Waterwings

By Mike C Sloan

Mystery shrouds the disappearance of an American airliner near Tahiti - and a young survivor must cope with a virtual tsunami of terror, twisted passion and tragedy in the Pacific, but is she really just an innocent victim Surviving a mid-air disaster, cute and quirky Los Angeles teen, Charlotte O'Donnell and her conservative mother are marooned on an uninhabited island with just one other survivor: Ray Hutchinson, a London drug dealer. Charlotte's mother is badly injured and is forced to relinquish responsibility for her daughter, to the whims of criminal Ray - a man who is discovering the flip side to many a man's favorite fantasy. Meanwhile, New Zealand oceanographer Tom Fitzgerald and his wife - a couple who lost more than most in that disaster - set sail on a quest for answers. But in the U.S., new evidence transforms their innocent journey into a voyage through a political and cultural minefield. How much of this, if any, is the fault of the beautiful but enigmatic Charlotte

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447563396

Book preview

Waterwings

A novel by Mike C Sloan

Waterwings ISBN: 978-1-84799-774-6

eISBN: 978-1-44756-339-6

Second Edition 2009

with very last minute corrections, a slightly expanded prelude and some improvement to sentence structure and overall quality of writing within the narrative.

Copyright (except satellite image) © 2005-2007 Michael C. Sloan.

All rights reserved.

American English with some phonetic substitution.

All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Grateful thanks to Jane Playdon for cover art and also for help and guidance.

Thanks to Angel Editing for corrections.

Acknowledgments to Ron Falconer for his observations within his book: ‘Together Alone’, and NASA ‘Johnson Space Center’, for license-free original satellite image.

NOTE

This book contains some material of a sexual nature, and may be unsuitable for persons under the age of seventeen.

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Caroline Atoll (a.k.a. Millennium Island) Republic of Kiribati, mapped from a satellite image.

Original image courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center. http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov

PRELUDE

Peter Garcia Lopez replaced the handset, shook his head and shuddered at the colossal responsibility that his job demanded; an insane job really, and one that paid surprisingly little relative to its importance. Peter was not the greedy type however; it was enough, and he was doing the right thing, on the right side. His parents were proud of him.

He looked again at the very short stretch of the river that was visible through the tall narrow window.

For better or worse, it was done now. There could be no going back.

He turned to the comforting postcard on his desk; it had been sent two weeks ago, but arrived only yesterday. It was one of the better ones with saturated color printed on glossy heavy card. The image was as ever, the rock of Gibraltar, his home territory, but from a new aerial angle he hadn’t seen before. He flipped it over and read again, the greetings from his fiancée.

Dear Peter, it began in English.

It still annoyed him slightly that everyone here referred to him as Pedro; and yet back home on Gib, even visitors from the UK called him Peter. His mother had given birth to him in The Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead but he had spent his childhood on Gib and his youth on a cousin’s farm in Uraguay. Brits outside their own country, he thought, always wanted to recognize perceived compatriots, but at home they tended to narrow their vision; here in Britain he was assumed to be Spanish; and of course, with a name like Lopez, it was difficult to counter. The door opened, it was his boss, a man who was by his own admission, as British as a wet bank holiday.

‘Afternoon, Pedro, how did it go?’ Peter’s boss stood in the open doorway, a gray-haired man in his late fifties, he looked like he had never smiled, though on this occasion smiling could hardly be less appropriate.

‘Good afternoon, sir, yes,’ Peter paused to draw breath before finishing. ‘It’s done. They have taken it on.’

The two men stared at each other, poker-faced, for several seconds until Peter’s boss said ‘When will we know the details?’

‘I think… in the New Year.’

‘Hmm. You going home for Christmas?’

Peter was not taken aback by this sudden change of subject; in fact it was normal. ‘Yes sir, I’m flying out tomorrow. And you?’

‘Yes, indeed… our house in the country.’

‘Have a nice time, sir.’

‘Thanks. All the best.’

The door closed behind Peter’s boss and instantly reopened.

‘I’m err… I’m worried about Hutchinson, he’s not very bright, but he has lived in London for forty years… maybe we can kill two birds with one stone.’

‘Sir?’

‘An old English saying, Pedro… see you in the New Year.’

The door closed once more. Peter was familiar with the saying, but was curious to know what exactly his boss had in mind. He stared at the door for a few seconds, half expecting it to reopen, but when nearly a minute had passed he cleared his desk, picked up his briefcase and took the opportunity for an early finish. His family would be pleased to see him and no doubt they would enjoy this Christmas and the New Year as much as any other, but then, they didn’t know, and would never know, what he knew.

CHAPTER ONE

Early on the cold gray afternoon of the nineteenth of January, an adolescent girl of about five feet two stepped down from the 'Tide Shuttle’ at the southern limit of its route, and followed the path alongside the narrow greensward that separated the road from ‘the boardwalk’. Ahead of her was the Pacific Ocean. At her back, the entire continental United States, beginning with that sprawling monster, Los Angeles.

Even by the common standards one would expect of a healthy young female, she was exceptionally and naturally attractive: slim, blond, good skin, blue-gray eyes, wide cheekbones, pixie nose and a perfect jaw line. Unlike many of her school friends, she wore no make-up and on such a face, adding it – according to her mother – would be like sticking ‘go-faster’ stripes on a Lamborghini.

Charlotte had arrived at her favorite place: Venice Beach, though it didn’t look its best right now. She zipped up her padded foam jacket to protect her from a cold breeze that was blowing in from the uncommonly gray ocean, and she turned south, along the boardwalk. Relieved from the noise of the bus, she restarted her mp3 player and smiled approvingly as it began playing the New Radicals’ teen anthem: 'You Get What You Give'. She adjusted her step in time with the music, and walked past the old bungalows, the new designer homes that were slowly replacing them, the sidewalk cafés and the few traders’ stalls whose owners were brave enough to open on a day like today.

This, she thought, should be the quintessential Southern Californian scene; now, on this dull and gloomy afternoon, it seemed somehow corrupted, damaged, the color all washed out of it by weather more appropriate for somewhere much further north. At weekends, even in winter, Ocean Front Walk, as it was properly called, would be packed with tourists and locals alike, most of the latter on roller-blades, skateboards, cycles or some other quirky, back-yard produced method of transportation. But it was a cloudy Wednesday afternoon in January. This, the only part of the vast metropolis she really liked, seemed as depressing as anywhere else in LA on a day like today.

Ignoring the gray horizon, she looked down at her new moon-boots instead. How appropriate they were, she thought, both for her and the present conditions. She admired them a little longer and looked up. Just ahead, an LAPD patrol car was standing on the intersection with Rose Avenue, but the presence of the police didn’t bother her here. By contrast, the Santa Monica Police had already accosted her twice this month, once for jaywalking and once – more seriously – for not being at school when she should have been. She always felt more comfortable outside their area of jurisdiction and wished once again that she still lived here, the place where she had spent her earliest years, rather than ‘sterile’ Santa Monica. Then again… life was becoming so confusing! She walked past the police and continued south.

Another, more familiar scene caught her eye ahead; now this was Venice Beach: a man, about thirty she guessed; long dark hair in a ponytail, and wearing only shorts, t-shirt and roller blades, was skating rapidly toward her. The weather apparently had no influence on him; he was smiling. It appeared that he would pass her on her right, but as a skater herself, she knew he would be likely to change course almost at the last second; it was the skater’s prerogative. He didn’t disappoint; he swung suddenly to her left, slowing slightly, looking closely at her as he did so. He passed behind her, slowing further, curving back on a reciprocal course to face her once again. Completing the loop, he looked her in the eyes and shook his head slowly. She interrupted both her progress and her music player, expecting him to say something. He breathed a single word, barely audible to her after the loud music, although the body language alone would have been enough.

‘Whaow!’

She turned, wide-eyed, to watch him resume his progress, head still moving slowly from side to side, and wondered what had made him react so blatantly to her appearance. She looked herself up and down, then smiled as she remembered another similar event just before Christmas on Santa Monica Pier: grown up guys; men as opposed to boys, were starting to take serious interest, even if it was only in her appearance. Three and a half weeks from her fifteenth birthday, she was hardly grown-up in the opinion of adults, but the possibility of having adult friends that didn’t appear to treat her as a child filled her with excitement and a sense of freedom. She continued her journey south.

The music had changed to ‘The Doors – Light My Fire’. A few yards from the boardwalk, near the intersection with Wave Crest Avenue was the entrance to her friend’s tiny, first floor studio apartment. As the music entered its classic finale, she turned the last few yards of her walk into an impromptu dance; spinning around, hands in the air, index fingers pointing horizontally outward, prodding the cool damp air; she arrived with her back to the door, spun one hundred and eighty degrees to face it and – having timed it to perfection – hit Francisca’s door buzzer on the very last note of ‘Light My Fire’, and laughed as she realized the two tones matched.

‘Hello?’

‘Francisca, it’s me. Charlotte!’

There was a short delay that would have gone unnoticed by anyone who did not know Francisca, but it was long enough for Charlotte to react by moving her head slightly, as if she had missed the response. Her friend’s reply seemed to contain relief.

‘Hi Bubba, come on up.’

Francisca was the only person Charlotte allowed to call her a name other than Charlotte. One school friend had adventurously tried Lottie, but she hadn’t liked it. Bubba may have sounded tacky to a third party, but it was not an abbreviation. Francisca was older than she by three years, and it was instead a made up reference to Charlotte’s comparative youth, as well as, Charlotte assumed, a term of endearment.

Her friend swung around from a computer screen just as Charlotte appeared in the upstairs doorway.

‘Hi Fran! How are ya?’

‘Hiya, I’m fine; I wasn’t expecting anyone. Hey, I love the boots!’

‘Aren’t they cool… they’re the only thing Mom’s got me in six months that are truly great.’

‘You know where she got ’em?’

Charlotte eyed the freshly squeezed orange juice Francisca was in the habit of making.

‘Oh you wan’ a juice, I just made some?’

‘Yeah thanks, I dunno where she got them, I’ve seen similar here and in the Goodwill Store, but they’re tan-colored and they don’t look so good, right?’

‘Right.’

‘I gotta take ’em off inside, so they don’t cook my feet.’

‘White, black and silver-gray!’ Francisca felt the need to comment on the color scheme of her friend’s outfit.

‘Huh?’

‘You don’t just know the weather, you match its mood!’

Fran replied, moving into the kitchen.

‘It isn’t a color kinda day, Fran; have you been outside? It’s fifty-five – though it’s s’posed to be sixty tomorrow.’

Francisca smiled. ‘Grab a seat on the sofa, Bubba. So what, school out?’ Fran said loudly, moving around in the kitchen.

‘I had an appointment with the dentist this morning. I don’t have to wear a brace anymore, check it out…’ Charlotte stood up, walked into the tiny kitchen and bared her teeth for Francisca to see.

‘Did it hurt?’

‘Not really, but I told Mom it was really sore, she believed me! She gave me the rest of the day off, so here I am!’

‘You’re always welcome. You wan’ ice? I got plenty.’

‘Sure, Fran.’

Francisca emerged from the messy kitchen and placed a glass of recently squeezed orange juice on the only vacant coffee-table space. ‘There you go.’

So cluttered with papers, posters and various bits of artwork and materials was the living space that the owners – if they could see it – would classify it a fire risk.

Back on the sofa, Charlotte struggled to remove her boots. ‘Hey, you know what?’

‘What?’

‘A cool-looking skater dude just looked at me outside and said like wow!’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘Yuh, he was admiring me!’

Francisca ran a hand through her unruly mop of jet-black hair. ‘You surprised? You’ve got looks to die for; you know that? Especially now you’ve lost the brace. I thought you looked happy.’

Francisca had clearly been working on something that Charlotte as yet, knew nothing of. Her friend began shutting down a PC on the right of the one she normally had in use. ‘What are you doing today, Fran, you working?’

‘Well, Bubba… I don’t really think of it as work, like… I’m not getting paid for this.’

‘OK,’ was Charlotte’s tuneful response. Francisca was involved in so many things, she had lost track of where her friend was getting her income.

Fran sat down in front of the still-running computer. ‘I’m designing a poster that emphasizes the diversity, artistry and spiritual freedom of the people of this neighborhood, in a way that makes it unappealing to bankers and property developers.’

‘What?’ asked Charlotte, impressed but puzzled.

‘Here, take a look.’ Her friend motioned her over.

‘Why have you got two PC’s now, Fran?’

‘Oh this one, the hard disk’s just full… and I needed a hardware update, I mean seriously. I got that one cheap, from a friend on Pico… I’m still fixing it up.’

Francisca introduced her to the new project as it came up on screen. ‘Notice that it’s all Venice graffiti style; with mostly black and Latino figures. Not the kind of scene that will appeal to loaded white professionals.’

‘Wow, you did all this artwork? It’s great, Fran.’

‘Well, you know I’m the treasurer of the Save Venice Beach Group. This poster will be all over the place soon… we’re organizing a fund-raising march. It’s gonna be great.’

‘You think it’ll work?’

Francisca breathed in and then sighed. ‘Well if it doesn’t, it’ll be lawyers, bankers and marketing jerks, all the way from Santa Monica to Newport Beach inside five years. The Pacific Coast will be somewhere for ordinary people just to visit, but not live.’

‘Where will you go?’ said Charlotte, suddenly realizing that her friend was vulnerable.

‘Back to Mom’s I guess; or inland, Montebello, Pico Rivera, wherever I can afford.’

‘East LA? Yuk! I can’t imagine you living anywhere but here, Fran, it’s just all wrong.’

‘A lot of people of my race live there, Charlotte,’ said Francisca, tapping the skin of a brown arm.

‘I know, I don’t mean that, Fran,’ said Charlotte apologetically. ‘There’s nothing there. Nothing for anyone to do, except like, get in trouble.’

‘I know.’ Francisca shot her an artificial smile. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, Mom got the tickets. You were right, it was cheaper with Pacific Air.’

‘So you’re flying next Friday, right?’

‘That’s right. There’s only three flights a week. Thanks for fishing that out for us! If only I wasn’t going with my mother.’

Francisca seemed to have something troubling her. She looked nervous.

‘You OK?’ Charlotte asked.

‘Sure. Just pressure of work y’know… oh, I’ve downloaded some more music for you, here.’ Francisca handed her friend a CD. ‘It’s European trance, you’ll love it.’

‘Hey, thanks Fran, I dunno where you find the time to do all this, you always seem so busy.’

‘Well, now I’ve got two PC’s, I can do two things at once.’

Francisca smiled, and planted a cigarette clumsily into her mouth, before scrambling across her numerous work surfaces for a light, disturbing Charlotte’s mp3 player as she went. ‘I thought your Mom was gonna get you an iPod?’

‘She can’t afford it right now; I’m stuck with this one ’till summer. Hey, did you know your door buzzer sounds exactly the same as the last note of The Doors – Light My Fire?’

Francisca stared at Charlotte for a second, unconfortably reminded that her friend was exactly that. ‘It does?’

‘Yep,’ laughed Charlotte, ‘it does.’

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An hour or so later, and back in Santa Monica, Charlotte slammed the door of her mother’s Twelfth Street apartment behind her.

‘Is that you, honey?’ her mother called.

‘Who else?’ she replied in her usual – where her mother was concerned – offhand manner.

‘Oh, honey?’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘The new Harry Potter movie is on at The Criterion.’

‘Oh yuh?’

‘Well, don’t you wanna see it?’

‘I guess.’

‘Come ’ere, lemme see your teeth.’

‘Oh…’ sighed Charlotte, and reluctantly halted her progress toward her bedroom. ‘I have to remember to open my mouth when I smile.’

‘You’ll get used to it… aww, isn’t that great?’

CHAPTER TWO

The phone rang again; reminding Ray one last time of the tedium that his occupation had somehow become. He walked out of the bathroom, picked it up and checked the display. This time it was Todd. The only exception among a quartet of Antipodeans, whose names all ended in ‘o’: Benno, Jono and one more he had forgotten. He answered.

‘Hi Ray. Any chance of the usual?’

He replied through a mouthful of toothpaste. ‘Nah, mate, Ah fought ah’d told everyone. Ah’m goin’ on ’oliday, mate, packin’ me bags. Brain Death’ll look after ya. Yer got his number?’

‘You mean Skinny Jim?’ Todd laughed. ‘Ar goddit mate yeah, ’e’s a fried egg short of a brekkie all right. How long you goin’ away for?’

‘A month, an’ ar need it.’

‘Course ya do, mate, course ya do. Well, ’ave a good one mate, I’ll see ya when ya get back, ay?’

‘See yer Todd. Adios.’ Ray remembered the other one, Danno. He held the power button long enough for the screen to go blank. He hadn’t seen it that way for… he couldn’t remember how long.

Ray was a drug dealer. Coke, pills, smoke, trips, the Full Monty; two years now. He wouldn’t have chosen this path, who would? he asked himself. Born of an Islington, working class family, he had done badly at school and had lacked both the confidence and the ambition to find a decent career and stick to it. He just wanted an easy life, and getting to know a fair number of users over the years seemed to offer a path forward. The fact that it was a crime, the fact that he had become a user himself, especially with the white stuff, had only seemed a slight disadvantage at first, now he was not so sure.

The business had started small, as these things do, but one thing led to another. In no time at all, he found a nice, clean, top floor flat in a converted Victorian house, on a quiet street in the ‘much sought after’, north London suburb of Stoke Newington. Fast-forward another year and he could afford a month on a South Pacific Island with two thousand in spending money: a childhood fantasy about to come true.

At school, he had loved novels about nineteenth century travelers, shipwrecked on a south sea island paradise. What a contrast; he thought amusingly, to a cold, grimy and depressing London in January. Of course, it had eventually all gone wrong for the castaways in those classic novels: they died of thirst or starvation, or else they were murdered by the natives, or, in some cases, eaten alive by them. Apparently, on some islands years ago, unfortunate strangers had had one arm cut off with surgical accuracy and were then forced to watch it cooked in front of them, before having it handed to them as an appetizer. This, however, was the twenty-first century, and Ray was in possession of a return air ticket and a reservation at an attractive hillside villa, on the gloriously exotic-sounding island of Rarotonga. No more meetings in dark side streets, no more stress and nightmares and no more bullshit for an entire month. Not before time. Nowadays, he had grown tired of it all. It all seemed to add up to a total lack of respect both for himself and everyone else.

He finished brushing his teeth and looked in the mirror. The smile that had formed on his face during his conversation with his old customer Todd had melted away, and a blank expression stared back at him. Forty years old last week, six feet tall, reasonable shape, dark, hirsute, but with short hair and clean-shaven; slightly overweight from too much creamy pasta and beer, but with a face that was as interesting, he reckoned, as it was good-looking. Well, not bad-looking by anybody’s standards. He had always compared people’s appearances – and his own – to well-known celebrities. At times, he felt he had more than a passable resemblance to Bruce Willis, albeit, not so muscular, but at other times, just himself. The entry buzzer to the street door sounded.

‘Allo?’ It was his cab. ‘OK, mate, ar'l be right down.’ He put his toothpaste, brush and electric razor into the vanity bag and threw that into the flight bag, checked for his passport, tickets, cards and money, grabbed his case and keys and listened to the satisfying sound of the front door clanking shut behind him. He turned the key in the mortise.

‘Paddington station, please mate.’

He could have afforded a taxi all the way to the airport, of course, but was worried about the notorious jams on the M4.

A friend had missed his flight to Berlin for that very reason just two months ago.

His ‘punters’ – the customers – were he hoped, in good hands. ‘Brain Death’, or ‘Skinny Jim’ as he was also known, occasionally fucked up, nutcase that he was; but was otherwise reliable and, more importantly for Ray, loyal. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of vehicle horns in combat: the seventy-three bus route had recently converted to articulated vehicles and one of them was trying to negotiate the junction of Albion Road and Church Street, but a truck was too far across the mini-roundabout to provide enough space for the bus to turn. They both had to back up slightly.

It took only a second for the cab driver to voice his opinion about it, ‘These bloody ‘bendy’ buses take up too much space on the road! Someone should tell that loony at Tower Bridge, London’s roads are too small for ’em. Where’s he fink this is, Paris? They got boolavards over there. They got the space for ’em. E’ll be puttin’ tramlines down in Oxford Street next! They’ve already got ’em in Croydon. Bloody nightmare! Ar could make a better job of runnin’ this city than ’im!’

For the next forty minutes, Ray listened to the cab driver complain about the congestion charge, the cost of his mortgage, the government, immigration and the density of loonies per square mile in certain suburbs of London; he wondered how long it would be before he finally got onto the subject of drugs, but it never happened. Perhaps that was the only subject he didn’t feel sufficiently familiar with, to comment upon.

‘There yer go, mate. Keep the change.’

‘Thanks, mate. ’Ave a good trip.’

On the Heathrow Express, surrounded by mostly empty seats in pairs, Ray was reminded of the reason for his being a lone traveler. Six months ago, Carla had left him; even the coke couldn’t keep her after she had found someone else to feed her in more ways than one. The sex had been a waste of time after he had given up trying to control the rhythm between them, or rather, the lack of it. He failed to understand how two people could be so ill-matched in their attempts at synchronicity. Carla had preferred intercourse on all fours. A position he would normally be happy to take. But it was only possible if he put all his effort into keeping her still, or trying to move in time with her own jolting, asynchronous lurches, that – and he cursed as he recalled – often resulted in accidental withdrawal. He couldn’t enjoy himself. He had tried mentioning it, of course, but she had freaked on him. She had blamed it on him. He had blamed it on the coke, but he had never come across the problem with other women, and was certain it wasn’t his fault.

Then there was the tattoo on her lower back; a snake, coiled around some kind of shield. He hadn’t liked it. It was tacky, reminding him of the kind of tattoos men used to have on their arms not so long ago: Mum and Dad or Jesus. He had admitted that he hadn’t understood it, but his eyes had been constantly drawn to it, though there was nothing sexy about it. To him, it was a deliberate, misguided disfigurement.

It’s just décor, she had told him. Oddly, it had seemed to mean little or nothing to her, despite the pain and expense of having it done. If it was décor, then it was the equivalent of a Victorian hunter’s trophy, Ray thought. A stuffed grizzly bear’s head – slavering jaws and all – sticking out of a wall in an otherwise tastefully furnished room; totally off-putting. Yet in a way, he still loved her. He certainly missed her. She was a soul mate in many ways, but now she was gone.

There was at least, an upside to all this; her departure had meant that he had cut down on his own usage. That had seemed to improve his health. He felt almost human these days.

As the train accelerated into the suburbs of west London, Ray began thinking about the journey ahead; he had to change planes in Los Angeles. He wondered again whether he should have included a few days stopover there. He had never been to America, never even flown before. In fact, the furthest he had been until now was across the channel to France, it seemed a waste to be passing California and not experience one little piece of it; but Los Angeles, by all accounts, was anything but little, and he was tired of big city living, and all its expense and restrictions. There was another reason for not stopping in America: he was worried about the questions they might ask, and the records they may have access to. Ray already had a criminal conviction. He had decided at the time of booking that it wasn’t worth the risk. Anyhow, he told himself, Los Angeles had nothing to offer him. Surely it was just another London in a sunny climate. As for the people: more drug dealers, he imagined. Same bullshit, different flavor. He had long since realized that he hated dealers, even though he was one himself, and it was nothing to do with the competition.

I’m in the wrong business, he thought.

Perhaps this trip – a far-flung odyssey – would inspire him to turn over a new leaf, to find some other way of making a living.

A dull orange gleam of winter sunlight pierced the train as it turned south toward the airport. He thought about his luggage, and smiled as he remembered how, late last night, in a sudden attack of paranoia, he had reopened his case and tore out all the carefully packed clothes and searched the pockets again for incriminating chemicals, or evidence of their existence. Anyone who had seen him would have treasured the comedy. He had found nothing. Ray relaxed as the train dived below ground and passed beneath the airport perimeter. White lights, fixed to the tunnel walls, flashed past the windows at regular intervals. In less than twenty-four hours, the cold, gray deadness of London would be replaced by bright tropical light, strange Polynesian culture and – he hoped – beautiful, sun-tanned young women, at least to look at.

CHAPTER THREE

Louise heaved her case into the trunk and span around to shout at the entrance to their apartment block. ‘Charlotte honey, c’mon, how long does it take?’ Her daughter appeared in the doorway laden with cases and bags.

‘Mom, we’ve got three and a half hours!’

‘Listen, honey, it’s LAX. We’re not flying from Santa Monica, ya’ know.’

‘So what. It’s ten miles. No big deal,’ Charlotte challenged.

‘And it’s a two hour check-in,’ her mother concluded. She surveyed her daughter’s luggage. ‘Jesus, honey, do you really need all that?’

‘I can take two pieces plus carry on.’

Her daughter didn’t look too happy, Louise thought. Though there was nothing new in that. The two of them struggled with the luggage until it