The time passed quickly, a blur of inadvertently cancelled flights, hasty passport applications, misspelt names and dodgy unconfirmed bookings. I had no time to be nervous or excited, work ate away the days and weeks until summer was gone and the departure date loomed. Fate, in the form of Emma the incompetent booking agent, had done its best, but failed in the face of H’s determination.
We drove down to Heathrow on a Thursday night, skimming the tarmac down the M1 in five degrees of frost, the black abyss of the sky held back by the glare of high street lamps. Me handing H ham sandwiches and crisps and soaking my jeans with apple juice from a reluctant carton, already imagining the mayhem my two might cause with the cash card I’d left them ‘for essentials like milk’ for the five days I’d leave them home alone. Not to mention leaving them to oversee a builder charged with, ‘doing something with the garage’.