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She sits in the airport Brasserie and reflects on how distance can be
measured in so many ways. In miles, years...in lost opportunities. She
is surrounded by people eating breakfast and waiting for their flights. She
pushes at her scrambled egg piled high on a toasted brioche. In two hours,
she’ll be on a plane home for Cape Town, and the evening with David in the
pub will have to be put away, filed in her brain like a memorable meal, a
day on the coast.
She remembers his eyes. Dark almonds. She can see him smiling, his fingers
wiping condensation from the sides of a pint glass.
In two hours, she’ll be heading back to her job at the newspaper, her
apartment by the station, to George who loves her with a passion and builds
book cases for her study. Before she boards, she’ll have to switch off. She
must if she wants to keep things level, balanced. David will have to stay
here with his wife and kids in the house she’s built in her mind, the one
that over looks the park with its swings. She pictures his wife playing with
the kids on the roundabout. She pictures her lying naked in bed next to
David.
She drops a cube of designer sugar in her Latté and thinks back to how it
all started when their office friendship ended up one lunchtime in her bed.
They called it an Affair of the Loins. After all, neither of them wanted
love. But when weekends and evenings found them both missing each other,
they had to call it a day. Her subsequent move to South Africa, his new
baby — all obstacles carefully crafted to stop them going for it, stop them
running the risk.
The announcer calls the gate number for flight SA294, and she slips her
boarding pass into her jacket pocket. He said his biggest regret was that he
hadn’t been able to do what he wanted. What? Fuck her? Leave Irma? Choose
crockery? She didn’t ask. It was enough that he pulled the car in behind the
post office and kissed her. No hands on her breasts or fumbling between her
legs. A kiss of regret. A kiss that said sorry for being scared.
She finishes her coffee and heads across the busy departure lounge for gate
C16. It will be warmer back in Cape Town. The red buds at the end of the
drive will be promising spring, brave crocuses will be pushing through the
frost in the tubs on the back deck.
At the gate, she sits down in a red leather sling chair and pulls out her
book. It’s Thoreau’s Walden — a book she read years ago and knew she’d have to
read at least once more before she even came close to understanding. She’ll
finish it on the plane, and when she gets home, slide it back into its empty
slot between Sedgwick and Whitman.
Once the dust settles, no one will be able to tell it had ever been away.
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