting her baby to more upheaval? It had already been exposed to enough traumas, and she dreaded that the crash, her hospitalisation and the suspended sense of bereavement she felt had already had a deep-seated effect on the fragile life inside her. But the truth was, she felt as disconnected from the child as she did from everything else. She hoped that would change soon.
She didn’t want to countenance the idea that a new life would replace Luc’s, but considered how its arrival would shift the spotlight from her. She wanted that more than anything else. But was it fair to give a person a life that could be wrenched away – in a manner she could already envisage?
If the baby arrived safely, she knew she’d be asking herself the same question thousands of times in the future. But life would throw up plenty of other obstacles and dangers from the moment it left her womb. She couldn’t safeguard against any of those, and that wouldn’t be an argument for not going through with the pregnancy.
When would be the right time to tell them? Luc’s parents had kept the condition from him until he’d been eleven years old. He’d resented them for that, said he felt he would have handled it better had they sat him down when he’d been a much younger child. That he would have been more receptive to the revelation when he didn’t fully understand it. If he’d grown with the knowledge, Luc said he would have been better equipped to gradually accept it.
As it was, his mother had dropped the bomb just after his father had died. Barely had he got to grips with the concept of losing him when he was told he might suffer the same protracted agony he’d witnessed first-hand.
But Beth felt like she already understood why she’d waited. When was the best time to present a ticking clock, to remove innocence from your child like that? Would she persuade them to take the test when they were eighteen? Not knowing had acted like a spur with Luc. He’d achieved so much in his life because of the potential restraint that had been put on it.
She imagined herself sitting with her son, his arms folded. Sitting with her daughter, Beth’s hand on hers. Whoever was waiting to fill that moment, she couldn’t allow their father to become obscure to them – or her. She wanted to be able to tell them everything about who he was, and until he’d whispered things she didn’t understand at the roadside, she thought she could. Now Beth had questions she had to answer.
She kept her hands where they were, palms resting gently on her stomach, and slowly breathed the cooled, processed air in through her nostrils. Sickness lurked on the fringes of sleep, so she kept her eyes on the screen in front of her and watched the plane’s progress across the Atlantic.
Then it struck her. She’d been so seduced by the idea of escape and chasing one word, so misdirected by packing and booking the flights, she hadn’t stopped to consider how much of a coincidence it was that the place they’d asked to meet her happened to be where Jody had his condo.
Beth remembered the phone call she’d received immediately after Rae had rung her in the car and the person hanging up. Was she being monitored? After all the Facebook subterfuge, she wondered if they were they capable of accessing the details of Jody’s timeshare via his computer.
Whoever had arranged the meeting had certainly made it very easy for her to be lured from the UK.
