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Chapter Thirty-seven

Gemma

It’s a big question: are you worth more?

It’s the sort of thinking that gets you down if you give in to it too much; the kind of thing that sends you spiralling into an existential crisis.

But sometimes, you have to give in.

You have to finally acknowledge how you’ve carried around the weight of your parents’ failures, or the blind eye you turned to your girlfriend’s non-committal nature in favour of her breezy, borderline flaky personality that you thought would balance out your own inherent need for control …

Or your best friend treating you like dirt for most of your adult life, telling yourself that as long as you found petty ways to return the favour, it didn’t matter in the end, because you were just as bad as each other.

Because deep down, you believe you’re a bad person, and this is exactly what you deserve.

This kind of thinking will bury you if you’re not careful.

It buries me now. Presses down like a physical weight on my shoulders, my chest. It’s leaden and suffocating and inescapable and I know, I know , that I can’t keep running away and pretending it’s not going to ruin me in the end.

Fran and I end up fannying about in the loos for ages, primping and preening so we aren’t immortalised forever in wedding photos looking like we spent the night getting drunk and crying in an airport. We run out of time before we’re able to do our makeup; our boarding gate is finally announced.

I could almost cry – with relief, or dread, or mostly just the fact that this endless night is so very nearly over at last .

We wake up Leon and dig out our passports and boarding passes before we finally, finally , put the terminal behind us. We pass by the rotating tower of mirrors and move into uncharted territory: the passport-control queue beyond.

I look back over my shoulder.

Is this what it feels like for those kids putting Disneyland behind them? A weird and wonderful land full of all the things your wildest imagination could never dream up.

I feel like I was a different person when I landed here twelve hours ago.

It definitely feels like it was a lot fucking longer than twelve hours ago.

Ours must be the last of the delayed flights playing catch-up from the storm.

I recognise other overnighters in the queue: the ginger couple/not-couple, the stag do attendees looking very worse for wear but happy all being together, and I even see the guy with the sparkly hair, who looks dead on his feet and in need of a strong coffee.

The collective sense of relief and exhaustion is palpable.

Leon stands with his arm brushing against Fran’s; she’s facing me, chattering about the three pools at the hotel and the sunrise hike she read about on the website, laughing when I pull a face because there’s no fucking way I’m leaving my bed before ten a.m. tomorrow, thank you, especially not with the hangover I fully intend to give myself.

When she turns to Leon, he pretends to be very busy with his phone, apparently also not a morning person.

She clicks her tongue and gives him a playful shove in the arm, and his facade cracks to show a smile.

And I can’t find it in me to resent this layover or this night, not one bit.

We’re through passport control quickly enough; I’m first out, and the gate is only a few metres away. Most of the seats there (not that there are very many) are already taken and I drift over to the huge windows, dropping down cross-legged on the floor to stare out of them.

It’s still dark out. The sky is tinged pink with hints of dawn visible through breaks in the clouds. The airport runways are lit up below in neat rows of tiny orange lights. An aeroplane passes overhead, little more than a blinking light in the sky.

From here, with the runways stretching out and the sky coming to life, the world looks like it could go on forever. It feels … huge.

I tuck my arms around my knees, hugging them to my chest.

It makes me feel so small, and there’s something oddly comforting about that.

It eases the weight that’s been threatening to crush me for hours – years.

I am so small, a speck of life in the vast universe; there is so much more out there than I can fathom.

What’s a stolen wedding idea and a promotion snatched from under my nose, when I’m barely a scratch on the surface of everything that’s going on, everyone else living their lives, all those planets and stars spinning through the sky?

What do I matter, in the face of all that?

I don’t.

And yet .

Here I am, anyway.

Someone comes to sit down next to me, close enough that her arm presses into mine. On my other side, someone else knocks their suitcase over and then practically falls onto his arse when he sits, graceless and uncoordinated.

Fran leans her head on my shoulder. Leon plants his hand behind me, his arm tucking around me.

So, so small. With nothing to lose.

And yet .

It hurts a little less, watching our plane come into land at last. It taxis down the runway all the way to our gate, and there’s a flurry of activity outside as ground crew springs into action.

It makes a little more sense, watching the sky bleed amber and gold and lilac, with yesterday feeling so far behind me it might as well have been another lifetime, happened to someone else.

Because Leon and Fran were right, weren’t they?

I could just walk away from the job. I could apply to other places, rather than stick it out working for Kayleigh just to prove some self-destructive point.

I could look for other house-shares, somewhere that isn’t tarnished by Kayleigh having left – or ever having lived there at all.

I don’t have to put up with those things.

I can … be worth more.

I tilt my head back and let my eyes slide shut, inhaling deeply.

And exhale.

Inhale.

And exhale.

It’s a big question, and those kinds of thoughts can send you spiralling into an existential crisis if you’re not careful, but I think I have an answer.

I’ve never relied on anybody else, had to be independent, had to build myself up when nobody else would. Why am I constantly waiting for them to tell me I’m enough? My boss, a partner, even – especially – Kayleigh?

I can be all I need. It’s up to me to decide that I’m enough, and that I’m worth more.

I am. I am, I am, I am.

Fran squeezes my arm. ‘Come on, they’re starting boarding.’

Leon gives me a hand up, and I take it.