Finding Fraser(44)

All my losses, though, paled against having to face my sister when I got home. I took that thought and tucked it in with what happened the day I met Herself, and resolved never to think of either of them again.

The taxi driver disgorged me at the airport with a handwritten credit receipt and a grunt. I scampered inside to get out of the weather and looked around for the correct airline desk. The airport was a fairly small one and there was hardly anyone to be seen. I finally found the desk I was looking for. A young man stood behind it, lifting a bag of trash out of a bin. A tag pinned to his lapel read: My name is Matthew. How can I help you?

“Hi,” I said, gloomily. “I need to change a ticket—can you do that here?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, Miss. I’m just closing down. Ye’ll have tae come back tomorrow.” He finished tying a knot in the trash bag with a tidy little snap.

I stared at him, completely without words. Everything in me—every drop of plasma, every cell, every follicle—wanted to scream my frustration into his neatly groomed face.

Instead, I did what I have vowed to never do since I read Gloria Steinem’s autobiography in seventh grade.

I burst into tears. “Everything-I-own-was-sto-ho-ho-len,” I sobbed, “and-I’m-living-on-my Vi-hee-hee-sa-card.”

“Oh dear,” Matthew said, looking desperate for someone to take the sniveling wreck off his hands. Unluckily for him, the place remained pretty much deserted.

He took a deep breath and pulled a pristine handkerchief out of his pocket.

“I’m afraid we’re out of tissues,” he said. “I’ve just thrown away the empty box.”

I accepted his handkerchief, wiped my eyes and then took a deep breath. It seemed to help. “I’m sorry,” I said, shakily. “I’ve had kind of a rough week.”

“Look,” he said. “I can see you’re very upset and I wish I could assist. But I am not authorized to reschedule flights. You can try doing it online …”

“My—my laptop was stolen, too,” I said, teetering.

“Deep breath,” he said, hurriedly. “Try another deep breath.”

By this time my glasses had completely fogged up. I pulled them off and used the only dry corner remaining of his handkerchief to wipe them. “I don’t even wear glasses in public, as a rule,” I said, pointing at my face. “But she even stole my conta-hac-hact lenses.

“Your contact lenses?” he said, sounding truly horrified for the first time. “What kind of monster steals someone’s contact lenses?”

Exactly. I sniffed and held up the hankie enquiringly.

“Go ahead,” he said, looking resigned. “You can keep it.”

I blew my nose into his handkerchief and took several more deep breaths. Something inside me felt broken. I had no idea what to do next.

A steady clicking noise coming from the other side of the desk made me look up at last. The young man’s fingers were flying across his terminal, his brow furrowed in concentration. After a few moments of unbroken typing, he smiled, and leaned over the desk.

“Look,” he whispered. “I’m not authorized to change your flight—I just don’t have the codes. But I can at least do a quick refund of your return flight cost, so you can rebook on your own. Do you have your credit card?”

I did. Still in my hand from paying the taxi driver. I slid it over the desk at him.

“Not that way, not that way,” he hissed. “Down here.” One of his hands emerged from around the back of the desk, out of sight of the CCTV cameras.

Trying to affect an innocent face, I slipped the card into his hand.

“This is the card you paid your initial booking on?” he whispered.

I nodded.

“And you swear you’ll rebook your return flight with our airline as soon as humanly possible?”

I swore. In the legal sense.

“Because I am NOT supposed to do this. If anyone asks me, I’ll have to tell them there was a mix-up or the machine failed or … something.”

Mechanical error as the go-to excuse for an airline did not make me comfortable. But comfort was not going to put a refund on my credit card.

“Works for me,” I whispered.

“Punch your PIN in now,” Matthew hissed.

After a few seconds, he slipped the card back into my hand and turned the key on his terminal.

“I’m afraid we are closed for the evening,” he said, in a suddenly loud and somewhat stilted voice. “You’ll have to return tomorrow, Madam.”

“I’ll do that,” I replied equally loudly. “Thank you, sir.”

The only person who could possibly hear us was the man rolling his cleaning trolley down the broad aisle between the empty waiting room seats. It didn’t matter. The deed was done.