Stargirl of the Edge

Ch 65 - A Long Journey to the East

After receiving her A level results, Olivia went on a day trip to Liverpool with Ben, the local guy who is very keen on her. After visiting museums, they go to a Chinese restaurant. Unexpectedly there is news of her father. She also makes an amazing revelation to Ben about the nature of her creativity. Then her mum phones to say dad is flying in that evening. Quickly they leave for Manchester Airport.

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As they made their way out of the restaurant onto Nelson St, they felt raindrops on their skin, and the sky was a dark grey. Moments later rain fell as heavy as the heaviest downpours during the monsoon season in Hong Kong. Water flowed down the street like a river. They ran across the street as quickly as they could to the Mini. Olivia glanced at the magnificent Chinese arch, brightly lit in orange against the charcoal sky. It too seemed to be saying ‘Congratulations’. She couldn’t resist taking a photo of it on her phone.
Ben started the engine, reversed and accelerated through the downpour. The raindrops hitting the roof of the car were so heavy it was deafening. He put the windscreen wipers on the fast setting.
After the first corner there was a red traffic light.
Olivia tapped on the door “Oh come on, lights! Hurry up!”
Finally the lights changed but then they were held up again at another junction and then another. They were losing precious time.
“Oh why is the journey taking so long?” she cried.
Eventually they were heading along the main road back towards the motorway. The road had blue street lamps. It seemed to go on and on.
The rain was still pouring down as the final set of lights turned green, they drove under a flyover and onto the motorway.
“How long Ben?”
“We should be okay, it should take about 45 minutes,” he said, putting his foot on the pedal.
“Not too fast. We don’t want to crash!” she said.
She sat back into her seat and closed her eyes. It was true. It wasn’t a dream. Her ordeal was over. Her dad was coming home.
They had driven only a couple of miles when the rain eased off and Ben was able to switch off the windscreen wipers. They were leaving the wet weather behind and heading into clear skies. The dusk light had almost drained from the sky, apart from a bluish glow to the north west. Now after the showers, the air was clear of dust and it was possible to see over a long distance. To the left were the bright red lights of the television transmitter on the hills quite a few miles away. Olivia smiled as they passed the giant floodlit head of the sleeping girl named ‘Dream’. She had seen it the previous year on a visit with her school Art class. It had made a huge impression on her.
Now there was no street lighting, and the motorway was dark.  They were driving on a long straight section. Ben was chatting about how happy he was for her.
Suddenly Olivia was transfixed by something she saw in front of her. There hovering in the distance, steady and not moving, she saw a bright light, and it became slowly brighter. It was an eerie luminous green light. Now greater in magnitude than anything in the surrounding sky, and growing brighter. The pale green light shone through the windscreen, casting shadows on the seat behind. The sharp rays were dazzling, causing sunburst patterns and halo effects. It held steady in the sky without moving. Olivia looked over at Ben. Though the bright green light was clearly shining on his face, and reflecting in his eyes, it appeared that he was not able to see it. He was chatting, his lips were moving but she wasn’t following his words.
Now it felt was as if the car was standing still, its wheels spinning, the motorway a fast moving carpet underneath and the pale green light in the sky maintained its position in front of them. She gazed, as if in a trance, fascinated, comforted by the hum of the engine, the sound of the tyres on the road and the wind noise. Still the light shone, now brighter than ever, fixed in the sky, strong, steady, a reassuring light, a benign light, a friendly light that seemed to guide them.
And then, just as it seemed to have reached the peak of its brightness and was beginning to die down and grow dim, in her mind, the words of her father, who was quoting his mother, echoed once more.
‘Gēnsuí nǐ de míngxīng’
And just at that exact moment, the ‘star’, still hovering high over the hills, its strobe lights flashing, with a ‘whoosh’ from its engines, banked towards the south west, lining up with the final approach path to Manchester’s Ringway Airport.
Flying smoothly and steadily, the handsome sky blue, white and silver KLM Boeing 737 headed down over the southern suburbs of the city. The cabin lights glowed through the portholes down the side of the fuselage, and at one of them, a man, mid-50s, of oriental appearance, looked out, smiling, peering out in all directions.
“How much longer Ben?”, said Olivia, holding her iPhone tightly, “Dad will be landing soon.”
“About another 20 minutes,” he said.
The Mini continued to drive quickly along the motorway, now reaching the section with street lights again, and approaching the junction where he needed to turn off to the left.
Soon he had moved into the left hand lane, and he followed the curved bridge, and down the slip road onto the motorway heading south towards the airport. It was now full of traffic, all leaving countless threads of white and red lights.
“Not long now, Livvy.”
Olivia’s phone rang, and she answered it immediately.
“Yes, Mum, we’ll be there soon! See you at Terminal Three. How are you getting there? Taxi? Okay. Oh, hold on…”
She turned to Ben.
“Can you take us back to the house after we’ve picked up Dad?”
“Course I can!” he said, smiling.
Ben took another motorway turnoff, curving around on another bridge and down onto the final section of motorway before the airport, but then there were flashing lights ahead, an incident of some kind, maybe an accident.
“Oh no,” said Ben, “what’s going on here?”
“Ben, the plane’s about to land, we can’t be late!”
“It’s OK, I know another way.” Pressing the left indicator, he came off the motorway early and made a detour, arriving at the airport by a different way.
With only a couple of minutes to go before landing, the Chinese-looking man peered out over the southern suburbs of the city, with its myriad of orange and white lights stretching in all directions. A few miles further on, seen from the northern perimeter of the airport on Ringway Road, the plane appeared to hover in the sky, its lights forming a halo of dazzling starburst patterns, and then, without warning, it screamed overhead past the approach lights, and dropped onto the tarmac, its tyres screeching, engines thundering, decelerated and partially disappeared at the far end of the runway, before turning and making its way back.
The plane moved slowly between the sparkling white, red and green taxiway lights. Seen from the roof of the terminal, beyond the perimeter fence, to the south, Jodrell Bank radio telestope was pointing up into the sky, and to the south east, it was just possible to make out the tree-covered, curved outline of Alderley Edge, a benign presence.
Finally the aircraft came to a complete stop, the ‘fasten your seatbelt’ signs were switched off and the engines died down.
Safe and sound, Dennis gathered his belongings and prepared to make his way to the arrivals hall, then through immigration, and experience the moment he had been dreaming about for so long.
In the small arrivals area, a few members of the public stood casually leaning over the barriers or against the pillars looking mostly bored.  For most people, this was a scene that was devoid of interest.
But for one family, the most wonderful moment of their lives was about arrive.
Leaning over the barrier, clutching a mobile phone was a woman of medium height, Caucasian, with thick dark curly hair, silver rimmed spectacles, wearing a pink jacket and jeans. She was looking at the screen excitedly and then at the passengers coming out of the double doors.
Outside, a car stopped in front of Terminal 3 pickup and drop off area. It was a white Mini. Out jumped a girl, medium to tall in height, late teens, of part European, part Oriental appearance, very slim. She ran straight up the terminal, in through the double doors and up to the woman with the curly black hair.
“Is he through yet?” she asked, panting for breath.
A few of the bystanders might have noticed a sense of excitement, and might even have recognised one or other of the women or both, but most continued to gaze at the screen.
And then a passenger of Chinese appearance, in his mid-50s, tired but confident, with a big smile on his face, walked quickly through the double doors, pulling a battered suitcase on wheels. This time he had not bothered to remove the baggage tags. Olivia ran up to him and threw her arms around him.
No media were present. They had learned of his release, and were on their way, but had not yet arrived. This precious moment of reunion would remain forever unphotographed and undocumented. But in the minds of three people, it would remain locked in their memories forever.

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In our world where everyone tries to capture images - whether paparazzi photographers or people on their smartphones, I wanted their happy reunion to be just a memory, with no photographs of it! More on the background to the story in Secrets of Stargirl of the Edge.