I reach the gate a full two hours and forty minutes before take-off because I cannot miss this plane. My parents need me and I need them. We need each other to make it through this catastrophic loss. To make sense of it all.
My group, group five, is the last to board. I locate my seat and place my bag down by my feet and the flight attendant tells me it must be placed in the overhead locker. I am not happy about this. The bag contains the things I need to make it through this flight; that’s why I packed them. I take my essential items from the bag and stuff them down into my deep coat pockets. When I sit down again, my security items and Pret sandwich bulge so much that the person in the middle seat grunts his disapproval.
‘Something wrong?’ I say.
He just shakes his head and looks out of the window.
Fool.
Fool in a middle seat.
Before take-off I listen carefully to all the in-flight safety announcements. I diligently read the instructions written around the emergency exit door and then I count how many rows of seats exist between me and the other exits.
We had always planned to be together in New York one day, just not like this. Never like this. Flying was unthinkable – it would have been an economy berth on the Queen Mary II ocean liner. A six-day voyage, with a back-up life vest and all the survival gear that could be squeezed into bags. She and I would have planned activities in Manhattan, walking in Little Italy and Chinatown, visiting Long island and New Hampshire if we’d had time.
All of a sudden I am tired. Weighed down by loss.
I tighten my seatbelt to the point where it’s almost painful, and the guy next to me inserts earplugs and pops a tablet from a blister pack. Is that a sleeping tablet? What kind of idiot, honestly. We accelerate and take off and it’s noisy but the flight is smooth once we’re up in the air. I watch as London shrinks in the emergency door window. My heart shrinks with it. Leaving all this and flying to my dead twin.
People in other rows start putting on eye masks and ordering drinks from the attendants.
This doesn’t feel real. We’re above cloud level now, flying over the southwest tip of England, the area where we used to holiday as kids. They were good times. The four of us: a normal, reasonably functional family from the Midlands. Dad was fun and Mum was caring and busy. I knew back then that identical twins weren’t identical. Not really.
Most of the passengers around me watch movies on their head-rest screens. Some are reading and some are already asleep.
The flight attendant approaches me. She smiles broadly and then there’s a bang. A woman yells and the plane starts to nosedive.
Chapter 3
The fasten seatbelt sign illuminates and the woman in front of me starts to pray.
Is this turbulence? We’ve barely reached the Atlantic. I look out of the window and the wing is still attached but it’s shaking violently. What are the engineering tolerances of this aircraft?
The plane settles and levels out. The man beside me is no longer dozing. He looks over at me, confused.
‘Turbulence has never brought down a jet aeroplane,’ I tell him.
He frowns at me.
‘I’d tighten your belt, though. Dozens of people break bones each year from leaping up out of their seats.’
He adjusts his belt.
People go back to their movies and the sleeping pill guy eventually goes back to sleep, his head resting on the person by the emergency exit door.
I imagine how this looks. A cross-section through earth’s atmosphere, the layers as described to me in a geography class ten years ago. The ocean and then thirty-seven thousand feet of air and then an aluminium can with wings crammed full of jet fuel flying at five hundred miles per hour, the rivets and bolts and seatbelts and cockpit safety systems all procured years ago from the lowest bidder.
Passengers settle back into their entertainment systems. There’s a woman sitting diagonally across from me watching a Christmas movie even though it’s only October. My sister would have given me side-eye if she’d been sitting next to me on this plane.
Ideally I’d assemble my anti-hijack devices in private but needs must.
I locate the para cord in my deep pocket. It’s military-grade string really, the type used for parachutes, and the YouTubers I’ve watched swear by it. I take five one-pound coins from my other pocket and start to weave a monkey-fist knot around the coins. You can make it without coins in the centre but it won’t be as effective. I do all of this underneath a British Airways complimentary blanket. My seatbelt is as tight as it will go and my hands are at work and you’d never even know it. Monkey fists are illegal in many places in the world owing to their inherent power, but if you learn to weave one yourself, and you practise enough, train in the dark, then you can make one on board a plane in ten minutes flat. When it’s done I place it in my right pocket and pull out a pair of socks. I take one and fill it with the remaining fifteen pound coins and place that makeshift weapon in my left pocket.