Page 10 of Girls Just Want to Have Sun

His knuckles are white as he grips the armrest. His chest is billowing out increasingly quickly. He’s obviously having a panic attack. I open my mouth to speak but he hand-blocks me again.Fine.I grab the sick bag from the seat pocket in front of me. With one hand nursing my poor throbbing eye, I hand him the bag with the other.

‘I’m not going to be sick,’ he states bluntly.

‘It’s not for that,’ I say. ‘Breathe slowly in and out of it. You’re hyperventilating.’

He turns his wild eyes on me, sweat pouring down his forehead. I demo it for him, but he shakes his head.

‘You’re having a panic attack. You need to close your eyes and blow into this paper bag.’ The pilot throws us around a bit more and the plane dips onto its side and back up straight again. My stomach lurches, and I can hear retching noises from further down the aisle.

‘Okay,’ he says, studying me for a brief second before warily taking the bag and closing his eyes.

‘It’s so your brain can send signals back to the amygdala to say that you’re calming down and that everything’s okay,’ I urgegently as he puts the bag to his mouth. He has perfectly generous lips, I’ll give him that.

The cabin lurches about again, causing several passengers to start praying loudly and voicing regrets. It’s very off-putting. I should take his mind off our possible imminent death. I peer out of the window to see towering hotel and apartment blocks glistening in the distance.

‘Did you know that Benidorm has over three hundred skyscrapers?’ I yell at him.

The bag billows in and out.

‘And a thousand bars. In fact, it’s cheaper to drink beer there than water.’

What else did Google tell me?

‘It has the highest pickpocket rate in Europe, so I’ll need to be careful,’ I say, sounding rather like I’m in charge of government foreign travel advice. ‘Oh yes, and it has a nudist beach and a restaurant especially for the Germans, dedicated entirely to sausage.’

He opens one eye, sliding it my way.

Christ, he’ll think I have sex on the brain.

‘And yet millions of people still want to go there.’

Well, that’s the Benidorm chat out of the way, and Mr Window Seat is showing no visible signs of interest.

We finally drop below the air pocket and the aircraft flies smoothly downwards, touches down on the runway and brakes to a stop.

As the whole plane erupts in relieved applause, Mr Window Seat and I sit in silence. I keep eye contact with him the entire time. While everyone is jumping up and grabbing their bags, desperate to get off the plane, we stay where we are, and I count with him. Soon his breathing becomes normal again and he takes the bag away. He looks like shit. Suddenly, I’m exhausted and wilt back against my seat. I hear, ‘Harlem Shuffle!’ but I amliterally too drained to care. He raises a tiny smile, and his face instantly softens, which transforms him, causing me to become self-conscious. I’m drawn to his eyes, which are incredibly dark and striking, just like the rest of him.

‘Let me see your eye,’ he says as I gingerly take my hand away. It is stinging like mad. His face drops instantly. ‘Sorry about that,’ he says. ‘But in fairness, you were a little too close to me for the entire flight.’

Rise above it. Be civil.

Tash yells up the plane to me that we have to wait until last because they’ll bring a wheelchair to carry her off. I quickly scoop up my belongings off the floor, which is littered with stuff that has been hurled around, and get up to let him out.

‘Is this yours?’ he asks, squeezing into the aisle with me. He tugs my case free from the overhead locker, the sleeves of his T-shirt clinging gently to his bulging biceps as he puts it down with a heavy thump.

‘It’s the standard 10-kg allowance and the rest is all emotional baggage,’ I joke nervously. ‘It’s the fear of what’s waiting for me in Benidorm.’

He doesn’t seem to find this funny and reaches above me to get his bag. We are stuck waiting for the cabin crew to open the doors. The seconds tick by like hours. Our eyes wander the cabin awkwardly until they connect for the fourth time.

He still seems incredibly tense and, because the sheer relief of landing safely and the gust of fresh air from the doors finally opening has suddenly turned me into Mary Poppins, I say, ‘Well, it was jolly nice to meet you.’

Why? Why am I like this?

I feel the heat rushing to my cheeks at his borderline-hostile stare. ‘Where are you headed?’ I ask to defuse the tension. ‘Somewhere nice?’

‘Home,’ he says in an unimpressed tone. ‘To Benidorm, actually.’

Oh.

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