24. Twenty-Four

24

PAST

DECEMBER, 10 YEARS AGO

I really wish I’d asked Dad to drive me to the airport. Or anyone else, other than Martin Baxter, who drives so slowly and methodically I’m pretty sure even Maisie Poole would have overtaken him if she’d had the misfortune to be stuck behind him on the winding country road he chooses to take us on.

“I thought you said it would be quicker to take the motorway,” I say anxiously, almost squirming in my seat as Martin slows down to take a not-particularly tight corner. “It’s going to take forever at this rate.”

“More haste, less speed,” replies Martin soothingly. “Slow and steady wins the race.”

I grit my teeth in frustration, realizing that Martin’s exactly the kind of person who repeats platitudes like “Everything happens for a reason,” thinking they’re being profound.

He’s also, however, my only chance of finding Elliot right now — assuming Sandra wasn’t lying, and he really did leave for the airport this morning — so I bite my tongue and try to focus on listing all the different scenarios in which Elliot would just up and leave the country on a different flight to the one we’d planned, and without bothering to tell me.

The problem is, there are none.

There are literally no scenarios in which Elliot — the man I was willing to change my entire life to be with — would fly back to America and leave me behind.

Are there?

“So, um, how well do you know this Elliot chap, then?” says Martin, awkwardly drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as we wait for a traffic light to change. “It’s just been a couple of weeks, hasn’t it?”

“Three,” I mutter reluctantly, knowing where he’s going with this, and not particularly wanting to hear it. “It’s been three weeks. But it’s … it feels like longer, with Elliot. It feels like we’ve always known each other.”

Just not well enough for him to tell me he was leaving, obviously.

The unspoken thought hangs in the air above us, and I stare at the road ahead of us, grateful that Martin’s too polite to voice it either.

But the thought is there, all the same; desperate to be acknowledged. It whispers traitorously in my ear that three weeks is a pitifully short amount of time; not nearly long enough to really know someone, and certainly not long enough to love them.

And yet, Elliot did say he loved me. He said it first. He wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it. Why would he say it if he didn’t mean it?

The thoughts torture me all the way to the airport, getting progressively harder to ignore the closer we get. Just before we set off, I borrowed Martin’s phone and looked up today’s departures, so I know there’s only one flight to the U.S. this morning, which Elliot could conceivably be on. It’s going to New York, rather than to Florida, and it’s due to take off in less than an hour, so if it’s the one Elliot’s planning to take, we don’t have any time to lose. I have to get there before the flight takes off. I have to find out if he’s on it. And if he is, well … well, I guess I’ll have to figure that out if it happens. Because, God knows, it’s making absolutely no sense to me right now.

“Can’t we go any faster?” I blurt out at last, my eyes on the speedometer of Martin’s car, which is hovering just above 40mph. “Isn’t this is a 60 zone?”

“The speed limit is a limit , Holly,” says Martin pompously. “Not a target. Just because we can drive at 60, it doesn’t mean it would be safe. And you want to stay safe, don’t you?”

“I suppose,” I reply reluctantly, thinking that just a little bit of danger wouldn’t go amiss here. Not if it meant getting to the airport before Elliot can get onto that flight. But Martin Baxter would very obviously be the wrong person to voice that thought to, so there’s nothing I can do but wait it out, as he drives agonizingly slowly the rest of the way there.

“I must say,” he begins, clearing his throat importantly as we finally pull into the airport’s giant car park. “I was surprised to hear you were going off to America, Holly. It’s so unlike you.”

“It’s just for Christmas,” I reply, barely listening to him as I press my foot to the floor of the car, willing it to go faster. “It’s not a big deal. People go on trips all the time.”

“Oh, I know,” Martin agrees. “I know they do. You don’t, though. I don’t think I remember you ever taking in a trip, in all the time I’ve known you. You’ve always just been there, behind the counter at the bookstore. I always thought you were too sensible to go rushing off to the other side of the world.”

He steals a quick look at me out of the corner of his eye; which is very daring of him, really, because he’s talked a lot on the way here about the importance of keeping your eyes on the road.

“I really wish people would stop saying that about me,” I say sharply. “Sorry, Martin,” I add quickly, seeing the look on his face. “I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just frustrating, that’s all: being constantly told what kind of person I am, and how ‘sensible’ I am. What if I don’t want to be sensible? What if I want to take a risk now and then? What if I can’t, because everyone’s got me neatly pegged into this ‘Sensible Holly’ box, and it’s impossible to break out of it?”

There’s a silence as Martin tries to work out what to say to this; which is unsurprising, really, because I think this is possibly the longest conversation I’ve had with him in the entire time I’ve known him.

“Well, I think you’re definitely breaking out of your box now,” he says mildly. “I think this definitely counts as a risk. I just hope it works out for you, Holly. I really do.”

“Thanks,” I reply, reaching to unbuckle my seat belt, as the car finally comes to a stop outside the terminal. “I hope so too.”

Then, before he can answer, I open the door and throw myself out and onto the pavement, almost falling over in my haste to get through the airport’s revolving glass door.

“I’ll just wait here for you, will I?” I hear Martin shout, as the door closes behind me. But it’s too late to reply. Because now I’m pushing my way through the crowd of happy holiday makers until I find the information board, scanning it frantically until I find the New York flight.

NOW BOARDING , says the flashing sign next to it. PROCEED TO GATE.

But, of course, I can’t proceed to the gate without a ticket. I can’t even get close to the gate without passing through security first: an apt reminder that all of those scenes in movies where the guy chases the girl through the airport, finally catching up with her to declare his undying love just as she’s about to board the plane, are a big, fat, lie.

There’s no romantic reunion waiting for me and Elliot in this airport. There isn’t even a satisfyingly dramatic scene in which I catch up to him and we have some tearful conversation about why he’s leaving me behind; if, in fact, he even is leaving me behind, because I don’t even know that yet. He might not even be on this flight. I could be doing all of this for nothing.

I hope he’s not on this flight. I hope I’m doing all of this for nothing, and I’m going to go home and find him waiting for him, with some totally rational explanation for Sandra’s insistence that he’d left for the airport this morning.

But this isn’t a Hallmark movie, which means there’s no guarantee of a happy ending. Instead, there’s just a frantic dash through the Christmas holiday crowds, past shops and restaurants all blasting out cheerful holiday tunes, followed by a terse, and ultimately fruitless conversation with a stern-faced woman at security, who — somewhat predictably — explains that she can’t let me through to the gate without a boarding pass.

Which I don’t have; and won’t have until tomorrow, when our actual flight was supposed to take off.

“You could buy a ticket,” the security guard suggests, softening slightly when she realizes I’m about to burst into tears. “If you’re really that desperate to get through.”

“I can’t,” I reply, sniffing miserably. “I don’t have my passport with me. And there’s not enough time.”

The woman shrugs, clearly wondering why she’s the one who got landed with this wild-eyed, tangle-haired woman who seems to think she’s in that episode of Friends where Ross gets to the airport just slightly too late. Later, it will occur to me that I could have asked her to send someone to find Elliot for me at the gate; or to put out an announcement over the loudspeaker. “ Would Mr. Elliot Sinclair, possibly traveling to New York, please return to the security gate, where his girlfriend is waiting to find out what the hell is going on here? ” Or something like that, anyway.

Right now, though, all I can do is walk back to the nearest information board, my shoulders slumped under the weight of my own misery.

DEPARTED , Elliot’s flight now reads: one little word that has just casually changed my life and broken my heart into the bargain.

I stare at it for a little longer, as if the plane might suddenly change its mind and turn back, then, when it doesn’t, I wander back over to the security gate, just in case Elliot changed his mind, and is, even now, pushing through the crowds, calling out my name.

That could happen, right?

Right ?

But no. Of course it couldn’t. Because the longer I stand there, watching people come and go, all of them having the absolute audacity to not be him , the clearer it becomes.

It’s too late.

For reasons unknown, it’s looking increasingly likely that the man who told me he loved me just two short days ago, has boarded a flight and flown to America, without so much as a backwards glance.

Elliot’s gone.

And this has just become the second worst Christmas of my life.