‘Oh for god’s sake!’ The older woman with red eyes swipes for it, grabbing the note from Jemma’s clutches.
‘What are you doing?!’ Jemma cries with horror. ‘You can’t do that!’ She turns to the woman on her other side. ‘She can’t do that!’
‘You’re right, that’s really uncool,’ the other woman nods, her nose ring twinkling in the low plane lights. ‘Haven’t you heard of boundaries, lady?’ They exchange vexed looks and Red Eyes sighs, defeated.
‘Fine! I’ll give it back,’ she says, sounding annoyed. ‘But only if you promise you’ll actually read it.’ She frowns furiously at Jemma, who visibly gulps in the face of such pushiness.
‘Er, OK, I promise.’
Nose Ring leans in. ‘She’s lying,’ she tells Red Eyes conspiratorially. ‘It’s so obvious she won’t read it, don’t believe her.’
‘You just told me I had to give it back!’ the older woman cries and Nose Ring shrugs.
‘I didn’t really mean it, I just wanted to say the right thing in the moment. I want to know what the letter says just as much as you.’
At this, the older woman huffs, yanking at the envelope and pulling out a sheet of lined A4 with force. Jemma gasps, covering her face as the intrusive (MYSTERIOUS!) woman unfolds the note paper, scanning the words.
‘Your name’s Jemma, is it?’ she says conversationally, and Jemma nods into her hands.
‘Please don’t tell me what it says,’ she mumbles through her fingers. ‘I can’t, I don’t want to know, not yet.’
The red-eyed woman tuts. ‘I don’t understand most of it anyway. He’s going on about names and – aha!’ She stops there, grinning widely at Nose Ring, who nods encouragingly.
‘What?’ she asks eagerly, her voice high and excited.
The older woman smiles, showing off uneven but very white teeth. ‘I’ve just got to his name!’ She quickly scans the rest of the letter. ‘Otherwise it seems to be a bunch of gobbledegook. Although’ – she elbows Jemma, who makes a gargled noise behind her hands – ‘he does want to meet up! He wants to take you for a very bizarre-sounding dinner.’
‘Dinner?’ Jemma peeks out from behind her fingers and the woman nods.
‘Here, read it for yourself.’ She offers up the note and Jemma takes it gingerly, like it’s contaminated. She gently places it into her lap and Nose Ring barges into her personal space again, reading over her shoulder.
Jemma’s eyes widen as she takes in his name and it’s clear she’sexperiencing an array of emotions, fighting to win out just under the surface.
At last she nods with determination, folding up the letter and placing it back into the ripped envelope. She slips it into her coat pocket, her face an inflamed red, but her expression neutral. Nose Ring looks at her closely.
‘What are you going to do? Do you know what you’ll say back?’
Jemma swallows, then nods firmly. ‘Yes,’ she says at last. ‘But first I have a more important mission ahead of me when we land.’
The two women look at each other wide-eyed as Jemma stands up from her seat, awkwardly climbing over Red Eyes. ‘Sorry, excuse me,’ she says. ‘I’m going to the loo. It’s where I go to think.’ She shrugs, rubbing her stomach. ‘But also, y’know, plane food, ugh.’
Chapter FifteenCLARA
I take a deep breath, trying to steady the pounding in my chest.
‘Are you going to knock or what?’ Buffy’s annoying voice booms over my shoulder.
‘Yep,’ I confirm, my voice high and scared. I raise a hand to the knocker – and then let it fall away.
‘Shall I do it for you, sweetheart?’ Mum offers nicely and I want to scream at her that I’m not a fucking child any more. But also, I would actually really like my mummy to do this for me because I’m scared.
‘We’ve only got the van until five,’ Harry points out unhelpfully from the back as Angela pipes up with one of her facts.
‘Did you know our days are getting longer because of the moon? Every year we pull another inch and a half away from its gravitational pull, which is slowing down the earth’s spin.So each century our days get an extra 1.09 millisecond of length.’ She pauses. ‘Approximately.’
The others ooh and aah as I tut. It’s so annoying that I’ve had to bring all of this lot with me. I wanted my first meeting with my soulmate to be romantic and intimate – not surrounded by idiotic family members shouting about the moon. The trouble is, I need them. I’m here ostensibly because I’m buying a chest of drawers from a stranger on Facebook. I’ve been discussing the ins and outs on Messenger with ‘M’ for two weeks, and he insisted I’d need a van, plus a few hands to help carry the furniture.
I brighten, considering this. Maybe it’ll actually work out well. This lot can deal with loading up the chest of drawers while I focus on flirting with Milo.
