Polly was full of sympathy – and concern too, for losing her, plus worry, remembering that timid mess who had shown up all these months before.
‘Are you okay going to an airport and getting on a plane and stuff?’ she said, which nearly made Marisa baulk again. ‘Can’t you get the GP to prescribe you anything? Like a sedative?’
‘I’m too anxious: they don’t really work on me,’ admitted Marisa. ‘I work myself into such a state worrying they’re going to knock me out and I’ll go crazy or fall asleep on the wrong plane or have to get removed, that they don’t really do what they’re supposed to do.’
‘Oh goodness,’ said Polly. ‘What about a gin and tonic then?’
‘Same deal,’ said Marisa. ‘So scared it’ll make me crazy it makes me crazy.’
‘I am so sorry about your grandmother,’ said Polly. ‘You always speak about her so much.’
‘Just because . . .’ Marisa’s voice cracked a little. ‘She’s normally so annoying.’
Polly smiled. ‘Do you need a lift? Huckle can take you to Exeter when the tide comes down.’
Marisa had been about to say no, but realised that actually every last piece of help she could get would be good in this situation.
‘Yes please,’ she said. ‘Are you sure he wouldn’t mind? The train fare is more than the flight.’
Polly snorted. ‘It would be. No. He won’t mind.’
She didn’t add, although she could have, that Huckle’s gratefulness to Marisa was boundlessly huge.
The twins had to come, of course, and were delighted by this turn of events; they didn’t get a lot of trips in the car.
Not only did they get to squabble over one filthy and very badly cracked iPad in the back seat – they had begged Marisa to ‘borrow’ her phone, being canny, before Huckle sternly told them to button it – but there was the promise of that impossibly exotic thing, the McDonald’s Happy Meal, on the way home. Therefore they both decided to sing the entire way, leaving Huckle and Marisa not much space for talking, which Marisa didn’t mind. She looked out of the window, trying not to feel her anxiety grow as Mount Polbearne grew small in the side mirror behind her, touching distance, then gone. She wanted to reach out, run back, but she couldn’t.
‘You gonna be all right?’ said Huckle in his sunny way.
‘I think so,’ said Marisa. ‘No. Yes. Yes. I can do this.’
‘If it helps,’ said Huckle, ‘nobody likes airports. Everybody hates them. Everyone’s feeling the same as you, just on a slightly different level.’
Marisa looked at him.
‘Is that true?’
‘Of course. Hellish places.’
Marisa looked at her hands.
‘That does kind of help, actually,’ she said.
‘There you go. Also, you get a run-up.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you walked down to the bakery. Then you got in a car. Then you’ll be getting on a train. You’re working your way up in steps. Plane is just the next bit.’
‘You’re a very helpful man,’ said Marisa.
‘Good,’ said Huckle. ‘Now could you invent a honey pizza, please? Just to help things along.’
‘There is a cheese and honey pizza! With pine nuts!’ said Marisa.
‘Is there?’ said Huckle. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Revolting,’ said Marisa. ‘I mean, if you think that’s a drawback.’
‘Okay,’ said Huckle, as Daisy and Avery sang a loud and extremely rude song off the radio. ‘Well, I might have to think about it. Do you know how long you’ll be away?’
Marisa shook her head shortly. Neither of them wanted to state the truth: until they knew the outcome, either way.
‘I wouldn’t mind if Polly stopped doing pizza for a couple of weeks,’ said Huckle. ‘She needs rest.’
Marisa nodded. ‘She does. Also think of how much pent-up demand there’ll be when I get back.’
Huckle looked at her and smiled.
‘Well, look at you, all optimistic and stuff. I think you’re going to be okay.’
They pulled up outside the station which the twins mistook for the drive-through and started shouting about chicken nuggets.
‘Thank you,’ said Marisa. Inside the car had felt safe and private and contained. Outside, the world was bustling and busy and nothing like the quiet of Mount Polbearne at all, and full of people shouldering their way through normal life, whatever that was. It was undeniably unnerving.
Huckle hefted her wheelie suitcase out of the boot and watched her wheel off into the crowd, worried about her, and slightly worried about his wife if they never saw her again.
Chapter Sixty-three
She very nearly didn’t make it. It was the smell of the airport; that mix of booze and anxiety and diesel and duty-free perfume: all sorts of things bubbling up to fuel her nervousness.
It felt so familiar: the desire to press herself against the wall, to render herself invisible. There was comfort in it, somehow, the old familiar panic; the comfort of the familiar even as she knew it was coming, a storm pulling up around her, a tornado, and she was standing directly in its path, her breath growing shorter, her hands trembling with the inevitability of everything she couldn’t do, of all the way she had yet to go, of how very, very difficult it is to change meaningfully, to change yourself, to get away from what is comfortable to you; all of it is unspeakably difficult, to step out with the sandworms, and she didn’t want to. She’d rather take the punishment beating of the panic attack, even as she leaned against the wall, felt her vision clouding over.
No. No. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t just wait to be engulfed in this chest-squeezing, appalling thing she thought might kill her at any moment She wasn’t having it.
She clenched her fists and remembered what Anita and the book had said: try and control your breathing and think of your happy place. Your calm place. Remember it. Find it.
She shut her eyes tight. She could feel other people passing her, sense them looking at her, a girl in an airport corridor.
She focused hard on the sand between her toes, her grandfather’s hand . . . but it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t feel it, couldn’t block out the roaring in her ears, the sound of a tannoy, the tightness in her chest, the beads of perspiration on her brow . . . It was so hot, why was it so hot, why was she so fricking hot? She felt she was going to pass out . . . everything was going a little wobbly around the edges, as if the world was zooming in and out of focus, and oh God was she going to faint, and she tried to focus on the beach, the beach with her grandfather, but all she could think of was her nonna being taken away in an ambulance, and sometimes people did die and—
‘Excuse me, are you all right?’
It was a young, friendly-looking girl in glasses, afro, backpack, looking concerned.
‘Oh, thank you so much,’ Marisa managed to stutter out to a perfect stranger. ‘I’m fine . . . thanks for asking. I just hate flying.’
The girl smiled. ‘If you hold on to the armrests really tightly, you know, that’s what keeps the plane in the air.’