Falling
Contents
For my Mum and Dad, who told me that I could.
For Matthew, who made me believe it.
And for Daniel, so that he may know that all things are possible.
FALLING
Chapter 1
Cecilia - Thursday, 15th March - 6.08pm
A shrieking of wind, screeching of metal as the plane ripped itself apart, the wicked cold tearing at her throat. Cecilia Williams gripped the seat, fingers burning with pain. She tried to close her mouth, but the sound pried it open, stealing her breath. A giant’s hand pinned her to the bulkhead, tumbling, tumbling so that she couldn’t remember which was the floor and which was the ceiling.
She couldn’t see the people. Just black night air where there should have been a plane, space where there should have been seats. She squeezed her eyes shut. If she leaned this way, then it could almost be like she was sleeping.
They almost hadn’t taken off at all. It had been touch- and-go. The air had thickened days ago, grey clouds massing as temperatures plummeted far below the March average. Then came the snow, thick and bulbous. It came down in thick flurries, wrapping itself around Cardiff airport, climbing into mountainous drifts. Flights cancelled one after the other. There had been no reason to believe that this flight would be any different. Except that it would be, because it had to be. Cecilia had sat in the crew room, sipping harsh black coffee, beads of sweat breaking beneath her blunt cut fridge as a potted ficas wilted and slowly began to die in the fierce heat charging from the radiators. She had pulled at the turquoise polyester jacket, letting it drop to the floor beside her. She hated that uniform. Saw the other flight attendants looking at the crumpled pile. Drank her coffee. She wouldn’t wear it again.
“Gonna cancel it, you think?” The co-pilot looked at her, running knuckled fingers through curtained hair. Concentration camp thin, all teeth and nostrils. He was new, coming in as she was going out. Cecilia didn’t know his name, didn’t really see the point in learning it, not now. She had handed her notice in. This would be her final flight. She stared out of the window, watched the falling snow. She didn’t answer.
“They’ll cancel.” The co-pilot mumbled, almost like he was whispering a prayer. “They’ll cancel.”
The pilot, Oliver Blake, glanced up at him, then back down. Staring at the ground. Jaw tight.
Made everyone tetchy, a night like this.
The plane kept tumbling, over, over. Seemed to be no end to it. There were things she should be doing, as the wind whipped past her, the ground rushing closer. Her arms wanted to fold themselves over her head, mouth to scream brace. But she couldn’t move her arms and she couldn’t move her mouth and the rest of her just didn’t care. It would be over soon, anyway.
They had waited in the crew room, roll-on cases lining the wall in a chain gang. Cecilia’s at the end, bigger than the rest. She blew on her coffee. Her graduation certificate. She hadn’t brought it. It was in a frame, displayed in the study that they used to hang laundry. She should have brought it. Then, the interview wasn’t for another month. Ground crew. She would be based out of London again, if she got the job. There would be a lot of applicants, would always be a lot of applicants for a job like that. But she had worked there before, and she knew people, and hopefully that would be enough. It didn’t really matter about the certificate, she would have to speak to Tom again. Eventually.
“We’ll never fly tonight. No chance.” The co-pilot was working his jaw, teeth grinding against the hum of the heating.
Cecilia had never thought she would want to go back to the chaos and the London smog and the pillar-box red uniforms. Never thought that at thirty years old she would pack up her life, walk out on her husband, her almost three year old son. Something stuck in her throat, choking her almost. She had looked out of the window at the snow and tried not to think about that. She wondered if Tom knew that she had left, if he had found the closet door hanging open, all of her most prized belongings gone. She should have left a note. Should have done that at least.
Then the crew room phone rang, and they all looked up. Oliver pushed himself to his feet, trudging like through a snow drift.
Watching. Waiting.
He hung up the phone, turning back.
“We’re on.”
She hadn’t kissed her son goodbye. She should have kissed him goodbye.
Then it was all hurry, hurry, hurry. She had grabbed her bags, a quick slick of lipstick even though her fingers were shaking, pulled her skirt straight, then click, clack, click, out into the terminal. Passengers’ heads bobbed up like meerkats, the whisper running through the terminal in a bow wave behind them. Cecilia raised her chin, and looked straight ahead.
Suddenly there was no time. It was a narrow window. There was more snow coming in. We go now or we don’t go. And Cecilia very much wanted to go.
“Hello, hi, welcome, straight to the back, please.” A pasted smile, gesturing with French tipped nails along the line of the plane. She bit her lip, as they shuffled their way in, buffeting one against the other with their thick anoraks, all clumsy in heavy gloves. “If you could move out of the aisle, please.” Smiling, smiling. “Let me help you with that.” Cecilia moved alongside the Jude Law man with his Armani shirt, open at the collar, reached up to angle the carry-on luggage into the overhead bin, not looking at the thin-lipped, flat eyed woman that stood beside him.
Then the doors were shut and they were moving, and all eyes were on her as she pirouetted through the safety briefing. Smiling. Always smiling.
Trying not to smell the smoke rising from the bridges that she had burnt behind her.
They were taxiing, building pressure pinning her to her seat. Cecilia turned her head, watching pinprick lights against the dark night sky. Sighing. She had straightened her hair three times today. Teasing the fringe that curled from the damp of the snow, pulling at it with fingers that trembled, ever so slightly, knowing that it would do no good. But doing it anyway, because it was better than thinking. Anything was better than that. Then the lift. Littered lights giving way to black sea. A turn, climbing, climbing.
Cecilia leaned back in her seat. Was staring off into space, when her gaze was pulled by the sense of being stared at. The little girl was three, four maybe. Chocolate streaked across the tip of her nose, solemn jaw moving up and down, she was twisted around in her chair watching the flight attendant. She was beautiful. Dark eyes. Like Ben’s.
Cecilia looked away.
They were climbing, up through clouds. The plane shimmied, but she was looking at her reflection again, where the mascara had smudged just ever so slightly. And now she was thinking about Ben’s smell, his velvet skin, the way he slept with his mouth ever so slightly open, snoring a little boy snore. She felt sick.
A murmur rippled through the cabin, washing up at her feet, and she glanced up, looking because she was waiting for something, anything so that she didn’t have to think about the little boy she had left behind. The little girl had turned around, curling into her mother as they leafed through the pages of a book. But there were others, glancing back at her. Cecilia tugged her shirt straight. An attractive girl maybe twenty, maybe a little more, looking at her, overlarge hoop earrings swinging, and it was like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t and, biting her lip, she dropped her gaze back into her lap where her hands twisted one inside the other.
Then the plane bucked. The murmur replaced with a “whoa” of riders on a roller-coaster. Cecilia flung out her hand, bracing herself against the window.
“It’s only crosswinds. Nothing to worry about.” Her words were lost in the groaning of engines. But she said them again, whispering to herself.
The engines whirred, singing in an unfamiliar key. The girl with the hoop earrings was looking at her again, eyes wide, like she was willing her to say something. Another buck. A high pitched whining she hadn’t heard before. There was nothing beyond the windows. A sea of grey cotton breaking into darkness.
The engine was straining, a dog pulling at its leash, and now they seemed to be tilting, not climbing now but pointing upwards, steep, steeper than she had ever seen it. A solitary bottle of Dr Pepper had shaken itself loose from somewhere. It rolled down the aisle, rattling, bouncing, all eyes watching as it drifted to a stop at her feet. Then the chaos of noise vanished into a deafening silence.
And she knew.
She hadn’t said goodbye to her son. She had stood on the threshold, where the murky blue glow of Ben’s Toy Story nightlight met the darkness of the hallway, and she had watched him sleep with his arms thrown up over his head, the way he had slept ever since he was a tiny baby. And she had turned and walked away.
Someone screamed. Then they were falling.
Chapter 2
Tom - Thursday, 15th March - 6.16pm
Tom’s feet skated on black ice and for a moment he hung in the air, shoes scrabbling for purchase on the steep incline. He slid, past gluttonous wheelie bins, through the puddle of yellow light that spilled from the street lamp, back into the darkness of the alleyway, a narrow artery littered with used syringes and disco balls of silver foil, air choked with the spiky scent of urine and rot. Then ice gave way to glistening tarmac, feet settling in to solid ground again.
The heroin thin figure was just ahead, plunging through banked up snow, skin blue on drug tracked arms. Callum Alun Jones had been out of prison for just a little over a month. The iced wind pulled at his breath, throwing it back towards Tom, dousing him in sweet alcohol, the musk of cigarettes. This time Callum’s victim had been 87 years old – a survivor of the battle of Normandy, an English teacher. A tremulously thin man with a shock of white hair who had buried his wife and his youngest daughter within a year of one another, and who had spent the last six months clinging grimly to a life that had all but defeated him. He’d been sleeping when Callum had broken into his tiny terraced house, had woken suddenly, roused by something that he couldn’t identify. Had found the drug addict in his kitchen, seen Callum’s rats tail fingers closing around his dead wife’s wedding rings, and then the fists that rained down on him until everything turned red. The man had woken in the hospital two days later, face grey and eyes empty, finally defeated.