Shattered, Part 2 (Cabin Pressure Fanfic)
Five
Carolyn sat absolutely still while Gordon paced about the small shabby room, gazing without seeing at the pile of women’s magazines, a sad heap of broken toys, and posters about smoking, AIDS and smear tests. She wanted as much as he did to be making somebody do something, but she understood more profoundly that it was all being done. So she held herself still, and watched him fluster.
“What the hell’s taking them so long?” he said, once again. “We should get him to a proper hospital.”
“This is a proper hospital, Gordon. They don’t perform brain surgery any faster if you pay them. You know very well we had to go to the nearest emergency department.”
“Well, soon as they’ve fixed him up I’ll get him transferred to somewhere decent. This place is like a Gulag. I bet it’s crawling with bugs. It stinks.”
This was not true, or only insofar as the hospital smelled strongly of disinfectant. It was a heady, sickening smell, and it was making Carolyn’s head swim. The secret wound she had been carrying around for the past two weeks, festering and eating her away inside, seemed utterly insignificant. Gordon didn’t matter, he was nothing. He couldn’t touch her emotions any more. It was a strange, desperate moment to have that insight, but as she watched him pace about, glancing convulsively at his watch, she knew it was true.
“Mr and Mrs Shappey?”
Carolyn jumped. It was a doctor, an attractive and surprisingly young woman with a grave, composed air and unmistakable attitude of authority. Carolyn looked sharply into her face, trying to read anything there.
“I’m Dr Miranda Cole, consultant neurologist. Would you like to come this way please?”
“What’s happening?” Gordon demanded. “What’s taken you so long, is he OK?”
“Can we see him?” Carolyn asked.
The doctor’s face was impassive. “Could you come with me, please,” she repeated quietly.
Carolyn followed her numbly, hardly even worried that Gordon would create a scene. He had gone very quiet very suddenly, and she could not look at him - she was afraid that they were being taken somewhere private to be given the worst news of all, and she couldn’t bear to see that fear reflected back at her.
They were shown into a comfortable office, evidently the consultant’s own.
“Now,” said the doctor, looking at a sheaf of notes, “your son - Arthur? - has just gone to the high dependency unit after coming out of theatre. At the moment he’s stable and the operation to relieve intracranial pressure caused by the cerebral contusion appears to have been successful - “
“Oh thank God,” said Gordon, sinking down into a chair and burying his face in his hands.
“However,” Dr Cole continued, “I have to warn you that the prognosis in this kind of case is very uncertain.”
“Uncertain?” said Carolyn. She could hear, and not help, the sharpness in her voice. “Uncertain - what?” Uncertain of life or death, was what she wanted to ask, but could not.
She felt sorry for the woman, who straightened her white coat at the edges before carrying on. “Arthur has superficial injuries to his body and face from the accident, including two cracked ribs, but the major problem is the head injury. His skull must have struck something hard with considerable force. It was a fall downstairs, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s right,” said Gordon. “Bloody great lot of stairs, big house you see. And they’re all stone, hard as rock. He must have gone all the way down. I found him at the bottom, you see. There wasn’t any blood though.”
“Not externally, no. There was trauma to the skull which caused considerable bleeding inside the cranial cavity, and bruising to the brain. That’s what we’ve just operated to drain off.”
“So he’s going to be all right?” said Gordon, his voice trembling in a way that Carolyn had never heard before. “He will be all right now, won’t he?”
“If he survives the next twenty-four hours there’s an excellent statistical chance that he won’t die.”
“Oh God.” Gordon’s head went into his hands again.
“And what,” said Carolyn, “is the statistical chance that he will survive the next twenty four hours?”
“At the moment the indications are encouraging. And he’s a young boy in otherwise excellent health, so he’s unlikely to develop secondary complications.”
Carolyn let out her breath. “Good. Well, can we see him now?”
“In a little while. I need to talk to you a bit about the long term prognosis, so that you’ve got some idea of what to expect when you do see him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Arthur won’t know that you’re with him, Mrs Shappey. Not for some considerable time, and possibly, not ever. He has suffered what we term a severe brain injury, and although it’s very difficult at this stage to predict what the long-term outcome will be, I’m afraid that some degree of permanent impairment is likely. At the moment, he’s in a coma, and we’ll have to wait until he comes out of that before we can even begin to assess the extent of the damage.”
“What?” said Gordon. “Are you telling me my son’s going to be a vegetable?”
“That would be an extreme outcome, Mr Shappey. Very occasionally people with this kind of brain injury never do emerge from coma and survive in a persistent vegetative state, but most recover to a greater or lesser extent.”
“But with impairment, impairment you said.”
“Cognitive effects such as difficulty with speed of thought, memory and understanding, sometimes speech. There can be an effect on what we call executive functions, things like planning and organisation, decision making, social insight. Emotional and hormonal problems, sometimes. It really depends on where the damage is located, how extensive it turns out to be, and how the individual responds. Until Arthur has recovered from the surgery and regained consciousness, we can’t predict anything with certainty. But I want you to be prepared for the possibility that he will not be the same boy, probably ever again. He may need some degree of care throughout his life.”
Gordon scraped back his chair. “This is a load of bollocks.”
“Gordon!”
“You be quiet. If you can’t cure him here, I want him transferred to the best hospital in the country for head injuries, wherever that is and however much it costs. I want the best brain doctor in Britain on his case. Hell, the world if that’s what it takes.”
“Mr Shappey,” said Dr Cole, impressively unperturbed, “it is of course your right to have your son transferred to wherever you want, but at the moment he isn’t stable enough to be moved anywhere. And you’re welcome to bring in any private consultant you like, but they will tell you exactly what I’m telling you now. The outcome of brain injury can’t be predicted in any detail at this stage.”
Gordon made a low growl of frustration, but said nothing else.
“Dr Cole,” said Carolyn quietly, “can I see him now?”
Six
He looked more dead than alive, and he didn’t even look like Arthur.
Carolyn couldn’t stop herself letting out a gasp of dismay, and halting a little way from the bed where her little boy lay as still as a corpse, and as waxy pale. His head was swathed in a turban of bandages, his mouth was puckered and his face half obscured by the breathing tube of a ventilator, and his arms were lying neatly and motionless on top of the covers. Stark against the white skin was a bruise all across his right cheek, but that was the only visible sign of injury.
Gordon stopped at the door and turned away, shuddering. “Christ.”
“It’s all right, Mr Shappey,” said the soft-voiced young Irish nurse who had escorted them to the intensive care unit. “It’s not as bad as it looks, he’s doing well.”
“It’s not all right, and he isn’t doing well,” said Carolyn. “When will he wake up?”
“Soon, you’ll see. He won’t wake up all at once though, just to warn you about that. It’s not like you see on TV, he’s not going to open his eyes and say ‘where am I’. He’ll come out of it gradually.”
“Will… it help if I talk to him, or is that another television myth?”
“Sure it can’t do any harm. I’ll leave you alone for a bit. If there’s any problem, there’s the call button.”
The nurse closed the door, and Carolyn made herself go to Arthur’s side. She was rent by competing urges to run away from this dreadful sight, and to tear off that obscene ventilation tube and saline drip, hold her child tight, and take him away from this. Of course, she did neither. She took hold of the other hand, the one without the shunt taped to it, and squeezed his fingers to reassure herself that they were still warm and alive. His hand looked so normal - the fingernails were ragged and grubby, he was always tearing them off even though she nagged him to cut them properly. A scruffy schoolboy hand.
“Arthur,” she said, keeping her voice firm, “it’s your mother. Now I want you to know that you’re going to be all right. Your father and I are going to make sure of it.”
“What’s the use, he can’t hear you,” said Gordon, finally and fearfully approaching the bed.
“We don’t know that. Perhaps he can.”
“Look at him. He’s - bloody hell, what have they done to him. He didn’t look anything like as bad as this when they put him in the ambulance.”
“They cut open his skull and operated on his brain, Gordon. Did you expect him to look like he’d tripped in the playpark and scraped his knee?”
“Do you think that woman doctor was right about what she said, that he won’t be right in the head when he wakes up? Or do you think she was just trying to scare us?”
“Why on earth would she want to scare us? And I don’t think we should talk about that here.”
“He can’t hear us,” said Gordon again, gloomily.
Carolyn admitted to herself that unfortunately, he was probably right about that. She rubbed Arthur’s limp fingers between her own, and stroked the side of his face that wasn’t bruised, wishing she could look into his eyes. Surely, if he would just open his eyes, she would know that he was still there.
Then she noticed something.
Two things, really. First, she saw that the mark on his cheek was distinctive in shape; not a single bruise, but two narrow ones running parallel. And then, there was a small cut, like a nick, in the middle of one of them.
She had seen this before.
“Gordon.” Dread stalled her for a moment.
“What?”
“What’s this bruise here, on his cheek?”
“I don’t know, do I, it must have happened when he fell downstairs. Must have given himself a hell of a knock.”
“If this bruise was inflicted by the stairs, why were they wearing your signet ring?”
She shot out her hand and caught his wrist in one quick movement, taking him by surprise before he could react or conceal the guilt and terror in his face. She held up his right hand so that they could both look at the gold and onyx signet ring he always wore.
“You hit him,” she said. It was a statement of fact, made quietly.
“No, no, no. Of course I didn’t.”
“Look at his face! Those two marks were made by your fingers, that cut was made by your ring. It’s exactly the same as before.”
He looked for a moment as if he were about to flame up in absolute denial, then he snatched his hand away. “All right! I gave him a bit of a slap.”
“A slap.”
“He was giving me lip. But that’s all, Carolyn, I swear it. For God’s sake, I didn’t do this to him. He fell.”
“How did he fall?”
“It was an accident, I swear to God. We were at the top of the stairs, like I said he was giving me lip. I saw red, I’m sorry, I gave him a slap, and he tripped and fell down. Like I said.”
“What you said was you heard him fall down the stairs and found him unconscious at the bottom. That is what you said, Gordon.”
“All right, well - that’s what really happened. It was an accident. You don’t think I really meant the boy any harm, do you? For Christ’s sake, Carolyn.”
The tremorous pleading in his voice was barely suppressed by the bluster. Carolyn pulled back the covers from Arthur’s inert body a little way, and gently opened up the front of the hospital gown they had dressed him in for the operation. His upper body, from collar bone to abdomen, was covered in bruises, some deep red and purple, some turning black.
“Go away,” she said abruptly.
“Carolyn, look, I promise, he went headfirst down the stairs - it was an accident.”
“Go away.”
She didn’t even look round as the door swung shut.
Seven
Carolyn had arranged in advance to have use of the so-called ‘family room’, a small office partially stuffed with faux comforts - a couple of battered sofas, a forlorn bunch of silk flowers, a landscape print - in an attempt to render its atmosphere domestic. This was the place, she was sure, where families were taken to hear the really bad news, and where they were left to cope with the initial impact afterwards. She had another use for its privacy.
She had not left the hospital for the past fortnight. Literally, had not stepped over the threshold. Gordon’s blustering about getting Arthur transferred to a private hospital of his taste had never been mentioned since, perhaps because she had not actually had a conversation with Gordon after she had told him to leave the room. He had left innumerable messages at the hospital asking him to call her, and she had ignored them, and though he visited Arthur daily, she avoided him. At least he had not done what she half feared he might - get into GERTI and abscond to some corner of the globe beyond the reach of British extradition. She hadn’t put it past him, but it turned out he had more decency than that. Or perhaps more faith in his ability to cajole and seduce her into silence. It must have been evident to him soon enough that she had not gone straight to the police with her suspicions, so he was probably feeling safer by now.
Now, that she was ready for him.
Arthur had been showing clinical signs of emerging from the coma for the past six days, and although he had started opening his eyes three days ago, to Carolyn’s bitter disappointment he hadn’t seemed to see her from those eyes. No matter how earnestly the consultant and the nurses reassured her that this was normal in the circumstances, and that he was responding very well, it was impossible not to be deathly afraid when her son opened his eyes, and moved his head to the sound of her voice, and then gazed blankly beyond her.
Yesterday, she had had something to try to tell him, at any rate.
He had been a bit more propped up in the bed, and they had removed the bandages from his head, revealing that most of his sticky-up unruly hair was still intact and awry. There was a shaved patch on the back of his head, but from the front he looked much more normal. The bruise on his cheek had healed. Altogether, he looked so much more like himself that Carolyn could almost believe that there was nothing stopping him hopping out of bed and coming home with her. Except, as she sat by his side and took his hand, he hardly stirred. His eyelids fluttered and his head rolled on the pillow, but he made no sound.
The doctor had told her that any response to stimulus was ‘very encouraging’. Trying to feel very encouraged, Carolyn said firmly, “Good morning Arthur. The doctor tells me you should be up and about soon, which I am entirely in favour of, as I think you’ve wasted quite enough of the summer holiday lying in bed. We had words about that in the Easter holidays, and I thought I made my position quite clear. No more lounging! This letter arrived today, or possibly yesterday, anyway one of your father’s secretaries brought it to the hospital this morning. And do you see who wrote the letter?”
She unfolded it from her pocket and held it up in front of his face.
“Yes! The Oxford Flying School, no less. I told you I’d get you an interview there, and it took a bit of string pulling, but if there’s one thing your mother’s good at, it’s social puppetry. It’s not until the week after your seventeenth birthday, so that gives you a good ten months to get back on your feet. There now. Up and at it, child.”
She left the letter on his bedside cabinet, keeping Biggles the Bear company.
And that morning, Arthur had actually looked at her and spoken. He had said, “Mum. Mum. Hello, mum.”
“Hello Arthur! That’s more like it. How are you feeling?”
He had smiled, and repeated, “Mum. Mum.”
And that was all.
But she had seen him looking at her, he had known who she was and that she was there, it was enough for now.
When Gordon arrived, he was looking red-faced and anxious again. “What’s this about? I asked the nurse, she said Arthur’s fine, or doing well anyway. You gave me a fright calling me here like this.”
“Good. I meant to.”
“For God’s sake, Carolyn, give me a break. I’ve been out of my mind with worry about the boy. I don’t need you giving me grief as well.”
“Don’t you? Maybe you should have thought of that before you beat him black and blue and threw him downstairs.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, it was an accident.”
“You might be interested to know that he woke up this morning, and he spoke to me.”
She paused, to get a good look at his reaction - unmistakable fear and guilt, before he smoothed it over with an uncomfortable smile. “That’s great. Great news! I knew he’d be OK in the end. What did he say?”
“Nothing important. Whether he’ll be able to say anything important ever again is still, I’m afraid, open to question. But I don’t need his collaboration, Gordon. I don’t need him to point the finger. I know what happened.”
“If you think you’re going to - “
“I’m not going to do anything. Not for now, at any rate. Understand this, Gordon - if Arthur had died, nothing would prevent me unleashing on you the full vengeance of the law. But as it is, he is alive, and goodness knows what kind of life he’s going to have. What I do know is that exposing you and locking you up, and thereby bankrupting Shappey Aviation, would do him or me no good at all.”
“Too right!”
“No - be quiet - I will speak. What you’ve done might have robbed Arthur of any kind of future. We had a lovely, sweet natured, clever child, and you have shattered him. So I will tell you what’s going to happen. You are going to give me a divorce, on the most financially advantageous terms possible. You are going to give me so much money that whatever care Arthur needs from now on, I will be able to give it to him, and he will want for nothing. You are never going to come near me again, and you are certainly never going to be alone with Arthur, ever again.” Even though she kept her voice steely and cold, she was shaking inside.
Whatever he had been anticipating, it was clearly not this. “A divorce? Carolyn, sweetheart, come on.”
“Don’t you sweetheart me!”
“You’re upset about Arthur, but he’s going to get better, I’m sure he’s going to get better - last thing he needs at a time like this is his parents splitting up. Come on. We can work this out, eh? I’ll go and stay in the London flat for a bit if you want some time apart, I mean that’s understandable - “
“Gordon, I know.”
“You know. What?”
“Oh don’t give me this!” Suddenly she lost her self-control and was shouting. “It’s pathetic, it’s insulting to watch you calculating what lies you think I’ll swallow. I know you’re having an affair.”
There was a silence as she watched him processing this and deciding what to do. “So he did talk,” he said in a different tone.
“Who?” Carolyn cried.
Gordon frowned at her, then said, “All right. I don’t deny it. Yeah, there’s someone, and it’s not an affair, it’s something special. She’s someone special. I wasn’t going to let it affect our marriage, not until Arthur had left school and was set up in life anyway, but since you bring it up, I don’t deny it. And since you just said you want a divorce, I take it you won’t be too put out anyway.”
“Far from it. She’s welcome to you.”
“Right. Fine. You’ll be hearing from my lawyers.”
He was going to attempt to make this an unoriginal parting shot, but before he could storm out of the room, Carolyn said, “Gordon. There is one thing. Well, many things, but this in particular. I want GERTI.”
“The bloody plane? What the hell do you want that for? You can’t fly it.”
“No, but maybe one day Arthur will be able to. And even if he never can, I have other plans.”
“Like hell you have. You’re not getting the plane. Over my lawyer’s dead body.”
“Do you have to make me remind you that it could so nearly have been over Arthur’s?”
He glared, purple faced, silenced, then resorted to the slam of the door for his final statement.
Eight
If this was Oxford, Carolyn thought as she drove lost through another wide street of drab red brick houses, then Inspector Morse had been lying to the nation all these years. She hadn’t expected Oxford Airport to be in the heart of the ancient university city, of course, but as it happened she had never been to the place before and had looked forward to a glimpse at least of dreaming spires. This hell-hole suburb was as featureless and depressing as Fitton.
“Oxford’s not like on the telly, is it, Mum?” said Arthur.
“I don’t think this is Oxford, as such.”
“Oh no! We’re supposed to be going to Oxford. Have you gone to the wrong place? We’ll be late!”
“No, Arthur, it’s all right. This is the right way.”
“Are you sure? Cos it said Oxford on the letter. And on the name of the school. And this is - “ At that moment they passed a sign. “Kidlington.”
“Believe me, I know where we’re going,” she said firmly, even though she was only convinced of the general direction.
Arthur frowned at the letter in his hand, the same letter that she had propped up against Biggles the Bear at his hospital bedside all those months ago. The letter she credited, wrongly she knew, with waking him up. It was worn soft with unfolding and smoothing.
She had to be careful what she said, or rather, how she said things. It was becoming second nature to think in a certain way when talking to Arthur, but sometimes she would still forget and would make some comment that would agitate or confuse him. He took everything very literally, and it could be mentally tiring trying to sustain a normal conversation. It was like talking to a two year old with the vocabulary of a teenager.
But she was so lucky, she thought, glancing sideways at him again. There he was, alive and fit, taller than he had been last year, and just a little clumsier. He could have died, he could have been left unable to walk or talk, and instead he had made a complete recovery.
“Airport!” Arthur cried suddenly, making her jump. “Look, Mum! Airport!”
There was indeed a sign ahead indicating the turning towards the airport, and after a few more streets and roundabouts Carolyn was driving through open fields towards the unmistakeable landmarks of a moderately large airfield; the modest tower, the humps of hangers in the distance, the clusters of parked Cessnas and Pipers.
“Wow,” said Arthur, as they passed the light aircraft. “Brilliant.”
He was silent, though, as she pulled up in front of a shiny glass building on the edge of the airfield, the headquarters of the Oxford Aviation Academy.
“Well,” said Carolyn, “here we are, and in plenty time. Do you want me to come in with you?”
“No, course not.” But he made no move to unbuckle his seat belt.
A large car pulled to the kerb in front of them, and an older woman and man got out with a boy who could easily have been one of Arthur’s classmates from last year. He was fresh-faced and bright eyed, and held himself with confidence as his mother kissed him and his father clapped him on the shoulder. Then, as his parents drove off, he gave an self-conscious wave and walked into the building alone.
Carolyn was overwhelmed by a huge qualm, a regret that she loathed to acknowledge, and which she felt was monstrous. It was a triumph for them both that Arthur was here today at all. It had only been a week before the accident that she had submitted the application to the Oxford Aviation Academy on his behalf, after he had confessed his ambition to be a pilot on the day of the school prizegiving; knowing that Gordon would try to put a stop to it, either directly or by bullying and emotional blackmail, she had done it all on the quiet, intending to present it as a fait accompli. At the time she had filled in the application forms, he had been in perfect health with an impressive school record. She had used her contacts in the aviation industry to secure him an interview, but he had been a good candidate on paper anyway.
Now, he was still technically in rehabilitation after a severe head injury, and he had not gone back to school. Although the headmaster had said that he was welcome to start in the sixth form as soon as he was well enough, she knew in her heart that all that was over. It had been enough of an achievement for him, and a relief for her, when he managed to stumble through a short passage of simple prose three months after the accident. He was never going to sit A Levels, he was never going to university.
She should not have brought him here.
“Right then,” Arthur said suddenly, surprising her. “I’ll just - “ He released his seatbelt and opened the car door.
“Arthur, you don’t have to do this.”
“Why, Mum? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. On you go. I’ll go and find a cup of coffee and pick you up at eleven.”
“Right-o!”
She watched him until he disappeared behind the sliding doors of the building, and she couldn’t help seeing that he moved awkwardly. It wasn’t normal teenage gangliness, it was poor co-ordination and heedlessness.
The relentlessly positive culture of the rehabilitation process, and her own fierce belief that he could still be her own Arthur again given a little more time and healing, had fooled her into seeing a normal boy with a few, hopefully temporary problems. But fundamentally, she was a bitter realist. She should not have brought him here, to expose him to an interview he would have no way of coping with. Even seeing him next to undamaged teenagers of his own age was enough to remind her that miraculous as his physical recovery had been, he was not going to be able to navigate the world on equal terms.
In the airfield canteen, she sipped a cup of atrocious coffee and took the two letters that had arrived that morning out of her handbag. One document she had no intention of showing to Arthur, nor mentioning in the near future. It was the decree absolute that finally dissolved nearly two decades of marriage. The other was a letter from her lawyer, outlining in detail exactly how rich she was. A combination of guilt, fear and infatuation had made Gordon an uncharacteristic pushover, and he had agreed to an immediate divorce on the grounds of adultery and given her pretty much everything she had demanded so that he could marry Miss Top-Grossing Entrepreneur of the Year in peace.
She looked down the list of her new assets. The properties in Scotland, Switzerland and London she would simply sell, and buy a comparatively modest house for her and Arthur to live in. Gordon had kept the Hall but really, she had no need for the hassle and expense of living in a stately home. She had, as she had said to Gordon, other plans.
When, after the allotted hour had passed, she returned to the Aviation Academy, she found Arthur sitting on the kerb in an attitude that suggested he had been waiting some time. She drove right next to him before he noticed her, and when he looked up his expression was anxious.
“How did it go, then?” she asked with trepidation, as he climbed into the car.
“Oh… sort of didn’t, really.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Didn’t go. I didn’t go in.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t go in?” she said, far more sharply, in her anxiety, than she had intended.
“I’m sorry, Mum!” he cried. “I couldn’t. All the others looked like they could - and I couldn’t.”
And to her horror, he burst into tears.
Carolyn stopped the car by the side of the road, a quiet one leading out of the airfield, and awkwardly put her arms around him. She was not particularly prone to displays of physical comfort and she had barely hugged him since infancy, but it was borne on her again that he had become as helpless as a toddler. She didn’t think she had seen him cry since he had been quite a young child, either, and now he sobbed in her arms uninhibited. She felt tears prickle in her own eyes, which she would not let him see. It was grief for everything he had lost, the life he should have had, the future that Gordon had shattered.
For a little while, she held him and let him cry. Then she said, “Now then Arthur, there’s no need for this.”
He pulled away immediately, wiping at his face with the back of his hand. “Yeah, Mum. I know. Sorry.”
“There’s no need for this, because you do not need to be a pilot to have a dazzling future in the aviation industry.”
“How - how do you mean?”
“I mean, there are many other ways to make a career with aeroplanes, beyond driving them. How would you like to run an airline?”
He took his hands away from his face and looked at her in confusion. “Well, I would, but how does that work?”
“Well, you start with a plane.”
“Oh right. I haven’t got one.”
“No, not as yet - but I do.”
“You do?”
“Guess who owns GERTI?”
“Dad…?”
“Wrong! As of today, I do.”
“What? Dad gave her to you?”
“Indeed he did. And we are going to operate her as a private charter plane, for now. We’ll hire a pilot, or probably two pilots, and fly anyone who can pay us anywhere they want to go in the world. And we’ll put the profits back into the business and when we can afford it, buy another plane, and then another, and grow into a private airline.”
“Wow! Mum, that’s brilliant! You’re like Stelios!”
“I sincerely hope not.”
“But I don’t know anything about running an airline. I don’t know if I’d be any good at it.”
“Of course not, child. You’re only seventeen. You will be starting at the bottom, making the coffee and hoovering the seats.”
“Brilliant!”
“But one day, you’ll be the one on the cover of Aviation Business magazine.”
“Dad would like that, wouldn’t he?”
Carolyn said nothing, because there was nothing she could trust herself to say.
Fortunately, Arthur didn’t register her lack of response. “When can we start, Mum? Can we go now?”
“Go, Arthur? Where?”
“To get GERTI, and start the airline.”
“Arthur, we haven’t got a pilot, we haven’t got an office, we haven’t even got an airfield to use as a base. As far as I know, GERTI is still in her hanger in Surrey.”
“Yeah, but can we go and see her? Can we, Mum?”
His face was shining with enthusiasm through the tear stains, and the sight was too much for her to bear. As long a day as this was turning out to be, she started the engine and turned the car around in the road. “Oh, very well. Why not.”
“And GERTI’s really your jet now? Cos I can hardly believe Dad let you have her.”
“Ohhh, he took some persuading, but yes. GERTI is absolutely my jet now. Come to think of it, that’s not a bad name for the airline. My Jet Now. It has a ring to it.”
They passed the Aviation Academy again on their way out of the airport, but Arthur didn’t even glance back.