✅ The Last New Start [NaNoWriMo2021]

83. Arrivals

The airport was a familiar scene to Tess. They were the same all around the world, even when they did things in a different order. Tess thought she'd arrived at this one before, although she couldn't remember for sure. There were people moving in all directions, trying to work out where to go next. Tess saw a huge room with a forest of waist-high poles sticking up from the ground, a labyrinth of tapes stretched between them. Somewhere at the far side were customs desks, where they would be checking the status of everyone coming into the country from Europe. She looked over her shoulder briefly and saw a machine dispensing cheap coffee at an inflated price; and on the other side quite a few people running to the bathroom.

The queues were short now. Her flight was already twenty minutes later than they had expected due to an unusual headwind, whatever that meant, and she knew that if she took a five minute break now, it would add at least half an hour onto her time coming out of customs. She shrugged and paced rapidly towards the back of the queues. She didn't stop moving even while she glanced at the overhead signs to see where to join the green process ("citizens returning from countries with a 138.81c reciprocal security agreement") queue. She stood a polite distance from the back of the person in front, and pulled out her phone to send Ffrances and Gabby a message saying that she had arrived; and to let her parents know that she was back on the ground.

Her instincts were proved right less than ten minutes later, by which time a good portion of the queue in front of her had already been dealt with. The doors behind her opened again and a crowd of people surged into the room. The next flight to arrive after hers, she presumed. The open spaces at that end of the room were filled with people pushing past each other and talking at cross purposes. Anyone coming out of the bathrooms now would find a solid queue that might take an hour to process. Even in the green lane, which was among the fastest moving, it looked like the queue was more than double the length it had been when Tess arrived.

While she waited, Tess found time to do some important things as well. Like booking a doctor's appointment through a confidential clinic's mobile app. It meant she would have to travel to the far side of Ashfields, but it also meant that there was no chance anyone she knew, or their relatives, would find out about the problems she had been having. Once that was done, she alternated between playing Bubble Hunt Magnate on her phone and looking at the people around her as the queues moved in different directions. Some of the lines were moving a lot slower than others, and there were people dressed in so many different styles that she could only guess at where in the world they might have come from. Watching people wasn't much entertainment, but it meant that her phone's battery would probably last until she could meet up with Ffrances. She was a little excited by that; not least because she was thinking about being hypnotised again and all the fantasies that it might help her to fulfil; not just because Ffrances's words had been dripping into the back of her mind while she listened to that recording earlier and she was eager to find out how it could make her feel. But also because she'd received a message on the way to say that Ffrances had something good to show her if Gabby wasn't sticking her nose in.

She didn't actually know who would be coming to pick her up today; it all depended on how tired Ffrances was after a hectic week of volunteering in addition to an already packed schedule, and whether Gabby could manage to entertain herself for a day. But Tess knew she would be able to see Ffrances and find out what this message was sooner or later, and she was sure it would be something to get excited over. In a lot of ways, Ffrances seemed to spend her whole life being strong for other people, as if giving everyone else what they wanted was some kind of obligation. That was the main reason that Tess was going to go through with this childish Christmas scenario. She wanted to see Ffrances getting what she wanted for a change.

As the front of the line grew closer, she started getting impatient. She had an empty water bottle in her hand now, passing it from one hand to the other. It wouldn't quite fit into her pocket, and there was nowhere within reach that she could throw it away. But more importantly, it felt like it had been an hour or more since she got off the plane. She knew the lines were long, but they shouldn't be moving this slowly. She should have stopped to use the bathroom before joining the queue, even if that would have meant another half hour standing in line. The pressure in her bladder was starting to feel urgent now. But she felt calmer about it when she saw that there were only six people in front of her now. It wouldn't be long before the uniformed man at the desk was glancing over her forms and asking about her souvenirs.