And as long as I don’t see a certain blond-haired woman and her sodding boyfriend Ray, I’ll be absolutely fine.
Cara and I finish our coffees and she suggests a little light browsing around the myriad shops that fill the terminal, giving bored people like us the chance to waste a few minutes while the clock ticks down to the gate opening.
I’d obviously like to just stay in one place to maximise the chances of Amy avoidance, but the airport is awfully busy – thick with travellers on this particular Monday morning – so I guess I won’t be taking too much of a risk if I trail around after my girlfriend as she browses.
Besides, if she sees anything she likes, I might just buy it for her as a surprise. I’m feeling guilty about keeping the Amy-sighting to myself, and would like to make it up to Cara, even if she has no idea what I’m trying to make up for.
And so, for the next forty minutes, I follow Cara around as she flits from shop to shop, inspecting their wares carefully as she does so. I do this in a permanently heightened state of awareness, thanks to both the caffeine and the secure knowledge that my ex-wife is around here somewhere, with Mr Five Bedrooms In Sevenoaks.
Nothing takes Cara’s interest in Prada, Gucci or Armani – which I’m mightily relieved about. Cara quite likes her fashion labels, but thankfully none of the brands she really loves are here at the airport.
When we hit WHSmith, though, I’m more than happy to buy the two books she takes a liking to, as well as the three magazines she picks out. The flight to the Maldives is eleven hours, so I don’t blame her for wanting so much stuff to keep herself occupied. I loaded up my iPad with games and Kindle books last night for exactly the same reason.
‘Can we go get something to eat? I’m ravenous,’ Cara says, stifling a yawn, as we walk away from Smiths. I glance at my watch. It’s nearly 11 a.m., and we still have a good hour to kill until we can go to our gate, so some brunch would be ideal. We’ve been on the go since six thirty this morning, so it’s no wonder Cara’s hungry. I could eat a horse myself.
And if we stuff ourselves now, we won’t be that hungry when we get on the plane, and can safely avoid the first of the two in-flight meals that we’ll be subjected to. Cara’s grandfather Roland may have been kind enough to contribute to the cost of this holiday, but that sadly couldn’t extend to anything above economy seating on the plane.
No complaints from me, though. We wouldn’t be going on this trip at all if they hadn’t had a flash sale on Expedia for this specific week – and the package only came with economy seats. I’d rather sit in cattle class than miss out completely on a bargain luxury holiday.
We make our way up to the Gordon Ramsay restaurant – which Cara had recommended to her by Barry Gasleak at the agency. His name is not actually Barry Gasleak, of course – it’s Barry Cross, but he’s had no less than three houses he’s sold suffer gas leaks over the twenty years he’s been in the estate-agency business, and that kind of thing leads to a nickname, whether you like it or not. It’s still better than some of the nicknames I’ve been getting at work recently . . .
We plonk ourselves down in an open booth that we are lucky enough to find empty at the back of the restaurant, and order a couple of English breakfasts.
By the time I look towards the bar to see a waiter approaching our table with them both in his hands about fifteen minutes later, my stomach is gurgling away with extreme hunger – so it doesn’t take me long to demolish a good half of my plate, once it’s put in front of me.
‘Easy there, big fella,’ Cara says with a smile, as she tucks into her veggie English breakfast. ‘You’ll get indigestion.’
‘Sorry,’ I reply, swallowing a barely masticated bit of sausage, ‘I didn’t realise how famished I was.’ I have to smile as I do this. Cara likes to mother me now and again, like a hen with her chick – which is hilarious given how much younger she is than me. But I can’t pretend I don’t like it.
‘I told you, you should have eaten more than that instant porridge sachet this morning,’ my girlfriend remarks, as she looks down and daintily carves off a bit of her poached egg.
‘Yeah, you’re right. I always tend to not eat much when I know I’m travelling,’ I admit, popping the rest of the sausage into my mouth. ‘I guess I’m a bit nervous that I might—’
There’s a sudden silence from my side of the table.
‘Never mind, at least you’ll have eaten plenty now, so—’ Cara looks back up from her poached egg to see that I have completely disappeared from view. ‘Joel? Where the hell have you gone?’
Poor Cara. Here she is having brunch with her boyfriend, on the cusp of their all-inclusive bargain holiday to the tropics, and he’s been abducted by aliens.
What other explanation can there be for his sudden and total disappearance?
Hideous creatures from beyond known existence must have created a portal in reality, and sucked Joel Sinclair through to their strange and mind-bending alien realm.
Either that, or he’s just seen his ex-wife entering the same restaurant in which he’s currently munching his way through an English breakfast, and has ducked underneath the table so fucking fast that there was an audible popping noise as the air rushed in to fill the void left by his immediate absence.
Cara leans to her left and looks down to find me scrunched up uncomfortably, with my head almost between my legs, and a large piece of half-chewed sausage in my gob.
‘What are you doing?’ she asks in confusion, glancing around at the diners seated next to us, who have noted my antics and are watching on with bemusement.
I think for a moment.
Is there any possible way I can lie myself out of this situation convincingly?
Probably not. Not unless I can somehow persuade my girlfriend that my entire head has suddenly become a hundred times heavier than normal.
I don’t think that’s a thing, though, is it? I’ve never heard of a medical condition that causes your head to rapidly increase in density for no apparent reason. Pretty sure that would have made it into The Lancet at some point.
No. I’m just going to have to come clean, and admit the real reason for my sudden impression of a meerkat who’s just seen thirty lions come charging over the nearest hill.
‘Amy,’ I say, through my sausage.
‘What?’ Cara responds, barely able to understand me due to the amount of processed pork in my mouth.
‘Amy here,’ I tell her in a muffled voice. ‘My eg-wige. She’d here in da gludy airgort.’
‘What?’ Cara repeats.
I should really swallow this stupid sausage, otherwise my communication abilities are not going to be up to snuff, at a time I really need them to be firing on all cylinders. I have a lot of explaining to do.
I take a moment to chew the sausage a little more, before swallowing it down in quite a painful fashion. My appetite has completely deserted me.
‘I said . . . my ex-wife Amy is here!’ I stage whisper at Cara – for some inexplicable reason. We’re in the middle of one of the busiest airports in the world. Unless Amy has developed the hearing capabilities of Superman, I doubt she could hear what I’m saying from all the way over there, even if I was shouting at the top of my lungs.
Cara instantly goes wide eyed, and swivels her head around to look behind her.
‘No! Don’t!’ I wail, not wanting to give our position away to Amy – who is standing with Ray Sevenoaks at the entrance to the restaurant, both of them looking at menus. It’s a saving grace they’re both staring intently at them, otherwise there’s a very good chance she’d have seen me masticating my sausage. Cara and I are at the back of the restaurant, but in direct line of sight of the entrance. It wouldn’t take much for Amy to glance up and see us. She always did have eyesight like a fucking hawk. She is to small crumbs left on a kitchen counter ten feet away what a kestrel is to an unsuspecting dormouse.
Cara turns back around again, and looks down at me. ‘Bloody hell, Joel! What is she doing here?’
>
I choose not to answer this question as the answer is pretty damn obvious. I don’t blame Cara for coming out with it, though. Seeing Amy is enough to frazzle anyone’s nerves to the point where they start to not make much sense.
‘Just . . . just keep staring this way, and with any luck she won’t look over here. If we act normal, everything should be okay,’ I tell her, not electing to elucidate any further on why I’ve suddenly decided that hiding under the table is something approaching normal behaviour.
‘What am I supposed to look at?’ Cara asks. For some reason she’s also started to stage whisper.
‘The wall!’
She glances up. ‘But there’s nothing on it!’
‘Your plate then!’
She glances down. ‘It’s empty!’
‘Just look in your lap then!’
So, now ‘normal’ appears to be me hiding under the table, and Cara jerking her head around like a chicken who’s worried the kestrel is coming for it next.
Given that the other diners close to us are now watching our exploits with not a small degree of confusion and befuddlement, I’d say we’re acting so far away from normal that I expect my friendly security guard to come and grab me at any moment for some cavity-searching fun out the back.
I raise my head to look over at where Amy and Ray are still studying the menus. As I do, I glance at Cara, who is staring down into her lap, and flicking her eyes back and forth.
Even from here I can see that Amy has got her Frown Face on. The Frown Face of Amy Caddick (I’m assuming she goes by her maiden name these days) is a thing that will be scored across my brain until the day I die.
Many times I have seen it. Many, many times – especially in the last two years of our marriage when everything was breaking down like a French car from the nineties.
I’d be on the receiving end of the mildest version of the Frown Face when I left crumbs on the kitchen counter, or forgot to fill the dishwasher. My – shall we say – relaxed attitude to household chores never sat well with her constant desire for permanent tidiness. The most severe version of the Frown Face was the one that greeted me when we had to sign the divorce papers, closely followed by the one I got aimed at me the day Amy left her job.
The Frown Face might be my saving grace today, though – if you’ll pardon the unintentional poetry. The Frown Face indicates that Amy is not happy with the contents of the menu put in front of her. Ray Sevenoaks and his disgusting orange Hawaiian shirt are obviously happier with the choices on offer, as I can see him pointing a few things out to her.
Good luck with that, boyo. Once the Frown Face of Amy Caddick has appeared, the chances of you getting rid of it without total capitulation are slim to none.
Just don’t look over here. Please don’t look over here.
Finally, Amy shakes her head and says something to Ray that for a moment makes him look a little deflated, but he almost instantly perks up again, and smiles at her.
Yes. That’s right. Turn around and bugger off, the pair of you. Let me continue with my sausage in peace.
‘Joel?’ Cara asks, still looking down into her lap like she’s a six-year-old being told off for eating the last biscuits in the tin.
‘Hang on, sweetheart,’ I say, like I’m watching a particularly rare and dangerous gorilla, half hidden in the forest. ‘They might be leaving.’
And . . . sure enough, the menus go back down on the table just off to one side of the entrance, and both my ex-wife and her five-bedroomed partner turn on their heels and walk away.
My heart, which has been pounding like a big bass drum this entire time, starts to slow its rhythm, and I sit back upright with a tight grin of relief on my face.
‘They’ve gone,’ I tell Cara, as I feel the muscles in my back start to unwind a little.
‘Thank God for that,’ she replies, looking up again. ‘Of all the bad luck. Where do you think they’re going?’
I shake my head. ‘No idea. I couldn’t see what the luggage tags on their suitcases said.’
Bollocks.
Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks.
‘Suitcases?’ Cara replies suspiciously. ‘How could you have seen their suitcases in here?’
‘Ah . . .’
You silly bastard. You silly, silly bastard.
‘I may . . . I may have seen them out there, while we were checking in,’ I confess, not making eye contact.
‘You did?’ Cara’s eyes flash. It’s not nice when Cara’s eyes flash. It rarely happens, but when it does, she can look quite scary.
‘Yeah. I couldn’t be sure it was her, though. I really couldn’t.’
Oh, Joel. That’s not true, is it? You’d know that ponytail and purposeful stride anywhere. You were right next to them for six years of your life.
Cara’s eyes narrow. ‘You should have said something, Joel! Given me a warning!’
‘Yes, yes . . . you’re right!’ I say in a desperate tone. The last thing I want is for Cara to be mad at me. This is supposed to be an exciting, fun trip away for us both. It can’t start off on the wrong foot like this. ‘I should have told you . . . but I really wasn’t sure it was her, and I didn’t want to trouble you with it.’
This seems to mollify Cara. The scary eye flash has definitely gone. Though she still looks pretty unhappy, to be honest.
I can’t say I blame her. Being sat here with the curious eyes of the nearby patrons on us can’t be a fun experience for her. It’s not for me, either.
I look over at the entrance to the restaurant again to see that there is absolutely no sign of the two of them now. They’ve been swallowed back up in the heaving mass of the Heathrow holiday crowd.
‘Of all the bad bloody luck,’ Cara says in a low voice.
‘That’s just what I thought,’ I tell her with a lop-sided smile. Taking a chance the gesture won’t be rejected, I lean across the table and take her other hand in mine. Luckily for me (and the rest of this holiday) Cara doesn’t pull her hand away. I give it a little squeeze. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a stupid coincidence, and we’re only going to be here for another half an hour or so, until we go to the gate. Why don’t we just stay in here until then, order a coffee, and bugger about on our phones? I’m sure we won’t see them again. This place is just too big.’
Cara continues to look downcast for a moment as my words sink in.
I probably shouldn’t say this, but she always looks quite adorable when she’s being a little pouty. She has the most beautiful set of lips, even when they are in the pout position, and her lovely brown eyes are only made all the more glorious when they’re a bit glossy.
I really have struck it so incredibly lucky with Cara. And seeing my ex-wife here today will do nothing to stop me being happy about going on holiday with this fantastic woman.
Cara nods once to herself, sits back and runs both hands slowly through her shoulder-length chestnut hair. This is always what she does when she’s relaxing, so I think it must be a good sign. ‘Yeah, I’m sure you’re right,’ she eventually says with a smile. ‘I just don’t want to see Amy ever again. Not after everything that happened.’ Her hand reaches out and takes mine again. ‘Not after what she did to you.’
I nod and return the smile – though it’s one laced with regret. ‘I know. It’s okay, though. In a couple of hours we’ll be thirty thousand feet in the air, and she’ll be long gone.’
Cara smiles even more broadly at this, before giving me a comically disparaging look. ‘Alright . . . but if you see your mother here as well before we get the chance to get on the plane, please bloody tell me, eh?’
I chuckle. While Cara actively dislikes Amy, she does everything she can to get on with Mum. It’s a bit of a pity Mum is always a bit cold around her – for reasons I’ve never been able to establish, beyond the fact that she always got along with Amy very well.
‘I promise I will,’ I tell her, though I don’t think we’re in any danger of seeing either my mother or father he
re. They’ve both become avid staycationers in recent years. Airports might well be a thing of the past for them.
One of the waiters comes back over to our table to clean away our plates, and I ask him to bring Cara and I both a cup of coffee.
Yes. That’s a great plan, Joel.
We’ll just sit here for another thirty minutes, enjoy another cup of coffee and then make our way down to the gate. With any luck Amy and Ray the Hawaiian Shirt King will have already buggered off to wherever it is they’re going, and we won’t run the risk of bumping into them again.
Either that or Amy would have browbeaten the bloke into visiting whatever restaurant took her fancy, and they’ll be in there. Amy was always something of a sushi fiend, so they might be in Itsu – which I’m pretty sure is in the opposite direction of where Cara and I will have to go to get to Gate 14 and our flight on a British Airways A380.
Yep. Everything is going to be absolutely fine.
Once we’re in the air I can relax in the safe and secure knowledge that I am flying away from all the stresses and strains of my life – especially my bloody job, with its dwindling client list and unpleasant work colleagues.
It’s an added bonus to know that I’ll also be flying far away from the person that made my job such a bloody nightmare in the first place.
Marrying Amy Caddick was the worst mistake I ever made.
Somebody very intelligent and clever once said that you should never mix business with pleasure . . . and I wish I’d listened to them. If I hadn’t fallen for Amy when we started selling houses together, then I wouldn’t have got myself into the mess that I did. I should have kept it strictly professional. I should have maintained some distance.
But then, without Amy, would I ever have been as good at my job as I was? Would I ever have been as successful? Would I ever—
No!
No more, Joel!
You Again? Page 2