Lucy in the Sky

off the fasten seat belt sign and you are now free to move around the cabin …’
    ‘Excuse me.’
    It’s uncanny how much quicker my neighbour moves when the stench of vomit is filling the air. Sick bag in one hand, phone in the other, I edge out and begin to walk uphill to the toilet as the aircraft continues to climb. As soon as I’m inside, I lock the door and empty the revolting contents of the bag down the pan, before rinsing my mouth out with water. The diamond earrings that James bought me for my twenty-fifth birthday last October glint back at me in the mirror.
    ‘Hey, baby … Lucy, wake up … ’
    ‘Urgh.’
    ‘Happy birthday.’ James smiles, kissing my forehead. I wrestle myself awake and look at him, deep blue eyes peering eagerly into mine.
    ‘I’m so tired. What time is it?’
    ‘Six thirty.’
    ‘James, six thirty? I don’t have to get up for another hour!’
    ‘I know, but I have to go into work early. I wanted to give you this.’
    He places a silver gift box on my stomach, on top of the downy duvet. Looking at his expectant face, it’s impossible not to forgive him for the early morning wake-up call. I sit up in bed and smile at him.
    ‘I hope you like them.’
    Them? I lift off the lid to find a black velvet box. Nestling inside is a pair of diamond solitaire earrings.
    Now I’m awake.
    ‘James, these are beautiful! They must’ve cost a fortune!’
    He flashes me a mischievous grin and takes the box, carefully lifting the earrings out.
    ‘Will you put them on? I want to see what they look like.’ He hands them to me, one by one, while I fasten them to my earlobes. Then he leans back and nods his approval.
    ‘Stunning. They suit you.’
    I climb out of bed excitedly and go to the wardrobe mirror, while James flicks the bedroom halogens on. The earrings immediately sparkle, white diamonds perfectly set off against my dark hair. They’re heavy, but I love them so much I don’t think I’ll ever take them off.
    ‘Thank you.’ I turn back to him, tears welling up in my eyes. He holds his hand out to me and I crawl back under the covers and into his warm arms.
    ‘Do you really have to go into work early?’ I ask, as he starts to kiss my neck.
    ‘Nah. Well, not this early.’
    ‘You little sod…’
    He grins and undresses me until the only thing I’m left wearing are the diamonds on my ears …
    I switch my phone back on, needing to read that message again, whatever the consequences. I look at the time it came in: 9 p.m. I tried to call him on my way to the departure gate at Heathrow. He didn’t answer. Now I know why. I crouch over the pan and throw up again.
    Fatso is sitting in the aisle seat when I get back, and grumbles about me being up and down all night.
    I ignore him, while his wife smiles at me apologetically. ‘Are you alright, love?’ she asks, as soon as I’m seated. The small act of kindness breaks me. I answer ‘No’ in a small voice, and the floodgates open.
    It’s the worst flight of my life. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t concentrate on any of the films. I take a sleeping pill and as I curl my legs up underneath the window, and in between terrible dreams and recurring pins and needles, I manage to doze off. Every time I wake up, stark reality hits me and I check the time on the digital flight chart to see how much longer I have to wait before we arrive in Singapore and I can call him.
    Ten hours and fifty-one minutes…
    Seven hours and thirteen minutes…
    Four hours and twenty minutes…
    It’s agony. What if he doesn’t answer? No, I can’t think about that right now.
    James and I met at a party in London three years ago, introduced by a friend of a friend. He was already working as a corporate lawyer, while I was barely out of university. I didn’t even fancy him at first. Fairly tall at six foot, well built with shortish,sandy blond hair, he was still wearing his dark grey work suit with a white shirt unbuttoned at the top. He’d taken his tie off so he didn’t look too City Boy. But his cheeky smile reeled me in. That and his blue, blue eyes.
    On our first date he took me to the Oxo Tower, where we drank champagne looking down over the city of London and the boats on the Thames. We made love four days later in a flat that he shared in Clapham with a South African bloke named Alyn. Two months after that, I moved in and Alyn moved out. Some people thought we’d moved too quickly. I couldn’t move quickly enough.
    James paid