So Now You're Back. Heidi Rice

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      Halle tightened her grip on the bag. ‘No, thank you.’

      The attendant led her past the galley and the functional luxury of business class and up a spiral staircase into a section way too reminiscent of a vintage Star Trek set. Eerie blue-toned lighting illuminated a series of pods, each furnished with a reclining seat, a mirrored wall, a control panel of knobs that would confuse Lieutenant Uhura and enough leather to fit out an S&M boutique.

      Halle tucked her bag into her assigned pod and tried not to think of all the other much more useful and tangible things she could have done with the five grand her flight aboard the Starship Enterprise was costing. She was a celebrity. She worked superhard. She had a very healthy bank balance these days. She was entitled to splurge on herself occasionally.

      This was not because she’d panicked when she’d seen Luke. She could easily control any and all inappropriate reactions where he was concerned. Simply by remembering how much she despised him. This was because she deserved to pamper herself. And because the take-off alone could cause her acid reflux to go into overdrive—so why add to her stress with an audience?

      There were only two other people travelling in first class: a balding, middle-aged executive seated four pods up, who was tapping industriously on his laptop, and an elderly woman three pods across, who was lying back with an eye mask on and was doing a great impression of being already dead.

       I should be so lucky.

      She quashed the spurt of panic. Once the take-off was over, she could let the pampering begin.

      ‘Would you like a beverage, Ms Best?’

      She briefly entertained the idea of deadening her anxiety with champagne. ‘Some iced water would be great,’ she replied. Getting legless could be her fallback position if the sedative didn’t kick in soon.

      Settling into her seat, she stared in dismay at the panel of buttons. Sweat collected on her upper lip and the muscles in her neck began to twitch. If only one of those buttons could whisk her across the Atlantic at warp speed.

      ‘How many knobs does one person need, right?’

      Her head swung round so fast at the suggestive comment it was a miracle she didn’t get whiplash.

      ‘Luke, what the …?’ She searched for the flight attendant. ‘You’re not supposed to be in here. They’ll throw you out.’

      ‘I’ll risk it.’ The sheepish expression on his too-handsome face instantly threw her back to their schooldays and all those times he’d done something diabolical—like spray-painting an image of Mrs Wendell going down on Mr Truer all over the sixth-form toilets—and she’d been his final line of defence against instant expulsion. Annoyance bunched in her neck muscles, but beneath it was the furtive spike of excitement. A mortifying reminder of how her sixteen-year-old self had once relished his bad behaviour.

      ‘Relax.’ He settled into the pod next to her. ‘I got an upgrade, too.’

      ‘What?’

      He slung his laptop bag under his console while she gaped as if he’d just spoken in Swahili. Either that or she’d gone momentarily deaf and misheard him.

      What had happened to Luke Best, class warrior? The guy who thought first-class train carriages were there to be invaded? Even business class had seemed like a stretch.

      ‘I’m a frequent flyer. It only cost a couple of grand extra. And it’s tax deductible.’ He began to fiddle with the dials on his personal control panel. ‘This is actually pretty cool.’ Propping his feet on the footrest, he rolled his shoulders and relaxed into the seat. Then sent her a grin that plugged her right back into the electric socket.

      ‘You can’t stay here.’ The in-flight trauma of taking off was bad enough, she did not need the one man capable of giving her a nervous breakdown when she had both feet on terra firma as a witness to her humiliation.

      ‘Try me.’

      ‘But doesn’t travelling in first go against everything you ever stood for? I distinctly remember you telling me once that the premium seats in Holloway Odeon were an exploitation of the working classes.’

      ‘I’ve mellowed.’

      ‘You mean you’ve sold out for a lie-flat bed and some complimentary champagne?’ Why did it even surprise her? Luke had never had the courage of his convictions.

      ‘There’s complimentary champagne?’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Damn, if I’d known that, I would have sold out sooner.’

      The flight attendant returned with Halle’s iced water.

      ‘Hi there, Debbie,’ he said, reading the woman’s name badge. ‘Is it true you get complimentary champagne in first?’

      ‘Certainly, sir, would you like a glass?’

      ‘You might as well bring the bottle. It’s a ten-hour flight and I plan to get my money’s worth.’

      The attendant hesitated. ‘We’re only allowed to serve it by the glass I’m afraid, sir.’

      ‘And it’s ten o’clock in the morning,’ Halle butted in. ‘Drinking at altitude will get you pissed. You’re supposed to be driving us to the resort when we get off this flying death trap. I refuse to get in a car with you if you’re over the limit.’ Hadn’t the man grown up at all in sixteen years?

      ‘I guess that’s me told.’ He flashed a sheepish smile at the attendant, whose cheeks shone pink beneath the ten layers of foundation. ‘I guess I’ll have to pass. I’ll have what she’s having,’ he finished, indicating Halle’s glass.

      The purser’s amplified voice filled the cabin giving them a rundown of the in-flight services as the stewardess headed off to do Luke’s bidding.

      Halle gulped down the chilled water, but it did nothing to ease the rawness in her throat.

       Shit, shit, shit.

      She rolled the icy glass across her forehead, then bent to retrieve her bag.

      ‘Why did you call it a “flying death trap”?’

      She ignored Luke’s question as she waged war with the child-safety lid on the Xanax bottle. Only to have the bottle whipped out of her hands.

      ‘What are these for?’

      ‘Give me those.’ She made a grab for the bottle as he read the label, only to have him hike it out of reach.

      ‘Heavy-duty happy pills. When did you start popping these?’

      ‘It’s not Ecstasy. It’s a mild drug to help with anxiety. And it’s none of your business what pills I pop.’

      ‘Mild, my arse. This stuff can kill you if you take too much of it.’

      ‘You are joking?’ She skewered him with her best give-me-a-bloody-break look. ‘This from the guy who once had so much E he ran down Green Lanes naked declaring to the whole of Hackney he was Sonic the Hedgehog.’

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