Girl on a Plane Read online

  Tim shifts the tin onto his lap, so I rest my arm on the armrest and fiddle with the built-in ashtray, opening and shutting the lid. There’s a pile of old, gray ash in there. The smell of it wafts up. David stops reading, holds his book between his knees, marking his place with a finger, and frowns at me. I stop playing with the ashtray. He goes back to his book. I notice that the woman in front of me has her hair fixed back with bobby pins; they remind me of Marni.

  Does Marni know? What will she say when she does?

  Marni, I’m being hijacked. The words rush around my head. Unleashed. Impossible to absorb. You said it hardly ever happened. But it has. Don’t let the boys fly tomorrow, Marni. Stay there. All of you. Don’t fly. The woman behind me lets out one of her shuddering sighs. Will I ever see you again, Marni? If I die, will it hurt?

  Fear prickles my skin. Tears rise. A sob grips me.

  “I HAVE TO GO!” a man shouts from behind me. “I MUST GO!” he bellows. “I HAVE TO USE THE TOILET! I MUST BE ALLOWED TO USE . . .”

  “SIT IN YOUR SEAT!” Sweaty’s voice, high and shrill, rises over his. The three of us turn around to watch, half kneeling on our seats. Sweaty charges toward the middle-aged man standing in the aisle and pushes him roughly down in his seat. The man stands back up, his face red and flustered, his gray hair tousled. There’s a scuffle. The woman behind me covers her face. The man with the bomb briefcase lifts it to his chest, hugs it as if it’s precious. The Giant strides down the aisle toward Sweaty. Both hijackers train their guns on the standing man.

  I shrink down, can’t watch, shut my eyes, wait for the shots.

  The cabin will depressurize. We’ll all be sucked out.

  My hands clutch the seat. FOR GOD’S SAKE, SIT DOWN, I scream inside. The fear in my chest, tightening like a vise, takes my breath away.

  The plane hangs in space.

  There’s a flurry of air as Rosemary, the stewardess, walks down the aisle with her hands up. “Let me help,” she says. “Please, let me help.” Her voice is clear and reasonable and calm. “The passengers will need to go to the toilets.” She keeps talking. “What about letting them go one by one? I’ll go with them. It’s not a trick, I promise. I’ll make sure nothing happens.”

  I climb back up again to peer over the back of my seat. Tim and David are half standing. The hijackers’ guns point at Rosemary now.

  “Wait here!” the Giant says, squeezing past her. He strides back to the man with the bomb briefcase and talks quietly in Arabic with him. Rosemary persuades the passenger to sit down.

  The Giant marches back down the aisle. “One only,” he says to Rosemary, holding up a finger. “With you. Only one at a time.”

  “Thank you.” She reaches out to the seated man. “Come this way.” He stands, and she follows him down the aisle to the toilets at the back.

  The man with the briefcase places it down by his feet.

  I sit back down.

  David looks at me, his face ashen. “We’re trapped inside a huge metal bomb.”

  “What if someone else does something really stupid?” I say.

  “Well, that’ll be it,” David says. “He’ll blow us up. Christ.” He looks away. “This is shit.”

  I can’t speak. My tray clatters down. I put my elbows on it and rest my head in my hands. I’m going to die here, surrounded by strangers. Disappear. Become nothing.

  The hard lump of fear in my chest flickers and glows . . . blazes. Tears sting my eyes. Endless nothing . . .

  Stop. STOP IT. Breathe. Just breathe. Say something calm.

  Calm.

  I’m Anna. I’m going to be all right.

  I’m going to be all right. Breathe. Quietly.

  Quietly . . . I was born fifteen years ago . . .

  And I hear her voice. Marni, speaking the words that used to hypnotize me to sleep when I was little: “It’s two a.m. . . . on a freezing February morning. We’re in the car, Dad and I, on the way to the hospital. But you’re in such a hurry . . .” Her voice smiles. “And then there you are—​in the car . . . eyes wide open, looking up at me, listening. All ready . . . all ready for life.”

  6

  Bahrain—​1300h

  While Anna is flying toward Beirut to refuel, her two brothers are kicking a soccer ball around on the roof of their house in Bahrain. They’ve made water bombs out of small balloons and collected them in a basket, and are waiting to throw them at the taxi driver who pretended to run them down the day before. He always cruises by about now.

  They keep looking over the balustrade, but there’s no sign of him.

  “What about that one?” Mark points at a cyclist wobbling toward them across the wasteland in a trail of dust.

  “But . . .” Sam looks doubtful.

  “Oh, come on. He’s probably the one who chased Anna.”

  When the man is under the parapet, they drop their load. The two water bombs hit the ground, making small, wet explosions in the sand by the man’s feet. He slews to one side, rights himself, looks up, and waves his fist at the two grinning faces before they duck behind the wall and roll on the roof, hooting.

  But Marni has seen the cyclist from the sitting room window and guesses what the boys are up to.

  She races upstairs and spots the pile of water bombs. “What do you think you’re doing?” she says crossly. The boys search for a reprieve in her eyes but find none. “Obviously I can’t trust you to behave up here, so you’d better go and play downstairs.”

  The boys trot down in front of her, one holding the soccer ball, the other the basket of bombs. “You’d better give the rest of those to me,” she says. “You can play in your room until lunch.” She doesn’t want anything to spoil their last day together. They’ll be back at school in England tomorrow. “And, Mark,” she calls as they disappear down the corridor, “if you’re thinking of playing rough games, put your violin away first.”

  She sits sewing the last name tags onto their uniforms at the dining room table. She hates it when they go. She’s missing Anna so much already. Missing seeing her sprawled out on the floor, stroking the dog, or spinning into the room, dropping everything she’s carrying to kiss everyone hello, or climbing into bed in the mornings for a chat.

  She folds away the last pair of shorts and thinks of Anna, way up in the sky. She hopes she has someone interesting sitting next to her. There were a few other schoolchildren at the airport, one or two Anna’s age.

  The back door slams. It’s James, coming back from work for lunch. He puts his cap down on the table and kisses her on the forehead. “Nearly there,” he says.

  “Yes, nearly there.”

  “What else needs doing?” He wipes away the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “Just last-minute packing. Call the boys. Lunch is nearly ready.”

  The shrill sound of the phone ringing echoes around the bare room.

  James picks up the receiver. “Hello, James Milton here.”

  Marni stands up and starts to pack away her sewing things. She glances up at James; something in his stance stops her. He listens for a while, frowning, then goes still, puts one hand on the table as if for support. “Yes, sir. I see.”

  Something’s wrong, something in his voice.

  Alarm flutters in her chest.

  “What exactly does that mean? Yes. Canceled. Right. Where to? RAF flight. Yes. Will do. Do you . . . ? Thank you for letting us know.” He puts the phone down, stands looking down at it.

  “What?” Marni says. “What is it?” He turns. “What?” she cries.

  He shakes his head.

  “James!”

  “Anna,” he says.

  “What? For God’s sake!”

  “Hijacked.”

  Marni’s hand shoots to her mouth. “No.” She feels both legs going, reaches out, grips the back of a chair.

  They sit opposite each other, uncomprehending.

  He puts out his hands, holds hers. “Palestinians. PFLP. Got on in India, hijacked i
t before it got to Beirut.”

  “Like those others,” she says.

  “Yes. They’re Palestinian refugees. They’ve involved the British because of the hijacker being held in London, taken off the El Al plane that was diverted to Heathrow on Sunday. They want her released.”

  “Where’s Anna now?”

  “They think the plane’s heading for Beirut.”

  “Is she alive?”

  He puts his arms around her. “They don’t know. They think so.”

  7

  Beirut—​1300h

  The hijackers have allowed the crew to hand around drinks. All the adult passengers are knocking back booze like there’s no tomorrow. Not us, though, or the Arab family opposite us. We’ve all had Cokes or lemonade. And now Rosemary and Celia, the other stewardess, are handing out white plastic trays of cold lunch. The salad is lettuce with a boiled egg on top and one of those green olives stuffed with a sliver of red. There’s a small packet of crackers, a hard little glazed roll, a rectangle of butter in silver foil that looks like a chocolate, and a miniature slab of tough Cheddar cheese in cellophane. The tiny plastic glass and teacup, the miniature salt and pepper shakers, and the plastic dishes all fitting together make me feel like I’m oversize and eating a picnic in a doll’s house.

  Up in first class, they’re sipping champagne and choosing from a cart with warm rolls, fresh cheeses, and grapes.

  But I don’t feel like eating anything anyway. My stomach’s churning. David says he’s starving, says we should eat because we don’t know when the next meal will be. He’s almost cleared everything on his tray already.

  He looks over at mine. “Do you really not want it?”

  I shake my head. “Help yourself.”

  Tim picks at his dry roll. “You know the dog you left behind, Anna? What sort was he?”

  “Well, I don’t know, really. A mongrel, I suppose. He’s honey colored, with dark patches, and he likes chasing cars.”

  He looks impressed. “If you’re missing him a lot,” he says, “I could draw him for you.”

  “That’s kind! Can you give him flying ears too?” I ask.

  “OK.” Tim pushes his tray to one side and pulls a red Etch A Sketch out of his satchel. He starts twiddling the knobs, making lines on the screen.

  “Where do you live in Bahrain, then?” David asks, wiping his mouth on his napkin. He’s really perked up since eating all three of our custardy puddings.

  “Near Juffair,” I say. “Just outside the barracks, in one of the white houses. But actually nowhere, pretty soon.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re not going back. Dad’s posting has ended.”

  “Shame,” he says. “Look.” Tim has made an angular doggy outline.

  “That’s really good,” I say.

  “Do you think they will let us get off at Beirut?” Tim asks, shading in Woofa’s dark bits. David and I exchange glances.

  But it’s Celia, collecting our trays, who answers. “We’re only refueling at Beirut.” She pushes a stray bit of hair back into her peroxide-blond bun. “We won’t be getting off, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, that settles that,” says David when she’s moved off.

  Tim shows me his finished picture of Woofa. It’s not bad. He’s chasing a car with his ears flying out behind him, but the sight of him makes me feel suddenly, intensely homesick.

  After the meal everyone starts chain-smoking. Or that’s how it feels. The cabin fills with smoke. It hangs in clouds around our heads, thick and suffocating.

  Eventually we’re told to put our seats upright and our tables away in preparation for landing. There’s an air of anticipation in the cabin, but not a healthy, relaxed sort—​more a sense of dread.

  We’ve been dropping steeply for a while, and my heart lurches when I hear the clunk of the wheels lowering. Will the government in Beirut let a hijacked plane land and refuel without doing anything to get us out? Surely they’ll try to rescue us?

  But what if they try and it doesn’t work?

  “David,” I whisper, turning my head so that Tim can’t hear, “do you think they will just let us refuel?”

  “God knows,” he says.

  “Not try to free us?”

  “I’d like to know how,” he says. “The moment they make a move, we’re finished.” I wish I hadn’t asked. “We’ll be dead meat,” he adds.

  No need to rub it in, I think.

  “Do you know what?” he says suddenly. “It’s probably better not to think about it.”

  But I can’t stop. What if landing jolts the bomb? Or someone tries to overcome the hijackers and . . . Can you storm a plane with a bomb on board without blowing everyone up? It feels as if blood is frothing in my chest.

  We’re about to land. I glimpse a green hill and some trees before I’m thrown forward and the plane touches down. It jerks and slows; the engines reverse in a deafening roar, then quiet. We’ve landed. We taxi along the main runway before turning off onto a smaller one. We haven’t blown up. WE HAVEN’T BLOWN UP!

  Everyone begins to crowd around the windows. I undo my belt and peer out of Tim’s porthole. All I can see are a few roads winding uphill, some white houses, and smoke rising. As we continue taxiing, through the windows on the other side I can just make out bits of paved runway, a bank of airport lights on red and white posts, a patch of scrubland, and, far off, a few parked planes and what must be the main airport building. It seems an awfully long way off. There are Jeeps parked outside, and there’s a crowd of people milling about, some of them soldiers.

  They don’t look as if they’re about to rescue us. They look too disorganized, almost relaxed. Don’t they realize what’s happening out here?

  But then it becomes obvious. We’ve been put as far away as possible from everything, as though we have some contagious disease, because they know we might explode at any moment, that we might be blown to pieces here on the ground instead of up in the air.

  Nothing much happens for ages. The cabin is unnaturally quiet. The cabin crew are still in their seats. We wait. Only Sweaty and the Giant are up, standing expectantly by the closed front door. What are they waiting for?

  Through the windows on the other side, I catch a glimpse of some white steps approaching across the runway, looking as though they are driving themselves, but there’s a man crouched underneath, steering them. Whose side is he on? Is he armed?

  Does he realize that if he’s not careful, the hijackers will blow us up?

  I feel as if my head will burst with it all. Suddenly the light changes at the front of the aircraft. Someone has opened the door. I think about the fresh air curling in and floating down the aisle, and I imagine getting up and running out and down the steps . . . but then what?

  There’s a brief conversation in Arabic between the hijackers and the man on the steps, and the door closes again. We’re shut back in.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I say.

  Tim stares disconsolately out of his window. “Waiting’s so boring,” he says. “Nothing’s happening, and there’s nothing to see.”

  “I can see the steps from here,” the Arab man opposite us says. “They’re on their way back to the main terminal building.”

  “Oh,” says David. “Thanks.”

  “And,” the man continues, “a yellow truck is coming out, probably to refuel.”

  We hear various clunks outside the plane. I think of all the liquid fuel pouring into the tanks, how inflammable it is—​and I push the thought away.

  “There’s a man watching the refueling, standing just below—​look, there.” Tim points. “He’s just wearing ordinary clothes. I wish he’d look up. I’ve written a message to him on my Etch A Sketch, asking him to save us. Look.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Tim. He might be a hijacker,” I say. “Better rub it out.”

  “The steps are coming back,” the man opposite us says. After a few moments, he adds, “A woman and a man are on them this
time, standing at the top.”

  The door at the front of the plane opens again. We hear the two newcomers climbing aboard and strain to look. To begin with I glimpse only the side of a shoulder. Then the woman steps into view. She glances briefly down the plane at us and then continues talking to Sweaty and the Giant. She’s youngish, in jeans, with a leather bag over her shoulder, and she’s wearing a silky silver headscarf and black-rimmed glasses that obscure her eyes. Her companion, in dull gray office trousers and a white shirt, comes over and offers her a cigarette. She takes one, and he lights it with a gold lighter. The flame blazes up, making her glasses glint. She takes a drag, turns to him, slaps him on the back, seems animated—​happy, even—​as though this is some kind of reunion, some sort of celebration.

  “Who do you think they are?” David whispers. “More hijackers?”

  “Looks like it.” My heart sinks. Now there’s no chance of rescue.

  “Just wait till I tell my friends!” Tim says. “I’ve been held up at gunpoint, sat near a bomb; that man at the back wanting to go to the toilet nearly got us all shot, and now the plane’s filling up with hijackers.” But then his face clouds over. “They won’t believe me, will they?”

  “I think they might,” I say. “It’ll probably be on TV.”

  I think of Marni, Dad, and the boys watching the news, maybe seeing footage of the plane landing in Beirut. What will they think? What will they say? Do they know I’m here? Do they know I’m still alive?

  “Are you thirsty?” Tim asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Me too.”

  “I expect they’ll put some more food and drinks on for us soon.” But no food or drinks arrive. Rosemary and Celia continue to accompany passengers up and down to the toilets. There are two at the front and four at the back. Celia is in charge of our side of the plane. She looks nervous when she isn’t flashing her fake smile.

  Suddenly a baby begins to cry. It’s a tense, high-pitched wail, of pain or panic. It sounds shocking at first and then becomes unbearable. It’s recognizable somehow, as though on some level he’s doing what we all want to. I turn to try to see the baby. They’re a few rows behind us. The mother is asking Celia whether she thinks he’s teething or has an earache. Celia looks at her as if to say, How on earth should I know? You’re the mother. But she bends down and peers at the baby.