Page 12 of Here One Moment

It would have been polite for the flight deck to keep her in the loop, seeing as she was the one responsible for keeping control of an increasingly agitated cabin, but she heard nothing for ages, while the baby screamed like a broken car alarm and tempers simmered, bubbled, and boiled over.

The reason was finally revealed to be a broken seat belt in the cockpit. They had to wait for someone to fly in from Sydney because Hobart has no engineer on-site. If the passengers had learned that, they would have been offering to fix it themselves. No doubt the square-jawed guy Anders dubbed “Superhero” could have fixed it with his eyes closed.

“He’ll trek through the mountains to save us before we turn to cannibalism,” he’d whispered as they both watched the guy march down the aisle. Allegra elbowed Anders. He didn’t actually use the words “plane crash,” but he sure did imply them.

Allegra could have fixed the belt. She’s handy. Sadly, that’s not the way safety protocols work. She was once on a flight where they had to wait an hour for an engineer to fix a broken overhead bin, which he did with a strip of masking tape. Took him three seconds, tearing it off with his teeth while asking her out for a drink.

She washes her hands and studies her face in the mirror, then gets that disconcerting but not unpleasant out-of-body feeling she’s been experiencing since she was seven. She would look at herself in the bathroom mirror and float free of her body for a few seconds. “I left my body!” she told her mother. “Did you, beta?” said her mother. “That’s nice.”

“Do you know how insanely beautiful you are?” said the most recent man with whom she’d had sex (two weeks ago now, and never again, absolutely not, done with that) as he ran a fingertip back and forth across her collarbone.

“You’re done with him, Allegra,” she whispers to her reflection. “Done.”

He’s like a junk food addiction: delicious at first, then regrettable.

Insanely beautiful.

I mean, that’s a nice compliment.

Nope. Stop it.

People comment on her beauty often enough that it would be disingenuous not to believe she’s attractive, but high school burns forever. Only tall, skinny blond girls were considered beautiful back then, the girls who, ironically, came back from summer holidays with tans that were exclaimed over and complimented, tans that made their skin nearly as dark as Allegra’s, but her brown was not the right brown. Even Allegra’s own mother would say, “Don’t go out in the sun, Allegra, you’ll get too dark.” Her mum wouldn’t say that now. She’s evolved, like everyone.

She thinks of Sara Perkins in Year 8, saying, “Imagine how beautiful Allegra would be if she wasn’t, you know…” Meaningful jerk of her head. She said this in front of Allegra. She thought it was a compliment, or at least not an insult. Allegra wonders if Sara Perkins ever wakes up in a cold sweat thinking, “Oh, God, did I really say that?” You really did, Sara Perkins, you really did.

Allegra finds Panadol in her bag, palms two tablets into her mouth, swallows them without water (life skill), and reapplies her lipstick. She only wears makeup at work. She is “required” to wear a “minimum” of foundation, eye shadow, and lipstick. Male flight attendants like Anders must only be clean-shaven with their hair cut above the collar, which is ironic because Anders taught Allegra everything she knows about makeup. He gave tutorials when they trained together in Melbourne. Allegra laughs each time she remembers him, makeup brush poised, shaking his head sorrowfully and saying, “I can’t believe you girls don’t know how to contour.”

She will never forget the pure exhilaration she felt the day she got her wings. Her dream job. Not her mother’s dream job for her. She’d always wanted Allegra to be a dentist, a strangely specific career choice, seemingly based only on Allegra’s excellent toothbrushing as a child. Allegra’s dad is happy for her—he loves the perk of free standby flights for family members. Thankfully, her brother got the medical degree, so they can show off about Taj to the grandparents, while Allegra makes them seem “interesting.” She was flying the day after she completed Ground School. Walking through the airport that first morning she’d felt glamorous and alive. All these years later she still feels lucky and secretly sorry for her friends in nine-to-five office jobs. No one expects them to have interesting anecdotes about their work (and they sure don’t), but people love to hear about Allegra’s work as a flight attendant.

People always want to know if she’s had the oxygen masks drop, and Allegra enjoys telling them about the one time she was working when they lost cabin pressure and the masks dropped, and she saw the horrified realization hit her passengers that maybe they should have listened during all the safety demonstrations they’d been ignoring. She also once had a pregnant woman’s water break. Who knew there was that much amniotic fluid sloshing around in every “baby bump”?! Allegra had carefully studied the obstetrician’s letter that today’s hugely pregnant passenger handed over as she boarded. “I’m only twenty-five weeks,” the woman sighed, “I just look gigantic.”

Kim once had two passengers get into a brawl over the reclining of a seat—fists flying, yelling, police, viral video—but Anders trumps them all because he had a passenger die last year. It might even have been on this same leg. The man’s poor wife was sitting right next to him. Thought he was napping. Anders said the man was old, but not, you know, Dumbledore old. Allegra has been keeping a careful eye on the ancient couple on this flight. They’re retired doctors, don’t require wheelchairs, their only walking aids are walking sticks, and they’re both wearing fancy Apple Watches, which is endearing. She wants them delivered to Sydney alive and well.

She straightens her back, smacks her lipsticked lips together, and watches her face in the mirror go into work mode: professional, polite, do not fuck with me.

Please, universe, don’t let these pinging call buttons mean a death or a brawl or a baby. I’m too crampy. Also, it’s fun telling horror work stories after the fact, not so much when they’re actually happening.

As soon as she leaves the lavatory, she checks the Flight Attendant Panel: a computerized screen showing her the exact location of the active call buttons. Three in the first two rows of economy. Another one pings as she watches. Something is going on. She knows Anders is packing up the back galley, but why isn’t eager-beaver Ellie dealing with these? As Ellie would well know, they’re meant to monitor the cabin and answer call buttons as fast as possible.

Kim is busy cosseting the business-class passengers with salted caramel chocolate balls and extravagant compliments about someone’s earrings.

“Anything I should know about?” Allegra asks her. The curtain is drawn, so they can’t see what’s going on in economy.

“What should I know about?” Kim is oblivious. Of course she is.

A passenger holds up a wineglass. “Kim, could I trouble you for a top-up?”

“No problem, Mrs. Lee!” Kim beams. “Back in a flash.”

Allegra grits her teeth, leaves business class to Kim. She pulls back the curtain and surveys the main cabin. She can’t immediately see anything untoward. People are up in the aisle as you would expect at this time: heading to the lavatory, opening overhead bins. There is, however, a subtle change in the atmosphere. Nothing dramatic, but something. A low hum of voices. Not agitated as such, but more conversation going on than you would normally expect.

Right. Start at the front with the chatty husband and wife who told Allegra all about their Tasmanian holiday in maybe a little more detail than she needed during the delay. She knows their names because they introduced themselves so enthusiastically, as if they expected they’d all be staying in touch after this day: Sue and Max O’Sullivan.

She smiles as she leans over to turn off Max’s call light. “What can I do for you, Mr. O’Sullivan?”

“There’s a lady we think might be upsetting people.” Sue answers on her husband’s behalf. She points backward over her shoulder, as though discreetly pointing out someone behind her at a party. “Not us! We’re not upset. We’re perfectly fine.”

“She’s predicting deaths,” explains Max.

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