Arrivals
You step off the coach right into the nearest slush-pile, and the cold seeps through your thin shoes. The cold is everywhere here, the wind is always worst near the airstrip, but you wear strategically wrapped scarves and long gloves. It doesn’t help. The cold finds the one unprotected spot of skin by your collar-bone, and pokes like the red-faced scream of a two-year-old. The slush follows you, tapes flat cigarette-butts to your feet, and the smell of the fumes drifts through the clear air. Should you have one now? Your mouth is so dry. You shouldn’t chew gum while you’re smoking anyway, you’ve been told. You inch closer to the dirt-white terminal-building; the corner will keep you out of sight of Arrivals, just one moment longer. It was bad before but now they are insistent; nerves, bubbling through your veins in little shivers, and shallow breaths, as if breathing might make something terrible happen. It probably will. Odd bits of Swedish dart through the revolving doors, bits of English, bits of maybe-Dutch. All punctuated by the bd-d-d-d-d of cabin-bags being dragged across the gravelled pavement. Everything is a bit distorted and strange. After five hours of sleep, you are over-tired and buzzing. Out of the corner of your eye the grey sunlight flickers, the click of your lighter is too loud. And you smooth your hair down, and the electricity from the gloves makes it worse and you sigh, but you can’t sigh properly. And you look around, but you don’t dare to, and what if he’s here already but you didn’t see him yet? And what if you won’t recognise him? And what if that is him? No, thank goodness, no.
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