you’ll bounce.’
She wanted to tell him he was right, she was indestructible, because she’d had to be. But she didn’t feel indestructible. And she had lost the ability to talk, every single muscle and sinew in her jaw and neck having atrophied.
‘I need a pill,’ she finally managed to squeak. ‘Please.’ The begging would have embarrassed her, but in the grand apocalyptic scheme of things, having Luke smirk at her while she died didn’t seem like such a big deal any more.
‘Is everything OK, Ms Best?’
Halle prised open an eyelid to find the stewardess looking down at their joined hands with a benevolent smile.
‘I’m fine.’ Her whole body shuddered like an alcoholic recovering from an all-night bender. The stewardess didn’t look convinced. ‘If I could just …’
‘For Chrissake, Hal.’ Luke’s grip on her hand tightened. ‘You’re freaking out. There’s no shame in admitting it. Loads of people don’t like flying.’
‘I a-a-am not freaking out.’ She never freaked out. She happened to be a champion coper—even if her chattering teeth weren’t helping to emphasise the point.
‘Let go of the chair,’ he ordered. ‘You’re about to break your fingernails.’
‘If I let go, I’ll fall.’ The plaintive plea sounded childish, even to her.
‘You’re strapped in, Hal. You’re not going anywhere.’
‘You won’t fall, Ms Best. This is an Airbus 380, the newest and best-designed plane in our fleet.’ The stewardess’s soothing tone managed to be even more annoying than Luke’s condescension.
‘You don’t know that,’ she whimpered.
Luke’s thumb caressed the web of flesh between her thumb and forefinger. ‘I do. Now let go, I’ve got you.’ He massaged into the pressure point. And her fingers released instinctively.
He threaded his fingers through hers and held on to her, just as he’d promised. ‘See, you didn’t fall.’
She rolled her head towards him, which wasn’t easy given that the sinews in her neck had about as much give in them as steel suspension cables. And managed a small nod.
‘Now breathe,’ he commanded.
Air swelled into her lungs and gushed out as the plane’s nose dipped to level off to their cruising altitude.
‘That’s it, keep doing what you’re doing,’ he prompted.
She concentrated on taking deep, even breaths, willing her lungs to cooperate. But continued to cling to his hand. The seat-belt sign pinged off and the purser’s reassuring voice droned on about their cruising altitude and flight path. Her gaze drifted to the fluffed cloudscape floating beneath them outside the window. The panic settled to purr under her breastbone, like a sleeping tiger ready to snarl at the first sign of danger, but subdued enough not to bite off her head at the slightest bump.
Luke squeezed her hand. ‘You OK?’
‘Yes,’ she croaked, her throat sore as her neck muscles relaxed.
‘You sure? You still look pretty spooked.’ He searched her face.
She took another careful breath, sighed when it didn’t hurt. ‘The take-off’s always the worse bit. I’ll be OK now.’ The Xanax must have finally kicked in, because she was starting to feel pleasantly numb.
Way to go, Xanax, only twenty minutes late to the party.
Luckily, Luke didn’t call her on her euphoric state, because she wasn’t quite ready to give him back his hand.
‘You look terrible,’ he said.
Way to go, Luke. You sure know how to make a girl feel good about herself.
‘I’ll look a lot better once I’m sure we aren’t going to get struck by lightning, hit a freak snowstorm, get hijacked or generally encounter anything that might cause us to go down in flames en route.’ The burst of verbal diarrhoea came naturally as the extreme panic downgraded to a bogstandard bout of nervous tension.
Nervous tension was doable. She knew how to handle that. She even knew how to use it to her advantage, because she’d had a lot of practice. Her nerves were an old and trusted friend.
The show’s first executive producer had once told her that her reaction to stress was the secret of her success, because the sharp, perky motormouthed quips she used to cope entertained while also making her totally relatable. Embracing the horrendous stage fright before every taping had become a key part of her ‘Everywoman appeal’.
‘Just so you know, if any of that stuff happens,’ she added, on a roll as her body sank into the seat, ‘I intend to arm-wrestle you for the Xanax. You have been warned.’
‘If any of that stuff happens,’ Luke replied drily, ‘you’re gonna need to be Dwayne Johnson to get to them, because I plan to bolt the lot.’
She laughed, the sound only slightly manic. And released his hand.
He flexed his fingers, probably checking for fractures, and she noticed the dark indents where her nails had dug into his skin.
‘I’ll keep these just in case.’ He flipped the bottle and caught it one-handed. ‘No more legal highs for you. Unless the slaphead executive over there turns out to be a hijacker.’ He nodded at the bald businessman, who had already resumed typing on his laptop. ‘In which case, let the arm-wrestling begin.’
He lifted his bum to shove the bottle of Xanax into the front pocket of his jeans, drawing her fuzzy gaze to his lap. The worn, comfortable denim cupped him, the metal studs of his button fly visible where the placket stretched over his groin. And a question from over twenty years ago popped into her head.
I wonder if he remembered to wear his underwear today?
Her pulse spiked and warmth settled into her lower body as she allowed her mind to drift into the safe, comforting fog of memory.
She could smell dust and varnish and the faint whiff of boiled cabbage as she stood in the wings of the school hall’s stage, waiting to do her piano solo for the Year Ten end-of-term recital.
Her school shoes scraped from side to side on the scuffed floorboards, her lungs sawing in and out. Clammy sweat trickled between her shoulder blades as she undulated the fingers of her right hand, miming the opening movement of the piece she’d practised for hours the previous afternoon. It had to be perfect, or her mum and dad might start questioning the cost of her weekly piano lessons. Then they would surely ring her piano teacher, Ms Havilland, to ask what was going on. And Ms Havilland would tell them their daughter had stopped coming to lessons months ago, and then her mum and dad would know she’d been pocketing the five-pound lesson fee to sneak off and hang out with Luke at the precinct.
And if that happened, her life would be over, because they would ground her forever and she’d never be able to see Luke again.
So, basically, her whole entire life was balancing on the edge of a precipice, ready to plunge into the abyss at the sound of a single bum note in five minutes’ time.
Wiry forearms banded round her waist and a calloused palm captured her gasp as her captor hefted her back into the secretive darkness backstage.
The scent of Lifebuoy soap and the sweet whiff of marijuana had the blast of recognition careering through her and all thoughts of Beethoven, bum notes and imminent disaster shot out of her head on a wild rush of adrenaline and adoration.
It’s Luke. Luke’s here. Luke will make everything