‘Ah-hem! What is this, Emily?’ she asked coldly, holding up one of the presentation cases.
‘A jewellery box.’ I shrugged.
‘That is where you are wrong, Emily. This is no ordinary jewellery box,’ she snarled, face blazing, the veins in her swan-like neck pulsating madly. I stared at her, puzzled.
‘This is a jewellery box that contains …’ she said, milking every moment of her Wicked-Witch-of-The-West performance ‘… a very valuable item belonging to your customer!’
Opening the box, she dangled the chokerin front of my eyes. OH-MY-GOD. I felt the colour drain from my face as my insides plummeted ten floors. I dropped the nozzle, realising with sinking horror that I had wrapped up the wrong box and sold nice, Scottish businessman one-thousand-five-hundred-pounds’ worth of diddlysquat.
‘Maybe we can trace him through his credit card? Or perhaps I could go to Heathrow tomorrow and try to …’
My voice fell away, as judging by Miss Cutler’s beetroot colouring, she was about to spontaneously combust.
So, that is how I come to be loitering around the airline check-in desks minus a ticket, a fifteen-hundred-pound diamond choker clasped tightly in my mitts.
The terminal is already abuzz with suited and booted businessmen on their way to Brussels or Belfast for a hard day’s wheelingand dealing.
I scan the concourse, looking for a tall, wiry, bearded Scotsman, clutching a boarding pass for Edinburgh and a beautifully wrapped box.
Couples cling to one another, off on romantic breaks to Vienna or Athens … Hang on a minute! My gaze rewinds to the Vienna check-in queue. Eyes narrowing, I move in for a closer look. It can’t possibly be. He’s ten and a half thousand milesaway … and yet … I’d recognise that sunburnt, bald patch anywhere. (As a first class galley slave, you can spend a lot of time gazing at the back of pilots’ heads, patiently waiting, steaming-hot tea burning your hands, while they finish prattling on to air traffic control and punching buttons on the automatic pilot thingy.)
Itishim, I swear. And who’s that woman he’s got his arm wrappedaround? It’s not Beverley, his wife. She looks young enough to be one of his daughters, but she definitely isn’t. I know this because I once served his family in first class when he took them on a working trip to Houston at Christmas.
Swiping my shades from my pocket and pulling my cycle helmet down over my eyes, I venture nearer and take up position behind a pillar.
‘Vienna? Two passengers?’says the check-in girl, switching on her Stepford-Wife smile. Taking their tickets, she taps furiously on the computer.
‘Any chance of an upgrade?’
Oh, yes, that’s our Mikey all right. The cheapskate, asking for an upgrade on his twenty-pound concessionary ticket. Bloody typical.
I’m tempted to walk right up to the desk and say, ‘Hey, Mike, what happened? Céline told me you were inSydney.’ I’d love to see him try and wriggle out of that one. Talk about leading a double life – no, atriplelife. How does he manage it?
‘Would all remaining passengers travelling to Edinburgh on BE2102, please proceed to gate five, where this flight is now closing. That’s all remaining passengers …’
Oh, Lord! In all the drama I’ve completely forgotten about finding Mr Beardy Man – MrSoon-To-Be-Divorced Beardy Man if I don’t get my act together pronto.
Zipping my way in between trolleys and wheelie suitcases, I race towards the security gate. Standing on tiptoes, I spy him in the distance, collecting his coat, shoes, and a small gift bag from the conveyor belt.
‘Boarding pass,’ grunts the security man.
‘Please let me through. I need to give this to that gentlemandown there – it’s really important,’ I beg, waving the box in the direction of the long line of travellers, waiting to be prodded and processed.
‘If you don’t have a boarding card, then this is as far as you go,’ he says firmly, darting me a scathing glare.
‘Please.I can’t explain now, but if I don’t get this to him …’
‘Stand aside,’ he growls, as a queue of red-eyed travellers startsto form behind me, brandishing their boarding passes, impatient to proceed.
There’s nothing else for it – filling up my lungs to maximum capacity, I push out my diaphragm and emit a rip-roaring, show-stopping ‘WAIT!’
It’s like someone has momentarily pressed the freeze-frame switch. All eyes swerve in my direction – all eyes but those of the one person whose attention I so desperatelydesire. He is now trundling along to gate five, blissfully unaware of the brewing storm about to hit north and south of the border.
Back on the road, my mind is buzzing with the thought of what I’m going to say to Miss Cutler, and more importantly, do I tell Céline that Mike is not in Oz, but on a romantic, Viennese mini break with … with … another mistress?
It’s just like one of thoseletters you find on theCosmopolitanproblem page:
Dear Irma,
