I was determined to be miserable. My plane had been eight hours late leaving Heathrow, and there had been another long delay in Dubai. A Christmas visit to my daughter Amy and her family in Sydney couldn’t have had a more exhausting start.
‘Mum, over here!’
I spotted Amy at the barrier, without the children. So the twins hadn’t bothered coming to meet their grandmother.
‘Hello, darling.’ I returned Amy’s hugs and kisses, and let her take control of my suitcase.
‘What a dreadful flight you’ve had,’ she said. ‘You’d best take off your coat, it’s boiling outside. If the plane had arrived earlier, we’d all have been here, but the twins went to a Christmas party and Tom drove them there.’
We walked into the glare of the afternoon sky.
‘I hope your car’s air-conditioned.’
Was that all I could say when I’d only seen Amy on Zoom for months? If Derek had been here, he’d have had a piece of me. But Derek wasn’t here.
Amy stopped at a blue SUV and stacked my luggage
