The clock glows green 4:45 as she lies
diagonally across the small double bed. Street glow seeps in through the gaps in the blinds and the air is prickled with an early morning chill. The bathroom lights blind as she steps into the ceramic boat, still bemused by the British love of the bath even in the non-fuss era of the shower.
Steaming water cascades over her shoulders, rushing over and between her breasts and down the soft curve of her stomach. She catches herself in the mirror, youthful but no longer young, soft but no longer new. How will he see her, she wonders. How did he see her the day he slid that ring on her finger. Did he notice the tiny spider veins crawling around her lower thighs or her rough, calloused feet from years of ill-fitting shoes? Will he see the small wrinkles forming round her hazel eyes or the deepening furrow between her brows, a symptom of a frowning thinker?
She dresses in silence. Carefully slipping each moisturised leg into a thick black stocking, she pulls the neatly arranged navy dress over her head. The hair dryer buzzes and blows her brown hair and she is briefly thankful for the noise to muffle the internal dialogue. One, two, three strokes and she puts the brush down. 5:15
A half-read novel sits by the bed as she pulls the white covers up, straightens and pats, surveys from afar and readjusts again. She briefly observes the
parallels between the her life and the narrative that tells of a young
Jamaican woman who gives up everything to live in London with her new husband, a man she hardly knows. Except that she isn't giving up anything, he is. And they aren't married, not yet. 5:20
The time, it's time she thinks. The cab will be waiting. She surveys herself once more in the mirror, straighten her dress, hitches her bag and walks out the door.
Coated in an ethereal
pre-dawn texture, the street is empty but for her cab. The driver looks
quizzically at her lack of luggage but he is too tired to muster a question. She settles into the back seat, blowing circles of vapour on the window, wondering how an action so simple can produce such a perfect result. They speed through the near-empty streets, past the green expanses she has so come to love and to think of as her own backyard. She wonders if he will feel the same. If they will run through these parks, as they had talked of, and lie in the sunshine reading the paper, as she had dreamed. She understood her expectations of the city, her love of its vastness and possibilities, but she knew nothing of his. He was coming for her, that was all she knew.
The car pushed on out through the outskirts of the city, the buildings morphing from residential to commercial as the sky lightened to a familiar shade of dark grey. 5:50 He should be landing by now. Wheels touching tarmac. Sighs of relief from uneasy flyers. Would he be excited now? Limbs twitching with the knowledge she was just beyond that runway, just within that building. Her stomach fought with itself. Excitement battling fear, shattered nerves the innocent victim. Would he be feeling the same? She new he was nervous about leaving so much behind, risking so much to be here, but did he share her uncertainty about their future? Did he doubt for just one second?
5:54 the car stops outside the terminal. She pays and steps out into the familiar buzz of the international airport. Childhood memories of dawn journies to Dubai international airport jolt through her mind, she can taste the adventure on her tongue and feel the anticipation tingling through her legs. And as she waits for him by the gate she wonders why she shouldn't feel the same about him, about their future. That when he walks through that gap in the wall, mingled between weary backpackers and grumpy mothers, searching the crowd for her face, she shouldn't be equally excited about all the possibilities that stretch on from that moment.
6:02 he walks out. For a moment, before he see her, she surveys him from afar. And while her stomach still churns with fear and cartwheels with excitement she decides then that she will stop wondering.
The footpaths are on fire with smatterings of autumn leaves. Even the trees are too lethargic to do more than just hold their branches up. And now, now the light is fading earlier and faster and all I hear from that island far away is of endless sunshine and days that are stretching the distance between us.
