Time to Let Go

by Christoph Fischer

  “He wants to sort everything out. Those were the exact words,” Henrik told her.

  “Crickey. Tell him to contact the airline instead. I don’t think I am even allowed to speak to Mr White with the legal proceedings going on. Or is that American law? I think I watch too much TV,” Hanna said confused.

  “No, don’t worry,” Henrik assured her. “To me the call sounded more like the meeting will be an apology rather than an offer for an out of court settlement. I am usually pretty good at reading between the lines. He wants a private and personal conversation and he wants it as soon as possible. I went ahead with it on your behalf. I have arranged a meeting for you with him at a country hotel in Wiltshire, which our chain runs. It is not far from you. It would take you no more than half an hour to drive. He is on his way there now and is expecting to meet you at 7pm. Can you make that?”

  “Of course I can make it. I am just not sure I should. It may be a ploy to compromise my statement in court,” she worried.

  “My mate Carl from university will be at the hotel tonight as well,” Henrik assured her. “He is a lawyer and if you need him he has agreed to come to the meeting.”

  “Can’t you come to the meeting?”

  There was a short silence before Henrik continued.

  “I would play it cool, Hanna. See how it goes. If Mr White has people with him then ring Carl Sutton, but I don’t think you will need anybody with you. I am sure he has come to his senses.”

  “I need to think,” Hanna said. “I’ll call you back later. I’ll have to clear this with the union and the airline first.”

  “Sis, if he is offering an informal meeting with you - you should take it,” he shot back at her.

  “The company made it clear that their support for me is conditional on my silence,” Hanna told him.

  “Yes, to the press,” Henrik pointed out.

  “Get this: they want me to become the new face of the airline for their promotional campaign. Can you believe that? At my age!”

  “That sounds like a pretty decent thing of them to offer,” Henrik pointed out. “But that also means that they will reap benefits from the publicity. If you and Mr White come to an agreement it will take the wind out of their campaign. Don’t speak with them, speak to Mr White.”

  “I turned the airline down. Maybe now they want it settled quickly, too?”

  “I would consider their offer, though. Do you know what Sunita would do for a chance like that?” Henrik asked.

  “Exactly! They should give it to people like her. It just doesn’t appeal to me. My job is more about people than anything else, not the commercial aspect of it.”

  “Without the commercial aspect there would be no airline,” Henrik said agitatedly.

  “I know, Henrik,” Hanna tried to calm him. “I know. That is why they have lots of people like you in their head-office, who think like you and who run the show, and pretty women like your Sunita to look the part on the posters. I don’t think I would be good at it.”

  “You are turning down an amazing opportunity, I hope you realise that,” Henrik said, resigned.

  “Oh, yes I do. Even worse, the guy from Human Resources implied that there might not be a job for me to return to if I refuse their offer.”

  “Oh, that is just persuasion,” Henrik reassured her. “Imagine the headlines if they sacked you?”

  “Karim’s mother has offered me a job as her personal assistant and biographer. She says she will match my current salary. I would be near mother, which is a big thing for me now.”

  “It’s great that you want to look after Mum but she has got to go into a home soon: you’ve seen how Dad struggles. It is a matter of time before he has to let go. If I was you I would be very careful risking my airline salary for a temporary job with a batty old woman. No job security, a dodgy relationship with Karim; it is a mine field,” Henrik warned her.

  “I know, I know,” Hanna admitted.

  “I get it now. That is why you called Guru Patrick, the life coach for all of your important decisions,” Henrik said angrily.

  “Yes.”

  “If my humble business success puts any weight behind my words and opinion, and can be considered relevant in your decision making at all, then please take on board that I, your more earthly brother, consider it absolutely vital that you go to this meeting with Mr White tonight. I am sending you directions and numbers in a text and via email. You decide!”

  “I hear you,” Hanna said.

  “Bye now! I have to go,” Henrik said curtly and hung up.

  The conversation with Hilary, Patrick’s assistant, was the exact opposite to the one she had just ended. Not what you might have expected from a secretary, she spoke very slowly to the point of sounding dopey. Hanna had serious doubts that anything she told this woman might reach her brother at all.

  After lengthy and rather chaotic consultations of two separate diaries, Hilary could finally offer Hanna a ‘telephone slot’ between 6:30 and 7pm tonight. Patrick might have to speak and eat at the same time. The seminar had reached the ‘vital clearance stage’, Hilary stated; at that point the participants would be particularly vulnerable and in need of extra attention.

  Hanna confirmed the timing and jotted down the number to call. This left her little time to speak to her mother or father before having to get on the road and making sure she was at her brother’s hotel in time to make the call to her brother, and then meet the infamous Mr White.

  Walter had just finalised the article on Helvi, and was pleased with his compromise of short official statements and lengthy confidential articles for the family.

  He noticed that his daughter spent a long time on the phone. It made him remember how Biddy had done the same. His wife could spend several hours on the phone every day, advising large parts of the family, who all seemed to look up to her for her advice and insight. They knew they would always find an empathetic listener in her, someone who could find a positive spin on a bad situation, and make them feel better about whatever bothered them in their life.

  Sometimes this had reached such extremes that Walter felt his wife was neglecting her duties to her immediate family and he had threatened to unplug the damn thing while she was still talking.

  “Please don’t, Walter,” she would say. “Rosie needs my help. I can’t hang up on her.”

  “Tell her to come here then,” Walter would bark. “You are blocking the line and if she was here you could talk while you are doing your chores.”

  “Rosie, I just have to move,” Biddy would say and would take the phone upstairs, but Walter would follow.

  Biddy hung up eventually and started work in the kitchen, but the second that Walter was out of sight she would grab the handset and hide in the basement and call her sister back.

  “There you are,” Walter would say when he caught her eventually.

  “Just give me another five minutes,” Biddy pleaded. “This is important.” From what he heard the calls were never really important and neither did she ever hang up that quickly.

  But as luck would have it the handsets operated on battery power and had to be charged. This limited the amount of time his wife could spend on the phone dramatically. After about two hours the handset started to make irritating noises and would soon shut down completely, cutting the ‘Biddy helpline’ off without Walter having to interfere at all.

  The fact that then calls for the rest of the family could not be answered either - until the battery levels were sufficient for further talking time - was lost on him. He was just happy that the woman was finally off the phone.

  Hanna had bought her mother a mobile phone once they had become affordable, but neither Walter nor Biddy had been good at working out the technology. Phones had been nothing but a curse in his married life.

  Now that Biddy no longer spent all this time on the phone Walter realised how he had enjoyed their cat and mouse games, regardless of the anger he had felt at the time. The rows about it had been part of the
ir life and in a strange way he missed it. He smiled at the thought that Hanna had inherited her mother’s love for the phone, and one could say that Patrick had inherited Biddy’s desire to help others. It was comfortable to see that - even though her own light was fading – Biddy’s legacy was living on in her children.

  Chapter 22: Mr White

  Hanna knew that she should call the union and the lawyer but her instincts told her that Henrik was right and she needed to do this by herself.

  She said goodbye to her parents and got on her way.

  The address her brother had given her was a huge country hotel with massive grounds and an impressive iron gate that operated automatically, after a security camera had looked her car up and down. Inside the gates a long stretch of road - lined with huge trees on either side – led to a large and stately mansion. She had no idea that Henrik’s hotel chain had such grand gems in its collection.

  A valet was waiting for her by the main entrance and he parked the car for her. Of course, there could be no cars in front of this elegant building; that would have spoilt the impressionable front view.

  “Mrs Korhonen, it is a pleasure to meet you,” said the receptionist before she could even introduce herself. “I have a note for you from a Mr Carl Sutton. If you should need to contact him speak to any of our staff and we will get word to him. Mr. White has taken the liberty of reserving a room for you for tonight. So has your brother, so you have the choice of a park view or a hill view.”

  “Thank you but I am not staying here.”

  “Certainly. Now would you like me to tell Mr White that you have arrived?” the receptionist asked her.

  “Please do,” she replied, “but I have to make an important phone call first. Is there anywhere I can have some privacy for half an hour?”

  “I suggest the room Mr White has reserved for you,” the receptionist replied, efficiently and overbearingly eager to please. “It does have an amazing view over the valley.”

  Hanna was escorted up to the room and settled down into a big lounge chair by the window. The view was indeed nothing short of spectacular, with what seemed to be miles and miles of unspoilt landscape; with the trees still full of colour it was stunning. She tried the number Hilary had given her several times but Patrick did not answer his phone until 6:40.

  “Sorry Hanna,” he apologised. “I am really sorry. I just had a break through with one of my clients. I am here now and all yours. What is eating you?”

  Hanna explained her current situation concisely as she could. Patrick had not heard any news over the last few days in his retreat and was completely unaware of the incident.

  “Hanna I don’t want to do this hurriedly over the phone. We should meet properly to discuss this. Is there any chance you could come here?”

  “I hope so. I need to check with Dad and see how that goes down with him. Because of me we are staying in the flat of a loose acquaintance of mine. He might be angry if I just go and I leave him there on his own.”

  “I will get Hilary to email you the directions and you can call her and make a date. Don’t worry about Dad. You need to sort out your own troubles first. Then you can help him much more effectively. Anyway, he doesn’t really accept help, does he?”

  “He has let me look after Mum,” Hanna said.

  “Well, I never,” Patrick said with a whistle. “Anyway, I better dash. Oh, and Hanna, if you ever are in trouble I can always find you work, either with the band or the coaching. I hope you know that. If job security is the only thing keeping you from making the step forward then go and resign today. I will catch you if you fall,” Patrick promised.

  The timing could not have been better. She hung up just after 7pm and went downstairs to reception to be escorted to Mr White’s suite.

  Mr White opened the door himself. There was no one else in the room but a butler who served them their drinks.

  “Ms Korhonen, would you care for a Scotch?” Mr White offered. His bald and round features looked oddly wrinkled today, nothing like he had been on the plane. His eyes were sadder and not as angry as she remembered. Everything about him seemed different.

  “No thank you, Mr White. I would like to keep a clear head,” she said as confidently as she could.

  “Fine, just one for me then,” Mr White told the butler and then motioned Hanna to sit down on the large sofa opposite his arm chair.

  “You are probably wondering why I asked you to come here,” Mr White began the serious part of the conversation.

  “The thought has crossed my mind, yes,” Hanna replied.

  “I am not sure I know where to start. What is more important? To thank you for trying to save my wife’s life or to apologise for the stress and the anxiety I may have caused you by threatening legal action.”

  Hanna was overwhelmed and confused: anger, disbelief and relief, it was simply too much to compute.

  Mr White looked at her with such incredible sadness that she almost felt like crying on his behalf.

  “Ms Korhonen, you must understand: my wife was everything to me. Ours was a marriage of equals. I am not one of those guys who use their money to get a pretty and young prestige wife: we were soul mates. We were together for over 40 years. When she became ill I felt so helpless. She had always been my emotional support, and this time it was her who needed me and I was useless at it, completely useless. I tried everything. I threw money at practically everyone who promised the most remote chance of healing or helping her. My money had always been the answer to everything; we could always buy our way out. Not this time.”

  Hanna was close to tears.

  “Mr White, you don’t have to explain. I understand. I am just glad you are coming round to the idea that I did my best.”

  “No, Ms Korhonen, I want you to understand the extent of my loss better so you know I am not the monster that the press here has portrayed me to be. You see, if you live a privileged life, like I do, there are certain areas in life that you just don’t come in contact with. I have been used to the best physicians and medical care all of my life. Of course, I was mortified on the plane to see that someone who is less than a specialist in their field would be in control of my wife’s life. It was only when my lawyers brought in some medical experts to crush the airline and yourself that I learned how wrong my estimation of the situation was. This lunch time when the police faxed your statement to my legal team I finally grasped the seriousness of my mistake. My wife Crystal would have been the first one to criticise me for what I have done to you. She would have demanded an immediate apology and compensation, and that is what I came here for.”

  “Are you withdrawing the charges?” Hanna asked quietly, trying not to raise her hopes too soon.

  “Of course I am. I have also written to the airline and proposed that when sufficient grieving time has passed I will think of a way to thank the entire crew of that plane accordingly.”

  “Mr White, that is not necessary. You were carried away in your grief. We are all very sorry for your loss,” Hanna tried to assure him.

  “Ms Korhonen I can’t tell you how sick I am of that phrase,” Mr White said bitterly.

  “Sorry,” she replied quietly.

  “No, I am sorry. I am very sorry. I have made such a fool of myself. I am so ashamed of my actions.”

  Hanna was speechless.

  “Are you married?” he asked.

  “No, I am single.”

  “At least you are spared the pain of losing someone you love,” he said with a bitter smile.

  “There is enough pain to go round for everyone, one way or another,” Hanna replied quietly.

  “I know. Sorry, Mrs Korhonen, I am a miserable old man. You must forgive me. Before my wife was sick I too was worried about the small things in life. What a waste.”

  “I wish there was something I could do for you,” Hanna offered.

  “Well, there is. Please feel free to say no. I feel I have already messed up your life more than I should. If by chance I haven’
t exhausted your good will completely, would you consider attending my wife’s funeral with me? It would mean a great deal if you could manage. You were the last person with her.”

  “Of course I will,” Hanna promised. It might even give her the chance of closure for herself.

  “Thank you so much, Ms Korhonen. I appreciate your patience with a bitter old man.”

  “That’s nothing. When will the funeral be held – and where?”

  “In Massachusetts where my wife’s family comes from, but the date has not been set yet. I didn’t want to let go yet, but it is time to say goodbye now. I have not even started the formalities of shipping the body back home. You could come with us on the plane. First Class, of course.”

  “That is a very kind offer but I am not sure I could accept that,” Hanna replied.

  “Have you ever travelled in First as a passenger?” Mr White asked her.

  “Once I got upgraded on my way to San Francisco. I was using one of my staff tickets at the time. It was very nice, but I found it hard to relax. Whenever I am on a plane I feel I should be working and listening out to the announcements for the operating crew,” Hanna told him.

  “When are you going back to work?” he asked.

  “I am not sure I can after what happened with your wife. I am...” she fell silent.

  “I can always give you a job in one of my companies,” he offered. “I am thinking of setting up a charity in Crystal’s honour. You know, for the disease she had.”

  “Thank you, that is very kind but I am looking for something more local in the vicinity of my mother. She has Alzheimer’s and I want to be more involved in her care,” she explained.

  “Very commendable, but wouldn’t you rather have her in proper care? A home with a team of professionals?”

  “It doesn’t feel right to get someone else to do that for us. Not to mention the costs,” she pointed out.

  “What if money was no object?”

  “I still would be reluctant to give the responsibility to a stranger all the same; just like you were reluctant to trust your wife into the care of a stewardess.”