of us, the boarding gates appear. People, limbs, spit and sweat. Announcements hanging from the ceiling with flashing orange letters and numbers declaring the areas our flight is leaving from. Our feet brush the tiles as we surge forwards amid the slippery mass, sliding across the mirrored thoroughfare where the shoes of the students clomp down in hooves of plastic and leather, jostling, laughing, bumping into me. Head down, I bite my lip and try not to scream.
Hidden by the human cloak, we remain out of direct sight. Some metres nearer now, the men move rapidly, steady, their presence two dark monoliths against the landscape of pick-a-mix colour. My heart rate rockets. We duck, weaving, as Chris keeps watch and Patricia spreads five fingers on her thigh, but every time someone’s arm or leg grazes me, I flinch. Every time I smell their burger breath, feel the heat of their perspiring skin near me – deodorant, talcum powder, flowers and musk – I want to scream at the top of my voice, curl up into a tight ball. It is impossible to switch off.
We finally approach the flight gates, Patricia to my right, Chris to my left. We drop our speed as the students slow down lolloping and laughing at each other, and as I risk a small glance, I find myself fascinated by their ease with each other, their calmness, happiness even, transfixed at the way in which their limbs seemingly absentmindedly intertwine, vines of arms and fingers interlinking as if all branches from the same tree. They oscillate and flutter, and I imagine a shoal of clownfish swimming over into a new anemone, relaxed, loose, just another day hanging in the reef.
I unpick my gaze from the students and inspect the two men. They are talking to each other.
‘They’re calling our flight,’ Patricia says.
The entrance to our boarding gate is drenched in sunlight from a vast glass and steel dome above. Glass, steel, huge masses of heavy concrete. I do the maths in my head.
‘If a bomb went off here, the glass would shatter and kill and maim the people beneath it.’
Chris stares at me. ‘Seriously?’
‘Of course.’
‘Oh shit. Shit!’ Patricia whispers. ‘They’re looking this way.’
She’s right. ‘Walk.’
We stride, not running, not wanting to create attention. Backs straight, footing as sure as we can make it, we mimic three busy work colleagues eager to catch their business flight. Soon we reach the gate. Patricia’s face is pale. Chris’s fingers are tapping his phone.
‘Good afternoon,’ the flight attendant says, his eyebrows two tapered caterpillars. ‘Boarding passes, please.’
We hand over our travel documents, fake IDs, as from my peripheral vision I see the two men searching through the students, casting them to the side, one after the other. The lights above shine bright, a traffic of chatter and laughter pummelling the air. I count to stay calm.
‘Hurry up,’ Patricia mutters, but, just as the line begins to move again, everything stops.
The flight attendant looks to us. ‘Could you step aside for a moment please?’
‘But we’re getting on the flight,’ Chris says.
My teeth start to grind. Breathe. One, two, three. One, two, three. The men are moving towards us in the pile of students washing up near the gate.
‘We have to run,’ Chris whispers.
‘Negative.’
‘Yes,’ he insists, stronger now. ‘The attendant’s stopped us.’
‘They are nearer now,’ I say.
Patricia’s eyes go wide. ‘Oh God.’
‘God has nothing to do with…’ I halt. Something is not right. The men have stopped. Their movements – why are they now so still? Keeping my head as rigid as I can, I check the CCTV cameras, their small domed lenses, dark black caps, blinking in the nearby areas. All seems as it should, all cameras facing the correct way, all security staff, in the immediate zone at least, carrying on with their duties as before.
Patricia shuffles from foot to foot. ‘Shall we peg it? This is fecking MI5. Shit.’
I trace the outline of the officers. They may have been trained, like me, to prepare, wait, engage. Is that what they are doing now? If I were them, what would I do next?
‘Doc? Doc, I think we should move.’
‘Holy fuck,’ Chris says.
I look to him. He is staring at his phone. ‘What is it?’
‘I’ve just…’ A shake of the head. ‘No way. It’s—’
‘They’re coming!’
We look up at where Patricia is staring. The second man, the one with the slightly narrower shoulders, is touching his ear, scanning to his right and moving slowly forwards. I track his eye line, wincing at the sharp clatter of some tray that is dropped in the distance, my assaulted brain just about keeping it together. What is he looking at, the man? What can he see?
I force my brain to focus, think clearly. Maybe Chris is right – maybe the flight attendants know who we are and have been informed to keep us back and make us wait.
I turn to Chris and Patricia. ‘We must go.’
Chris points to his phone. ‘You have to see this email.’
‘Not now. We must leave first.’
We all turn, ready to duck from sight and out of the airport, my mind already fast forwarding to a next plan to hide, when the flight attendant calls to us with a bright white smile beaming on his face.
‘Hello? I’m so sorry about the short delay.’ We hesitate. He gestures over to us. ‘If you’d just stand to the side and allow our late wheelchair passenger through, who we were waiting for, then you can board. Apologies for the inconvenience.’
We look to each other, the three of us, our chests visibly deflating, eyes blinking in what? Shock? Relief? I cannot tell, but we watch a wheelchair board the ramp and, with one nod of the attendant, we follow it fast through the final doors that lead to the plane ahead.
Outside, the Madrid air hits me. Aviator fuel, warm concrete, the roar of jet engines, all of it colliding in my head. I grind my teeth and blink at the blue sky that swirls through clouds spun with cotton. I stay close to Patricia.
As we reach the door of our Zurich-bound plane, Chris stops me.
‘I got an email.’ He swallows, catching his breath. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you before.’
My heart rate shoots. Alarm bells sound. ‘From who?’
An attendant smiles. ‘Welcome to the flight. Boarding passes, please.’
I thrust her my pass, ignore her and turn to Chris. The woman frowns.
‘Who is the email from?’
Chris pauses then, lowering his voice, he tells me what I didn’t expect to hear.
‘It’s
