Page 5 of Harper's Holiday Romance
After Billie planted the seed in my head that the plane food would be horrendous, we spent the next thirty minutes purchasing enough food to feed all three-hundred-plus passengers on the plane.
“Expect to eat curry for breakfast,” she said. The thought made my stomach shrivel. Indian was my least favourite cuisine because my spice tolerance was abysmal. By the time I was done adjusting my order at an Indian restaurant, it was no longer Indian food. It essentially became pureed baby food with a side of chips and an extra garlic naan. The chances of me getting garlic naan on a plane were slim. The last time I went on holiday I received a stale bun and a hard block of butter; with all the will in the world there was no bringing the bread back to life.
Was it normal to spend a week’s food budget on food for a ten-hour flight? Probably not, but every shop I went into offered me something different until I ended up with too much.
“I wish I’d seen the sushi first. Do you think they’ll let me return this sandwich?” I asked. The boring cheese sandwich I’d planned to eat with crisps seemed extremely lacklustre after seeing a man bring out some freshly prepped sushi.
“I think it’s probably frowned upon to return food,” Sarah said.
She had a point, maybe embarrassing too. I decided against it.
Our gate was the furthest away from civilisation. Our plane could’ve been forty-five miles away at Heathrow Airport with how long it took us to get there. We made use of the travelators; the flat escalator solution was a clever idea. I almost tripped twice coming off the other end, but that was to be expected.
“Did you bring the first aid kit?” Billie asked Sarah.
“Yes. I specifically packed blister plasters, normal plasters, ibuprofen, sickness tablets, bite cream, and some antiseptic wipes.”
“What for? Are you hurt?” I turned to look at Billie. She looked completely unharmed.
“It’s for you,” she disclosed.
“Oh, but I’m okay.”
“Hmm.” Billie laughed.
“For now,” Sarah quipped.
“You guy’s hate me, don’t you?” I sulked.
“As if! We love your clumsy little ass.” Billie reached her arm around my shoulder, barely, she was at least three inches shorter, but it was a nice gesture.
“I am clumsy, so clumsy.” I carefully watched the escalator come to an end, and it took all the concentration I could muster to step off it like a normal human being, whilst Billie and Sarah practically skipped off and on to the next one.
The best thing about traveling in a group of three was not having to sit next to a complete stranger for ten hours. The seats in economy were quite intimate. Nobody would dream of climbing into bed with a complete stranger—who they didn’t find attractive—and going to sleep, but we do it sat upright on a plane. It was odd.Unfortunately, I was too poor to fly first class and too money conscious to pay double for premium.
My one prerequisite was the window seat. It was a non-negotiable condition any travel companion had to surrender to me. I was aware it made me sound like a diva, but I had a genuine dislike for the aisle seat. I felt less claustrophobic in the window seat, and if the plane was to take a nosedive into the unknown, I wanted to see what fate lay beneath me.
“Remember on the last holiday when you got a ‘windowless’ window seat,” Billie taunted.
“Yes, I do remember. It was traumatic.”
Yes, believe it or not, not every window seat has a window. As an obsessive window seat passenger, it gave me a slight panic attack. It took three glasses of wine and a large can of Pringles to calm my nerves.
My suitcase was small enough to be permitted as hand luggage, so I forced it up into one of the overhead bins. When we took a seat, the captain informed us there would likely be a twenty-minute delay due to missing our allotted takeoff time.
“Great.”
I leafed through the gossip magazine I’d purchased as the last few passengers took their seats. Two loud and distinguished looking southern men from the boarding queue were on the middle row to the left of us.
“Why us?” Sarah sneered.
“Kill... me... now.” Billie pulled the large over-ear headphones up from her neck and cranked the volume up.
I spent the whole flight flicking back and forth between playingWho Wants to Be a Millionaireon the games section of the entertainment screen and watching a mixture of films, whilst debating whether to continuediving into the paper bag filled with processed goods. The loud, obnoxious southern men made a racket for the first two hours, then they’d consumed enough alcohol to send them both to sleep, and the back of the plane fell silent.
It was peaceful, just how I liked it. I watched the small plane on the electronic screen glide across the map, the pilot occasionally informed us on the route. I looked out to my right to see Florida and the city of Miami along the coastline. The famous city was a collection of grey, blue, and green dots from forty thousand feet in the air, but the clear sky allowed for a much more pleasurable flight.
The final meal on the plane was a vegetarian lasagne; to the airlines credit, it was enjoyable. What wasn’t enjoyable was the bloating of my stomach after coming to the realisation I’d eaten four meals in a ten-hour period.
