Rather like a couple of camels.
Oh well, each to his own. The corners of Rory’s mouth twitched as the pair pulled apart for a moment and the woman, gazing dreamily into the man’s eyes, murmured, ‘Wuv you.’
Oh God, don’t do it, don’t say it . . .
The man nuzzled her, nose to nose. ‘Wuv you too.’
Eurgh, he said it. And no one else in the queue had even noticed.
Then he realised he wasn’t the only one after all; at the very end of the check-in queue was a group of girls in their late twenties, one of whom was in a wheelchair. She had cropped wavy dark-red hair and plastic tubing across her face, mask-style, feeding her oxygen. She was chalk-pale beneath a scattering of freckles and there were violet shadows beneath her huge dark eyes, but she was watching the couple and trying hard not to laugh as well. The next moment, her gaze met Rory’s and they silently shared the comedy-gold moment that everyone else had been too distracted to witness.
She looked so unwell, so thin and frail, that Rory wondered if she were actually fit enough to travel. But she was there in the queue, so she must be. And despite the obvious fragility, she was evidently still capable of retaining her sense of fun. As the couple ahead of her in the queue exchanged another noisy kiss – mwahhh! – the girl discreetly mouthed the words Wuv you and mimed sticking her thin fingers down her throat.
Wuv you too, Rory mouthed back, and she started to laugh, provoking a helpless coughing fit.
One of the officials from the airline approached the girl with a clipboard. ‘Hello, you don’t need to queue here! If you’d like to come with me, we can fast-track you through.’
‘Really? Fantastic.’ The girl’s friend swivelled the chair round and detoured out of the snaking line, to the considerable annoyance of a group of people halfway along the queue.
‘Hey, hold on! Just ’cos she’s in a wheelchair, how come she gets better treatment than we do? We’ve been stuck here waiting for half an hour . . .’
The girl coughed, looked at them and said with a half-smile, ‘I know, it’s so unfair. I’m just lucky, I guess.’
What a bunch of imbeciles. They carried on whingeing and complaining as the girl was whisked up to the desk. When she lifted herself briefly out of the wheelchair in order to disentangle the strap on her shoulder bag from the plastic oxygen tubing, they howled with fresh outrage because she wasn’t completely paralysed and could stand up.
‘She’d better not be on our flight,’ snorted one of the angry family. ‘I saw someone who looked like that on one of those hospital programmes the other week. Turned out they had Aids.’
Jesus.
‘Look, and now she’s got someone pushing her along, taking her up to Departures in a lift. She’s probably only pretending to be ill for the special treatment.’
Rory marvelled at the morons’ staggering lack of empathy. He had no idea what was wrong with the girl, but she was clearly very unwell. Imagine feeling that ill and having to deal with the ignorance of people like that.
Maybe he’d stop for a chat with her if they happened to bump into each other again.
Meanwhile, here came Den and Ehjaz now . . .
The others were so thrilled to be here at the airport, about to fly to Paris for three days to celebrate Bea’s birthday. Hallie had been looking forward to it too; having made the decision to go, she’d found herself getting more and more excited about the prospect. Their rooms in Montmartre were all booked, she’d pored over the website for so long she practically knew every inch of the hotel off by heart, and people had recommended all sorts of brilliant restaurants to visit and fantastic places to go. Tomorrow they were taking a trip down the Seine on a Bateau Mouche . . .
Everything had seemed to be going so well. For the last week, praying that she’d be OK for the trip, Hallie had actually felt fine, if anything a bit better than usual.
Until this morning, when she’d woken up feeling just that bit less well and, deep down, had recognised the early symptoms and realised she was harbouring the beginnings of yet another infection. Whether her immune system would be up to the task of fighting it off was another matter.
Maybe in her heart she’d known the truth, but desperation had led her to deny it. Like waking up in the night feeling sick and trying hard to go back to sleep in the hope that the nausea might somehow magically disappear, Hallie had resolutely ignored the signs.
But that had been five hours ago, and the infection evidently had no intention of going anywhere. Rather than fighting it off, her hopeless, feeble body appeared to be surrendering completely. She was feeling shivery and weak all over, the backs of her eyes hurt and her chest was already tightening in that oh-so-familiar way.