I sensed his excitement as the plane began its descent into Suvarnabhumi airport, and the usual set of instructions was issued by the cabin staff for us captives. It’s all a joke, really, I thought as I closed my eyes and tried to still my banging heart. If the plane crashed, we would all die instantly, whether or not my tray table was in the upright position. I supposed they had to say this stuff to make us feel better.
The plane touched down so gently I hardly knew we were on the ground until they announced it over the tannoy. I opened my eyes and felt a surge of triumph. I’d completed a long-haul flight alone and lived to tell the tale. Star would be proud of me . . . if she even cared any longer.
Having gone through immigration, I collected my baggage from the carousel and trooped towards the exit.
‘Have a great time in Oz,’ called my teenage neighbour as he caught up with me. ‘My mate says the wildlife there is insane, spiders the size of dinner plates! See ya!’
With a wave, he disappeared into the mass of humanity. I followed him outside at a much slower pace and a familiar wall of humid heat hit me. I caught the airport shuttle bus to the hotel I’d booked into for my overnight stop, checked in, and took the lift up to my sterile room. Heaving my rucksack off my shoulders, I sat on the white bed sheets and thought that if I owned a hotel, I’d provide my guests with dark sheets that didn’t show the stains of other bodies on them the way white does, no matter how hard you scrub.
There were so many things in the world that puzzled me, rules that had been made by someone somewhere, probably a long time ago. I took off my hiking boots and lay down, thinking I could be anywhere in the world, and I hated it. The air con unit hummed above me and I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but all I could think about was that if I died right now, not a single human being would know I had.
I understood then what loneliness really was. It felt like a gnawing inside me, yet at the same time, a great hole of emptiness. I blinked away tears – I’d never been a crier – but they kept coming, so that eventually my eyelids were forced to open with the pressure of what felt like a dam about to burst.
It’s okay to cry, CeCe, really . . .
I heard Ma’s comforting voice in my head and remembered her telling me that when I fell out of a tree at Atlantis and sprained my ankle. I’d bitten my bottom lip so hard in my effort not to be a cry-baby that I’d drawn blood.
‘She’d care,’ I murmured hopelessly, then reached for my mobile and thought about turning it on and texting Ma to tell her where I was. But I couldn’t hack seeing a message from Star, or, even worse, seeing no message from her at all. I knew that would break me, so I threw the phone across the bed and tried to close my eyes again. But then an image of Pa appeared behind my eyelids and wouldn’t go away.
It’s important that you and Star make your own friends, as well as having each other, CeCe . . .
He’d said that just before we’d gone to Sussex University together, and I’d been cross because I didn’t need anyone else, and neither did Star. Or at least, I hadn’t thought she did. Then . . .
‘Oh Pa,’ I sighed, ‘is it better up there?’
In the past few weeks, as Star had made it clear she wasn’t interested in being with me any more, I’d found myself talking to Pa a lot. His death just didn’t seem real; I still felt him close to me, somehow. Even though outwardly I couldn’t be more opposite to Tiggy, my next sister down, with all her weird spiritual beliefs, there was this odd part of me that knew and felt things too . . . in my gut and in my dreams. Often it felt like my dreamtime was more real and vivid than when I was awake – a bit like watching a series on TV. Those were the good nights, because I had nightmares too. Like the ones with the enormous spiders . . .
I shuddered, remembering my teenage plane companion’s parting words . . . They couldn’t really be the size of dinner plates in Australia, could they?
‘Christ!’ I jumped out of bed to halt my thoughts, and washed my face in the bathroom. I looked at my reflection and, with my eyes pink and swollen from crying and my hair slick with grease after the long journey, I decided I looked like a baby wild boar.
It didn’t matter how many times Ma had told me how beautiful and unusual the shape and colour of my eyes were, or Star had said how much she liked to stroke my skin, which was – in her words – as smooth and soft as cocoa butter. I knew they were just being kind, because I wasn’t blind as well as ugly – and I hated being patronised about my looks. Given I had five beautiful sisters, I’d gone out of my way not to compete with them. Electra – who just happened to be a supermodel – was constantly telling me that I wasn’t making the best of myself but it was a waste of time and energy, because I was never going to be beautiful.
However, I could create beauty, and now, at my lowest ebb, I remembered something else that Pa had once said to me when I was younger.
Whatever happens to you in life, darling CeCe, the one thing that can never be taken away from you is your talent.
At the time, I thought it was just another – what was the word Star would use? – platitude to make up for the fact that I was basically crap looks-wise, crap academically and crap with people. And actually, Pa was wrong, because even if other people couldn’t take talent away from you, they could destroy your confidence with their negative comments and mess with your brain, so you didn’t know who you were any more or how to please anyone, least of all yourself. That was what had happened to me on my art course. Which was why I’d left.
At least I learnt what I wasn’t good at, I comforted myself. Which, according to my tutors, was most of the modules I’d taken in the past three months.
Despite the battering my paintings and I had received, even I knew that if I lost faith in my talent now, then there wasn’t any point in carrying on. It really was all I had left.
I went back into the bedroom and lay down again, just wanting these awful lonely hours to pass, and finally understanding why I saw so many old people sitting on benches whenever I’d walked through Battersea Park on my way to college. Even if it was freezing outside, they needed to confirm that there were other human beings on the planet, and that they weren’t completely alone.
I must have fallen asleep, because I had the spider nightmare and woke myself up screaming, automatically clapping a hand to my mouth to shut myself up in case someone along the corridor thought I was being murdered. I decided I just couldn’t stay in this soulless room any longer by myself, so I put on my boots, grabbed my camera and took the lift down to reception.