Page 99 of The Christmas Holiday
Chapter Twenty Two
Half an hour later we were back at the hotel, in Hunter’s room, warming up with coffee and choosing food from the room-service menu. He rang through and placed the order while I sat on the couch and peered out of the window at the London streets below, watching the lights, the bustle of people, and wondering if I really wanted to hear everything I’d made such a fuss aboutbeing told.
‘You OK?’ Hunter pulled the chair away from the desk and set it opposite me, before sitting on it.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. They said the food would be about half an hour.’
‘Great. I’m actually quite hungry now.’
‘Me too.’
‘You’re always hungry. That doesn’t count.’
He laughed. ‘That is true.’
We were stalling and we both knew it.
Hunter rubbed a hand overhis jaw. ‘I’m not exactly sure how to start with all this. I’ve gone over what I’d say to you if I ever got the chance a million times. But now I’ve had all these weeks with you beside me, and now you’re in front of me, and I’m not even sure where to begin.’
‘Tell me where you went when you left. I did my best to avoid people for a while because I didn’t want to talk about it, but when I didask about you, no one had any idea where you were.’
‘South America. To start. Like I said.’
‘You always wanted to go there.’
‘Yeah. I went to the agency and told them I’d take whatever the next job was so long as it was soon. I didn’t care what the pay was. I just had to get away.
‘And you got away to South America.’
‘I did.’ His hand went to his chain and his tanned fingerscurled around the ring momentarily. ‘When you handed this back to me, I was so devastated and angry and, I guess, just bewildered. For the previous three years, all my thoughts of the future had always contained you. And then everything changed and I didn’t know where I was. My first knee-jerk reaction was to sell the ring. When I went to the agency, they’d just had this job come in forNationalGeographic. I knew they wanted to give it to someone better known, but I literally begged them to give it to me, to give me a chance on this. The woman eventually relented and I left that night. I’d planned on going to a jeweller’s that day, but I just didn’t get a chance, with packing my stuff and catching the plane. I told myself I’d sell it when I got to the next big city. I stuck it on hereso I wouldn’t lose it.’
‘But you didn’t sell it.’
He rubbed his jaw then let his hands drop back to where they’d been resting on his thighs. Flexing his fingers a couple of times, he picked up the story again.
‘The place I was going was the back of beyond. I had to get a couple of transfers to get there and then travel by Landrover for another hour or so after that. On the second transfer,I was in this rickety rubber-band plane, flying over incredible swathes of dense forest. It was all pretty amazing until the plane started making some weird noises, and coughing.’
I didn’t say anything but I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
‘The pilot was saying something, and I spoke hardly any Spanish back then so I had no idea what it was. One woman started screaming and the guy acrossfrom me, a big guy, made me look kind of puny, he started crying, at which point I was really starting to think it just wasn’t my week.’
‘Oh, Hunter.’ My voice was barely audible.
He gave me a smile and continued. ‘Everyone else in this little plane is praying and clasping their rosaries. I listened to this little engine cough one final time before it all went quiet and I knew that wasit. There was nowhere to glide this thing to. We were heading for the trees. My hand went to your ring and I gripped it so hard and thought back to all the good times, your smile, your laugh, the way you’d look at me after we’d made love. I thought, if I’m going to die, I’m going to do it thinking of the woman I still love more than anything in the world.’
My chest was tight and it hurt whenI swallowed, but I didn’t want to interrupt.
‘The moment I took hold of that ring, I heard the pilot say something and people started looking out of the windows. Just in front of us, in amongst the trees, was a clearing. We were already losing height, we had no engine and the pilot had been looking for a place to glide to. All around had been nothing but forest and then this. He got it down,with a few feet to spare before we’d have been straight back in the trees.’
‘Was everyone OK?’
‘Yeah. A few bumps and bruises – it wasn’t exactly the most elegant of landings, but he did a fantastic job of getting it down in one piece. It was pretty amazing. Everyone was hugging each other, total strangers, all crying and laughing. This incredibly scary moment actually became really life-affirming.’His hand went to the chain. ‘After that, I don’t know, I guess it was a little bit of superstition. I just found myself kind of disinclined to let go of this.’
He read my face and smiled. ‘I know. Having the engagement ring you were handed back become your kind of good luck charm does sound a bit unusual.’
‘I’m so glad everyone was OK.’
