Silverstone: Games of Trust

Chapter 3

"Final call for gate seven, flight one eight nine three, to Heathrow. Final call for gate seven." 

"Yes, I get it!" I snap hurriedly, grabbing my jacket from the tray. The security guard behind the conveyor belt gives me a disapproving look, as he turns to the next (much calmer) passenger. Scowling, I pull my suitecase behind me, rushing towards the double doors. 

I hate flying. 

Wait, no, let me correct myself. I love the actual flying: the weightlessness, the feeling you get in the pit of your stomach. I tend to annoy other passengers by laughing during turbulence. Yes, I'm a little strange. But I love being up in the air. 

What I hate is the rush of getting to the airport, checking in baggage, then having to go to 'Oversized Luggage' because it was a 'little too wide' for the baggage chutes, then waiting in a ginourmous line, then having to get something to eat because Cam was 'starving', then having to literally sprint through security, begging people to let me skip past them in the line. 

And now, I'm finally here. 

This airport is layed out in such a way that you can see your family and friends one last time before boarding the plane, over a barrier. And as I jog down the corridor, checking the gate numbers, and eventually swerving through the glass doors underneath the huge silver '7', I rush foward through the crowd of people moving towards the stairs outside towards the plane, and look around, panicking. 

"Rose! Over here!" 

Cam appears on my right, and I throw my arms around him over the barrier. 

"You'll be fine," he grumbles, not liking the affectionate show. Obviously, this means I just hug him harder. 

As soon as he lets go, I move on to Al, grinning. "Good luck at fancy engineering school. Build some robots." 

Al sighs in disbelief at my apparent diss, and gives me a reassuring squeeze. "Don't fall off any English horses." 

"Hey, what do you mean?" I wink. "My horse is a buckskin. Not so English." 

After I give my parents one last hug each, I turn back to Cam, and whisper to him. 

"You'll be fine. Ring me if you're feeling down." He gives me a sad grin, shoving me in the direction of the plane. 

"After you give me so much grief for wanting a sandwich, you better not make yourself miss the flying tin can!" 

I roll my eyes, shrug on my jacket, and rush off, down the stairs, thinking of missing planes and Cameron's sad smile. 

But more missing planes. 

•  •  •  

Correction: I love flying if it's for less than three hours. 

I knew a ten hour flight wouldn't be fun. It wasn't last year, on the way to school, and on the way back, at the beginning of the summer, I had a one-stop flight. That was nice. 

It doesn't help that, as I'm a minor travelling alone, the cabin crew keep on asking me if I'm okay. I get that they're just doing their job, and they're honestly very nice, but, yes, if I was okay twenty minutes ago, chances are I'm still fine now. 

The couple next to me, two middle-aged Scottish people, haven't really spoken to me since I thought they were asking for some tea. Turns out they needed to know what time it was. 

I'm sorry, if you know you will be needing to check the time, please just wear a watch. 

Anyway, I knew that a ten hour flight wouldn't be much fun, but this is literally probably hell. There was some turbulence back a few hours ago, but it was so bad it made me feel like I was going to vomit. The airline food was really not so great, and my seat isn't as comfy as you'd expect for a ten hour seating. 

And the view of eternal blue-grey-greenness isn't particularly special. 

In short: it is not fun.

I try to huddle down in my seat to try to nap, but just as my eyes close, I turn my head in the direction of the window to get comfier, and something catches my eyes. Lights. Lots and lots of lights. 

For a second, I just stay glancing out of the window, before I snap up to attention. I know we came over land a while ago, but I thought we still had at least thirty minutes. But this amount of lights; literally stretching further than the horizon, can only be London. 

"Excuse me," I call out, looking for an air hostess. Surely enough, one appears next to the Scottish bloke, who casts me a disdainful glare. 

She smiles, looking pleased albeit tired. We must be nearly there. "Yes?" 

"How long until we land?" 

"Well, actually-" 

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are just about to land. Please fasten your seat belts and lean back. All members of cabin crew to return to their seats." 

She smiles again, brushes a lock of hair behind her ear, and walks back up the plane towards her seat. 

Finally. 

The descent is pretty fast and smooth. We hit the ground, drive along at the fast pace for a few seconds, then slow down, coming to a halt at the base of the airport. 

Some people start clapping, others cheering, and I just slump down in my seat, worn out but relieved. We're here. 

The Scottish couple proves to be rather agile for their age, and are down the isle and giving their thanks to the cabin crew before most people have started to get their hand luggage down. I stare after them disbelievingly, then burst out laughing. Of course they'd be the first off. Probably want a cup of tea. Or the time. Why not both? 

As I start to reach up for my suitecase, another air steward pats my back, grabbing it and passing it down to me. "There you go." 

I flash an appreciative grin at him. "Thanks." 

"No problem," he looks at the fray of people trying to exit the plane. "You need any help getting off?" 

I shake my head. "Nah. I ride horses. Shoving past a few little people shouldn't be too hard. Thanks for all your help." 

"Good luck with the horses, kid." He gives me a last wave and disappears off to help another passenger. 

Surprisingly, I manage to wind up near the front of the queue, and the scowling security guard scans my face suspiciously, checking the passport. When he apparently can't detect anything wrong with it, he slides it back under the glass and grunts for me to move on. I try not to laugh. 

Because I'm so great at packing lightly, I only have two huge suitecases, plus my hand luggage, so I enlist the help of another security guard to help me drag them off the roundabout, and figure out how to drag them all along together, before taking a deep breath, and walking through the doors into the terminal. 

The plane I was on wasn't a huge, five-hundred-plus-people one, but there are enough people here for me to look around, confused, for a few seconds. 

Then, all of a sudden, gleaming black hair is in my face, and I'm nearly knocked back by the force of the hug. The familiar perfume is comforting, citrusy and gentle. 

"Finally! I thought your plane was just going to circle up in the sky for eternity!" 

"Tabitha," I grin at her as she leans out of the hug. "It wasn't even delayed." 

"Well," she huffs. "Felt like it." 

"So, why are you here, anyway?" I say as the driver catches up with Tabitha, looking flustered at having nearly lost one of his school's pupils in a busy airport terminal. 

"I got back to school a few days earlier," she explains, as I hand her the smaller hand luggage, the driver grabs one of the huge suite cases, and I take the other. "I wanted to settle Leona back in after bringing her home for Easter. I managed to convince Lucy to let me come get you." 

As we exit the building, I take a deep breath. "It's good to be back." 

a/n: So, as always it's very late. As always, I'm sorry. But I'm just a bad human bean who can't write when she isn't in the mood. :) Thank you so much for all your awesome comments! Carry on being great people!