Then, worse, he puts his hand over mine – another first. He must be about to break bad news, or why would he do that? I watch in horror as my fingers waste no time in threading themselves through his, like they have a life independent of my brain.
Seeing my hand like that, entwined with a man’s after two years spent on its own, reminds me of all the touches I’ve missed. Cam never passed me a glass of champagne without his fingers brushing mine. He’d touch the small of my back with every, ‘Have you met my wife?’ I’d feel his hands on my hips, gently shifting me aside in the kitchen, or tucking the tag of my shirt into the collar at my neck. He’d grab my hand and pull me away from traffic and crowds and into bookshops and cafes. We craved each other’s touch, even after life got hard. Especially then.
But now my hand is in Hugh’s where it doesn’t belong. My fingers are interlaced against unfamiliar skin. Even after working together for years, his hand forms a shape I don’t recognise, his touch foreign.
It’s too different, and I get spooked and let go, despite my desperate fear that this plane is lurching out of control.
‘I think we’ll be okay,’ he tells me, clearing his throat. ‘She’s diverting us from the storm. I know this is your worst nightmare and you’re worried about Charlie, and that’s understandable, but I have a strong feeling the pilot is much older than sixteen. I think she knows exactly what she’s doing.’
He knows exactly what he’s doing. I want to bottle him and bring him out in every other moment when life feels treacherous. The way I always do with Cam’s notes.
Folded inside my purse are the emergency messages I’ve carried through everything. In fact, I don’t know why I didn’t reach for them as a valium substitute earlier. I take out my purse now and sift past receipts and shopping lists and find the notes tucked carefully into a pocket.
‘You know how he used to leave me these?’ I say to Hugh. ‘Not the ones around the house that you’ve seen. Other notes that he’d slip into my car or bag or suitcase. He was always doing it. Passed me the first one back in a lecture on Eighteenth Century Romantic Poets at uni, the day we met.’
‘Sentimental sop,’ Hugh teases.
‘If only! All it said was, “Hey Red . . .”’
Hugh laughs. ‘Smooth, mate. Expected more from a future English professor.’
‘Young Cam relied heavily on his good looks and boyish charm,’ I explain, laughing. I love talking about this. Gorgeous images of my first love play across my memory. Gosh, I fell hard for that boy. ‘Resistance was useless. Anyway, I just remembered this one about you. Funny, I’ve never thought to show you this earlier. I found it in my handbag on the day of my job interview, wrapped around the lipstick he knew I’d use to touch up before going in to meet you. Read it and weep, Lancaster!’
Hugh takes the yellow sticky note from me and clears his throat, while I go back to gripping the armrest. ‘KW: If this guy doesn’t see the incredible woman I do . . .’ He trails off as his eyes track over the rest. ‘If he lets you slip through his grasp, it will be the biggest mistake of his career. Be brilliant!’ There’s an unexpected catch in his voice, and he needs a fraction of a second to compose himself. It’s not surprising. They were very close. ‘That’s more like it,’ Hugh says. ‘God, I miss him.’
He looks at me straight. No bravado. Visible grief.
Don’t cry.
Too late.
‘Right, I’m ordering you not to cry,’ Hugh says. ‘It’s contagious.’
Gallows humour. Perfect.
He might be ordering me not to cry, but he’s also lifting the armrest against regulations – both the airline’s and his own. And my body involuntarily shifts into the space he opens up between us, with no resistance from him. Is he more alarmed by our situation than he seems? Because this is not what we do, inhabit each other’s personal spaces.
Hugh is no stranger to having me go to pieces in his company, but he always keeps me at a careful distance on the other side of his desk. He closes the door and plies me with tissues and tea, but he never hugs me or anything. Not even at Cam’s funeral, when I seemed to hug every other person I’d ever met.
‘I’d offer you a cup of tea,’ he says now, ‘but the service around here is atrocious.’
There’s another huge bang and a drop and a thud. People scream. I don’t care who he is on the organisational chart, I simply invite myself into his arms.
The side of my face is pressed against his chest. His hands float above my body, as if he’s unclear how to deal with this development. I try to block out all the chaos and listen for his heartbeat as a distraction. Of course, it’s so noisy I can’t hear anything, but if I press my ear hard enough against him, I can feel it thumping through his shirt. Unfortunately, it’s beating quite fast, betraying his cool-headed demeanour, and that scares the hell out of me.
‘You’re freaking me out with your heartbeat,’ I accuse him. ‘I thought you weren’t worried?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Why the racing heart then?’
‘Geez, Kate. Let me adjust that for you, shall I?’
Am I this demanding? I smooth his business shirt under my fingers, and the hard lines of his chest underneath it make me feel like I’m prying. I don’t get to touch people any more. I read something once about ‘skin hunger’。 It’s an actual condition and, the more firmly I plaster myself to Hugh’s torso, the more certain I am that I’m riddled with it.
He braces against me in response. His muscles contract. He doesn’t share my skin starvation and nor does he want this level of proximity.
‘You miss your desk,’ I say cryptically.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asks, his hand finally coming to land on my arm when the plane lurches again.
‘Your desk. The barrier. You know, the wall. The blockade . . .’
He’s still puzzled.
‘I want to be friends with you again,’ I blurt out, the way a person would only do if they thought time was running out and wanted to hurriedly make amends and seek forgiveness and dot all the ‘i’s’ and cross the ‘t’s’ in an otherwise doomed relationship. ‘Proper friends, I mean. Without this giant obstacle between us.’
‘What are they piping through these air vents?’
I won’t let him evade this with humour. ‘What happened between you and Cam?’ I demand.
I lift my face to his, up close, in time to catch his expression progressing from consternation, through recognition, to pain, and settling on the usual resolute distance, whenever this topic is raised.
‘Please don’t ask me,’ he says finally. He means business and meets the desperation in my eyes with a hard ‘no’。 If he won’t tell me now, when it feels like our minutes are numbered, he never will. This secret is doomed to stay wedged between us for the rest of our lives. It’s why, despite all the early bonding we were forced into when Cam’s life was impaled on the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, we operate at a slight distance now. It’s sad.
Maybe he’s right about the air vents, though. Something is obviously going to my head because for one, wild moment, despite my frustration with his relentless disengagement on this, perhaps because of the stark vulnerability in his expression, I imagine what it might be like to kiss Hugh Lancaster.