The Lady and the Locksmith (10 page)

I tear my gaze away and try to concentrate on the matter in hand: finding my bag. I study the luggage carousel like my life depends on it. I fix my attention on the row of black and navy bags passing by, giving each one serious consideration as if it might turn tartan and shout ‘surprise!’. But all the time I feel his presence – just a few feet away. I try to remain focused on waiting for my bag, but now and again, I steal a sidelong glance at him, and I strongly suspect him of doing the same.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him get something out of his pocket. I risk taking another look. It’s a little piece of paper, old and yellow. He stares at it, scowls, and then he crumples it up in his fist. I watch as he lets it slip from his fingers and fall to the ground. Quite deliberately.

A loud American voice startles me. “Madison! There you are!”

Mrs. Bertorelli. Cross with me. Worried about me.

I can see from her face that she’s tired and I’ve put her through the wringer. She’s a short woman, a New Yorker, with a wide face and a double chin. She wears her hair in one of those styles that has ‘a lot of volume’ and she must have sprayed it to hell and back so it didn’t deflate while she was on the plane. With hair like that she wouldn’t even need a neck pillow. The color is basically purple, though I’m sure it must have said something like ‘burnished mahogany’ on the box. She’s waving her fat little hands at me, to get my attention. Her rings are glinting in the artificial light. She wears a lot of rings, on all but the third finger of her left hand.

“Madison, honey. There you are!”

“Oh. Hi … Sorry!” I don’t say the fatal words ‘forgive me’ this time.

“We’ve been looking all over for you! Everyone else has gone to find the bus.”

“I had to go back for my coat, Mrs. B. I left it on the plane. One of the fight attendants went in and got it for me.”

“I see,” she says, and she reaches out and touches the jacket with her short stubby fingers, as if to make sure I’m not faking. “I guess you can’t go round London in September without a jacket,” she says grudgingly.

“It’s still August, Mrs. B.,” I remind her gently.

“You know perfectly well what I mean. Put it on. It’s cold outside tonight. Thank goodness I’ve found you. I thought I was one down before we even made it to the hostel.”

I haul on my jacket, obediently. “Sorry I scared you, Mrs. B.”

“Oh my gosh, Maddie. Is that your bag?”

I turn and see the giant tartan eyesore being swept away on the conveyor belt. It’s already out of my reach, and so I try pushing my way through the crowd to see if I can rescue it, apologizing all the way. I catch frustrating glimpses of it as I try to shove my way through to try to grab hold of its old plastic handle. I can see I’m not going to get it. It’s heading serenely towards the black rubber strips concealing the entrance to that unknown, unnamed area out back. The place where all the lonely unclaimed bags end up. I suppose I’m in for a long, long, wait while it does another lap of honor around the entire system. Or worse – they might pull it off the conveyor and send it to Lost Property.

I sigh. Mrs. B isn’t going to be thrilled about this.

Then I see him again - the man in the immaculate charcoal suit. He appears through a gap in the crowd and suddenly he’s right there - reaching out his hand to grab my bag . I see his outstretched arm and his pale, elegant, fingers, rescuing my runaway bag, just before it disappears out of sight. He lifts it up and off the conveyor, and then he checks the label. I watch him tweaking open the tag and taking a look.

I frown. Now he knows where I’m staying. I bite my lip.

He looks up and catches my eye. He looks kind of angry – in a sultry, stormy sort of way - but he moves towards me, and holds out the offending tartan bag.

“I believe this is yours, Miss Lambourne.”

I take hold of the handle, and my fingers graze against his as we do the exchange. I look up, feeling grateful and a little guilty. “Thank you.”

“Not at all.” His tone is light and casual. His eyes are not.

“My teacher’s waiting for me.” I say, desperate to get away, but mesmerized by him all the same. I’m drowning in his dark eyes. Yearning to feel the glancing touch of his hand again. Knowing I never will.

“Of course,” he says. Very British. Very proper.

He turns away and releases me from his spell. I can breathe again, and I remember my manners. “Thank you. Thank you so much!”

He spares me one last, intoxicating glance. “Fare thee well, sweet lady.”

His strange turn of phrase leaves me struggling to make sense of him, again. I stare as he disappears into the crowd. Fare thee well. What archaic words they are, and used so lightly, so naturally, as if he spoke like that all the time. I feel a tiny surge of pleasure, and I can’t suppress a smile. Sweet lady. He called me ‘sweet lady’! Though I have to say his voice was a little gruff and bitter when he said it.

But he said it, all the same.

Again, it’s Mrs. Bertorelli who breaks into my little daydream with her harsh New York whine. “Now wasn’t he your guardian angel, huh? He came along just in the nick of time.”

I smile weakly, and struggle with my bag. The ancient mechanism that allows the handle to extend seems to be jammed. At this rate I will have to drag it like a dead animal out of the airport, instead of wheeling it gracefully away like everyone else.

“Didn’t kill him to help out a pretty girl, of course.” Mrs. B says, with a laugh.

I bite back a swear word that comes to my lips, and tug at the handle of my horrible bag. At last it gives. The handle extends and I straighten up. I can wheel it along – slowly and with a repetitive bump every few inches. One of the wheels must have gotten squashed out of shape or something. It’s like towing a little drunk guy along by the hand. A little drunk guy in a huge tartan overcoat.

“Move it along, Maddie! I wanna be on the bus, honey. My feet are killing me. I need to take the weight off and I still have to get all those kids settled into the hostel. If that bus has gone without us I am going to be so mad!”

“I’m doing my best, Mrs. B.” I try to sound cheerful and upbeat, but it’s late and I’m tired too. The crowd has thinned out a little, and we start walking towards the door that leads to passport control. I see something pale on the floor up ahead of me – a scrap of paper, discarded like an old candy wrapper. People are walking right over it, treading it into the carpet, but I am drawn to it like a magnet. I feel certain that I know what it is and I want to go see if I’m right. I watch people passing by and dread that one of them will notice it first and take it before I can get there – but of course, they don’t. To them it’s just a piece of litter.

I veer away from Mrs. Bertorelli and I go and check it out. Staring down, I see that the paper is thick and yellowed with age. It’s folded and crumpled and it’s been trodden on, but I’m guessing there’s writing inside. I bend down and pick it up.

“Maddie!”

“Shoelace,” I insist, stuffing the ball of paper into my pocket. I make a pantomime of adjusting my shoe. Then I hurry after her and we make our way out towards the long queue for the checkpoint.

Outside, in the parking lot, I can see the bus waiting for us, with everyone else on board. The driver is standing outside the bus, pacing up and down. He looks as if he’s been cursing me and Mrs. Bertorelli for a good thirty minutes or more. He helps me stow my trusty tartan friend in the luggage hold and slams down the metal hatch. I climb up into the bus and a big cheer goes up. About ten different people want to know what took me so long. Further back on the bus, my best friend Lydia leaps up out of her seat and starts waving at me. “Here, Maddie! I saved you a place!”

“Hey, Madison. Did they strip search you?” The question comes from Brody, who sits with me in compulsory English. He has gum in his mouth and his cap is on back to front. As usual, there is far too much interest in his round blue eyes.

His sidekick, Tanner, answers for me. “Like she’d tell YOU, even if they did!” Then he laughs like a hyena, and sticks his foot out to try and trip me up.

I roll my eyes and try to step over his leg. “No, they did not mistake me for a terrorist,” I hiss, “but I’ll let them know you’re carrying explosives on the way back if you like.”

Mrs. Bertorelli turns and yells in a voice that would halt a herd of buffalo. “Enough interrogation, Tanner Doyle! For your information, nobody got strip searched. I did offer, but they just said welcome to the United Kingdom and have a pleasant stay.”

Everyone on the bus erupts in laughter, but she has their attention.

“So will you all sit down and shut up, so we can get this show on the road!”

The bus driver turns and glances warily at Mrs. B over his shoulder. I guess he hasn’t met anyone quite like her before.

I head for where my friend is sitting, about two thirds of the way down, on the right hand side of the bus.

Lydia’s great but she’s always been the odd one out. She’s a platinum blonde with braces on her teeth. Her style owes more than a little to Madonna’s early look. Miniskirts and military boots, that kind of thing. She gets up and moves into the aisle and lets me take the window seat. She’s generous like that, and she knows how much this trip to London means to me. I slump down and the bus starts to move.

Lydia gets out her (pink) cell phone and flips it open. “You’re dad’s been messaging me.”

I shoot her an agonized look. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. He’s worried. Apparently you promised to call when you arrived.”

“But I haven’t arrived,” I say, consternation brewing. “I’m barely out of the airport.”

Dad is unbelievable sometimes. I reach inside my pocket for my phone, which I had obediently switched off when we got on the plane. Instead I encounter the crumbling edges of that piece of paper I picked up off the floor at the airport. Just the feel of it gives me a tiny thrill of anticipation.

Brody pipes up again. “Hey! Check out the Lamborghini!”

Everyone on the right hand side of the bus peers out of the window into the parking lot. Sure enough, there’s a highly unusual car oozing down the street. A just-out-of-the-showroom kind of a car. Pale silver, not a mark on it, raindrops beading on all its gleaming bodywork. The windows are tinted and I can’t see who’s behind the wheel, but for some reason, I know who’s inside it. I can feel it.

It’s him. Mister Didn’t-We-Meet-Someplace-Before.

“Oh man! That is one hell of a car,” Tanner says. He’s standing up in the seat in front of me, with his face pressed against the window of the bus, flattening his nose. He’s practically licking the glass.

I’m guessing he looks like a ghoul from the outside.

Beside me, Lydia lets out a sigh. “That’s two hundred thousand bucks worth of car. Right there.”

I shoot her what I hope is a sympathetic look, but she frowns at me. I know that Lydia’s family is dirt poor, and I know who paid for her to come along on this school trip, too, and it wasn’t them. I’m sworn to secrecy, and I’m not even sure if Lydia knows the whole truth. Maybe she thinks it really was the school hardship fund that paid for it all. But I know it wasn’t.

It was my dad. He didn’t want me to make this trip on my own, so he forked out for my best friend’s fare too. I’m glad he did – real glad - but it’s created this tension between me and Lydia that I didn’t expect. Maybe I’ll get a chance to say something to her tomorrow. To clear the air. To apologize for having a generous dad - an overprotective, sentimental old fool of a dad who sometimes has more heart than he has sense.

It was a difficult call and he did what he thought was best. For me and for Lydia. I know he went over to her house and talked her parents into letting her go. Told them to forget their pride and take the money, for Lydia’s sake. I’m glad they said yes. I hope she’ll be glad too when she gets used to the idea.

Finally we are on our way, and in spite of being so tired, I look out into the dark night and try to catch my first glimpse of England, but all I can see is a big curving slip road leading to the freeway – or whatever they call it over here. The road up ahead gleams black and shiny in the rain, and traffic from the airport streams past. Red tail lights reflected on the wet road– that’s about all there is to see. Not much to write home about yet.

Lydia has settled back in her seat to read her book. It’s a dog-eared paperback with a creased spine, and I’ll bet she’s read it before. I smile.

I lean over and whisper to her. “What is this time? Vampires, werewolves, or shifters?”

“Vampires. They always win. Hands down.”

I sit back and try to relax, but my mind is still buzzing from the encounter at the airport. I decide to allow myself a surreptitious look at the little piece of contraband in my pocket. I pull it out and unfold it gently, for although the paper is heavy, the edges are so fragile that they crumble away in my fingers. I smooth it out. I catch my breath and pray I won’t be disappointed.

It’s like the start of an old, old letter. Written in black ink. There’s no name at the top and no signature at the bottom, either. Just a few words scrawled in black ink – and they could mean anything.

‘Forgive me. In time you will forgive me. I’ll be waiting for you at Heathrow, last Wednesday in August, in the year of our—’