I pulled my phone out and opened my message thread with Andrew. I read through it for a while, weighing up my decision. I looked at my dogs again.
‘Fine, if you can get your nails clipped, I suppose I can do this.’ I put my fingers to the screen and typed as fast as I could, in case I stopped.
Pippa:Yes!
CHAPTER27
The abandoned runway looked ghostly. Maybe a better synonym waseerie. I liked the sound of that word. The way it sounded like the very thing it was describing. A ghostly moan in the middle of the night. The tarmac had cracked and weeds were pushing their way through them, fighting each other for space. Thick trees and shrubs lined the sides of the runway, which would never be allowed if this was a functional landing strip. I stepped onto the tarmac. I loved standing on airstrips; it wasn’t often that I got to do it though. You couldn’t just walk out onto a runway and stand there. I imagined how many planes had taken off from here, where they’d all gone and who’d been the ATC.
The broken-down mine had a dystopian feel to it and was the perfect set for a zombie film. Rusty scaffolding that was once a mineshaft stood at an angle like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Dilapidated miners’ accommodation, doors hanging off hinges, shattered glass windows and crumbling brickwork. Abandoned mining equipment lay on the ground, rusting like the bones of a carcass, or long-ago shipwrecks marooned on the rocks. I loved it here. It was mysterious, and I knew I could spend hours exploring it, but that would have to wait, because right now I was being introduced to a group of mostly older men.
Their names all blurred, and because most of them had gray hair their faces blurred too. They were also all wearing the same T-shirt, so no one stuck out. Except Andrew: he was sticking out like he’d never stuck out before.
I was being spun around in a never-ending tornado of introductions. Each time I turned and said hello to someone, another person would greet me and I’d have to turn around all over again. It went on like this until I thought I would fall over from the dizziness. At some stage the ‘hello’s died down and I found myself standing in front of Andrew again. I let out a relieved breath. It was calm and quiet here, as if I was finally in the eye of the tornado.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘Fine. They were just very enthusiastic. In fact, you seem to be friends with very enthusiastic people in general.’
‘And that’s a bad thing?’ he asked.
‘It’s fine, but I think it needs to be peppered with the opposite of enthusiasm sometimes.’
‘And what is the opposite of enthusiasm?’
‘I don’t really do antonyms,’ I said quickly.
‘Why?’ He looked intrigued.
‘I don’t like them. I don’t like opposites. I don’t like things that mean the opposite of something else. I like same things. Similar things. And now I’ve said the word “things” too many times and I no longer like that word either, and there is not a good synonym to replace that word, in this context anyway,’ I concluded.
Andrew slowly leaned towards me, tilting his head to the side as if looking at me from another angle. I tilted my head to match his.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said, placing the emphasis on ‘thing’.
‘Something,’ I replied, as he began walking away from me. He didn’t turn his head though, in fact his eyes were still locked on mine as he walked off, which made him look strange and awkward.
‘What are you doing? You’re walking like a praying mantis. You should really look where you’re going, or you could walk into something.’
He stopped, gave me a small smile and a wave and then turned his head away and walked like a human being once more. I eyed him suspiciously as he moved off. That hadn’t been nothing – that leaning and head-tilting and strange mantis-walking had definitely been something.But what?
‘What?’ I called after him as he’d crossed the runway to the other side. He waved his hand in the air and then curled his fingers towards me in a beckoning motion. I was just about to cross over to him when a small plane skidded past me at such a speed that I jumped back. The small yellow plane – a replica of a Cessna Skyhawk – bumped and bobbed down the old runway and then started to lift. It seemed to hover for a while, and I gasped, unsure if it was going to make it into the air. It looked like it was about to tumble straight down again. But it didn’t. Shakily, speedily – surprisingly speedily – it launched itself into the air and then shot straight up as if gravity no longer existed. It climbed at a speed and height that I hadn’t expected and, as it did, excitement bubbled up inside me. It started in my stomach and then radiated outwards, into my shoulders, down my arms and into my fingers. I fluttered them at my sides a few times and then brought them together and clapped hard like everyone else was.
The next plane caused even more excitement. A fighter jet the size of one of my dogs was suddenly charging down the runway, and when it finally took off it shot straight up in an insane vertical take-off. This time, my feet lifted off the ground as I bounced and clapped for it as the plane engaged in mid-air circus-like maneuvers. I was getting more and more excited and lost in the atmosphere as RC plane after RC plane was launched off the runway. And every time one took off I was shocked all over again by how fast they flew and the noises they made as they cut through the air, with such speed that sometimes you completely lost sight of them. My clapping led to cheering, which then led to me high-fiving two silver-haired total strangers. But I was enjoying it all more than I could ever have imagined. Every so often I looked over to the other side of the runway, where Andrew was, and each time I found myself waving and smiling at him. And then the planes started racing each other, which only added to the building excitement of the crowd, and by the time it was Andrew’s turn I felt buoyant. Afloat on an invisible wind of frivolity. Feet hardly touching the floor any more and hands that stung from clapping. Andrew and his opponent lined their planes up, remote controls in hand. A countdown started and then the planes were screeching down the runway and catapulting themselves into the air.
‘GO! GO! GO!’ I didn’t know I’d shouted that until I’d heard my own voice. The plane flew through the air, Andrew running behind it, and I was so caught up in the moment that I too was running and jumping behind him. ‘GET HIM!’ I screamed over all the other shouting. It was all so damn exhilarating. I felt like I was driving fast with the roof down. I shielded my eyes from the sun as I watched his plane soaring higher and higher, until it wasn’t any more.
‘Oh shit!’ Andrew said as his plane started dropping from the sky. It spiralled towards the ground, riding invisible currents that pushed it further away from us.
‘It’s headed for the trees,’ I shouted as Andrew raced after it, desperately trying to pull it out of its death roll. But it was too late. We stood still, side by side, and watched in horror as his plane tumbled from the sky and finally crashed in the trees at the end of the runway.
‘Well, are you coming to help me retrieve it?’ Andrew asked.
I nodded, and then, for some reason, squeezed his shoulder. The move took me by surprise. I didn’t squeeze people’s shoulders. Ever. In fact, I usually never knew what to do in situations like this, when the other person was visibly upset. For the most part, I would just stand there awkwardly wondering if I should try and deflect with something. In this case it would have been a fact about plane crashes. For example, the average number of plane crashes per annum is between seventy and ninety. I might have even blurted out something that I would definitely regret later, an overshare, like ‘The first time I ever experienced severe turbulence on a plane I threw up on my dad’s feet.’ But I did none of these things.
Andrew placed his hand over mine and squeezed back. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and then started walking towards the crash site.
