LITMIR.BIZ

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me help.’

      ‘Thank you,’ I said, hurling my handbag onto my seat. He shrugged agreeably, staring at his ticket as I curled up in my uncomfortable seat.

      ‘Oh.’

      ‘Oh?’ I looked up to see Adam staring at his ticket. ‘What’s wrong? Are we not sat together?’

      ‘We are,’ he said, jamming his ticket into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘But you’re in the window seat.’

      I looked out of the tiny porthole at the steaming tarmac below and saw three men in orange hi-vis vests chucking suitcases onto a conveyor belt. I watched as one fell off, bouncing along the floor before one of the men came over to kick it all the way back to the conveyor belt to try again.

      ‘Did you want the window?’ I looked out at my little square of sky reluctantly. ‘We can swap?’

      ‘No, I don’t mind,’ he wrestled his man bag from across his chest and dropped it in the aisle seat. ‘It’s just, you had the window on the way out.’

      ‘You can have the window,’ I told him, nursing my handbag. ‘You sit here and I’ll sit in the middle.’

      ‘I said I don’t mind.’

      It was funny, because he certainly looked like he minded. He looked like he minded a lot of things but since he’d been almost silent ever since we got in the taxi it was impossible to know what was going on in his head. I had read every single gossip magazine the airport had to offer while he paced up and down the terminal, shouting at the supposed restaurant owner in broken Spanish. It had been a long three hours. I wasn’t a woman renowned for her patience when it came to human beings and the thought of a twelve-hour flight back to the UK was not helping me be my most sensitive self. If he wasn’t going to explain what was going on and the rubbish app I’d quickly downloaded to translate him couldn’t explain either, I was just going to have to pretend it wasn’t happening.

      ‘Uh, I think I’m sitting next to you guys.’ A young woman with an American accent waved her hand awkwardly behind Adam’s immense shoulders. ‘22C?’

      ‘Oh, hi.’ I gave her a manic smile and nudged my boyfriend in the thigh. ‘Adam, can you move your bag.’

      ‘I’m Maura,’ she said, slipping travel-sickness bands onto her wrists and sliding assorted medications and sick bags into her seatback pocket. ‘I’ll probably sleep the whole flight, so if you need to get by to use the bathroom, just like, climb over me.’

      ‘No problem, I’m Olivia, Liv,’ I replied, pointing at myself before gesturing at the six-foot-four human partition standing between us. ‘This is Adam.’

      ‘We’re not supposed to change seats before take off.’ He grabbed his bag from Maura’s seat without acknowledging her and hugged it like a sulky toddler. She sat down, cheek to cheek against his backside. ‘But whatever. You sit in the window, I’ll sit in the middle. Again.’

      I looked up at him, all tanned and sullen, and hoped against hope that my ring was wedged right up his arse.

      ‘Why can’t we change seats before take off?’ I asked, watching as Maura in 22C swallowed a handful of little white pills without so much as a sip of water. Total pro.

      He sat down in the middle seat with a heavy thump. ‘Because if we blow up during take off, they might not be able to identify the bodies so they need to know where everyone was to distribute the remains.’

      Maura in 22C froze.

      ‘I think it’s actually something to do with weight distribution,’ I replied loudly. ‘And I don’t think it really matters that much, let’s just swap.’

      ‘No, that’s helicopters,’ Adam corrected, still cuddling his backpack. ‘With planes it’s in case all the bodies get burned up beyond recognition, then they can bury the right remains in the right—’

      ‘Just swap with me.’ I stood up and hoisted him to his feet while Maura in 22C began to cry. ‘And for god’s sake, shut up.’

      ‘What?’ he asked, wide-eyed and completely oblivious to my neighbour shaking silently as she stared at the safety card through red eyes. ‘What did I do?’

      ‘Nothing,’ I muttered, hiding behind my hair. ‘Sit down.’

      Adam kicked his bag under the seat in front and pulled his hood over his head, smiling for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long.

      ‘Liv.’

      From deep inside a dream about going out for ice cream with Brad, Ange and all the kids, I felt a stiff poke in my shoulder.

      ‘Liv? Liv.’

      Why? Why would he wake me up when it took me so long to fall asleep?

      ‘Liv.’ Adam tapped my shoulder over and over again. ‘Are you awake?’

      ‘No,’ I replied without opening my eyes. ‘I’m really not.’

      ‘I’m bored.’

      I cracked open one eye to find his face so close to mine that everything but his freckles was a blur.

      ‘Talk to me,’ he pulled the strings on his red jumper so that the hood cinched in tightly around his face until just his eyes and nose were showing, the strain showing on his stupid, handsome face. ‘We’ve still got ages.’

      ‘I know, that’s why I was asleep,’ I said, swiping at his hood. ‘Can you take that down? You look like Little Red Riding twat.’

      ‘You love it.’ Adam tied the strings in an elaborate bow underneath his chin. ‘I look amazing. I’m the amazing red-hooded yeti.’

      ‘If you say so,’ I replied with a yawn. ‘And I’m not just saying that because you’ve got food in your hand.’

      Abi had been the one to christen him ‘yeti’ when we first met. She always labelled our dates, refusing to acknowledge their real names until the relationships had been established. Adam came to be known as the yeti because none of us really believed it was possible for an eligible, handsome man over the age of thirty to move to our village with his family and therefore she considered his kind to be as rare as the abominable snowman. With his sandy blond hair, longer and shaggier than it was now, yeti worked, and yeti had stuck.

      ‘Open your mouth,’ he ordered, opening a packet of M&Ms. ‘I bet I can do it in one.’

      Somewhere far, far away, I felt my grandmother spinning in her grave. Somewhere closer, I heard Maura in 22C let out a stuck-pig snore.

      ‘You’re not throwing sweets at my face on a plane,’ I said quietly, holding up a hand in front of my face. ‘Stop it.’

      ‘You know I can do it,’ Adam repeated, readying a blue M&M. ‘Open your mouth.’

      With lips pursed tighter than the average cat’s arse, I shook my head, still mad about being woken up and slowly remembering all the other reasons I was upset with him. Last night’s weirdness, the airport phone calls and, oh yeah, the complete and utter lack of a bloody proposal.

      ‘Fine, whatever,’ he muttered, emptying half the bag directly into his mouth, slumping back down in his seat and producing a tiny can of Coke from his backpack. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

      ‘Excuse me?’ I turned so sharply a curtain of my own sun-bleached blonde hair slapped me in the face. ‘What did you call me?’

      ‘Nothing,’ he replied with a smirk. ‘Mum.’

      ‘Oh, be quiet,’ I replied, mostly peeved because he was right. It was happening more and more often, I would open my mouth and my mother’s voice would come out instead. I had Motherettes. ‘That’s so not funny.’

      ‘Oh, it’s so not funny?’ He let down my tray table without asking and placed his can in the little indentation without a napkin

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