A Beautiful Forever (3 page)

I’m just watching him. He’s very graceful in his movements
considering his size. I like that he is so tall and broad but doesn’t seem to
take up all the space around him. Most guys I've met that are as muscular as
him are all stiff and seem to have trouble with their natural movement. But
this Elliot guy carries his bulk as if it was always meant to be there.

He gets his back pack out of the overhead locker and then
looks at me, so I lock my eyes with his, waiting for him to say something.
Maybe a full minute passes before he points upward.  “Do you want me to get
your stuff too?” he asks.

Shaking my head I start to get up. “I’ll get it myself,” I
tell him.

He moves out of my way and looks down at the floor, so I
hesitate. He’s trying to be nice to me, and I keep rebuffing him. I pause with
my hands reached into the locker and look at him until his eyes meet mine.
“Thank you though,” I say, “for the offer… it was very kind of you.”

He gives me a tight smile as the flight attendant comes up
behind him and touches his arm to get his attention, her voice is all breathy
while she’s telling him that she has new seats for us.

She gets us settled in a middle row of five empty seats,
telling Elliot especially, that if we need anything else, she’d be only too
happy to help.

I smile brightly at her and tell her how appreciative we are
for her help. She looks between Elliot and I, like she thinks something’s going
on between us. I don’t know why I did that, but I keep on smiling, behaving
like the other half of a happy couple until she goes away.

The second Erin walks away, Paige moves one seat over. “I
hope you don’t mind,” she says. “You’re just very broad, and I thought you
might like the extra space to stretch out.”

“Thanks,” I smile at her gratefully. She’s right; it is nice
to have a bit more space in these small seats. I’m pretty good at keeping to my
own spot, but it’s better when I can lean into the space between us and angle
my legs more comfortably.

She's lifted the arm rests and is now sitting two seats away
from me with her legs on the seats between us, and her head leaned to the side
against the headrest.

Looking at me with heavy-lidded eyes, she seems to be
struggling to hold them up. “Why are you going to London?” she asks me.

I lean my own head back and look over at her, deliberating
over my answer. Something about this situation makes me think,
fuck it
,
so I tell the truth. “Because I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Her eyebrows move closer together as she considers my words,
“Who did you used to be?”

“A solicitor,” I answer, thinking about how much time I
wasted studying for a career I didn’t even want.

Yawning, she shakes her head. “I didn’t ask what you were, I
asked who you were.”

I look at her for a long moment before I answer, “A jerk, I
used to be a jerk.”

“It’s the curse of the good-looking guy. You're all jerks,”
she tells me knowingly.

I laugh a little at her revelation, “Talking from
experience?”

She shrugs her shoulders and tilts her head noncommittally
in response.

“So where did your catharsis come from? Some girl break your
heart?”

I can't help but smile at her insight. “I kind of turned
into a jerk after that actually, before, I don’t know that I was a jerk - I was
just living a life that wasn’t mine.”

 “So, you don’t know who you are, and you’re hoping to find
yourself on the other side of the world?”

I rest my head back in the seat and sigh heavily before I
turn my head to meet her eyes, “I don’t know what I’m hoping. I just know I
need a change, I’m sick of just… existing... What about you? Why are you going
to London?”

“Same reason as you I guess. My life isn’t anywhere near
what I used to imagine it would be. Time for a change.” She covers her mouth as
she yawns, closing her eyes and working her head into the back of the seat,
effectively ending our discussion. I watch her beautiful face until her
breathing deepens and her features soften, before closing my eyes as well,
drifting off as sleep finally gets the chance to claim me.

I sleep during the remainder of the flight, only waking
because it’s time to fill out paperwork and eat a meal. Blinking rapidly, I
yawn and stretch as I right myself within my seat. I look over at Elliot, who
is rubbing his eyes, also yawning. His hair is sticking up at odd angles, which
of course, looks really attractive on him. Must have been a hard life for him -
looking awesome while everyone else looks shit. My eyes roll involuntarily at
the thought.

“Good morning,” he says, without even glancing at me. “I
think that was the best upright sleep I have ever had in my life, I was
exhausted.”

“Me too,” I tell him, moving one seat closer so I can take
my breakfast tray more easily from the approaching food trolley. “Thank you for
not being an obscenely loud snorer.”

The trolley stops near us, and we accept our trays,
immediately going over their contents. He looks over at me, “I wish I could say
the same for you though.”

“What?!" I exclaim, jerking my head around to face him.
“I snored?”

His starts laughing, shaking his head, “No you didn’t –
actually, I wouldn’t even know. I passed out the moment I closed my eyes. I was
just ribbing you.” He’s still smiling, pleased with his joke.

I nod my head and watch him as he starts to work his way
around his food. Pausing mid chew, he raises his eyebrows. “Are you not
eating?”

“Yeah, I’m eating,” I say, snapping my gaze away from him to
focus on my own plate, poking the rubbery looking eggs with my fork. I pull the
foil back on my cup of orange juice and take a sip of the cold sweet liquid,
gulping greedily as I realise now how thirsty I am.

“So how long are you staying in London Paige?” he enquires.

I frown at my food and shake my head slightly, “I don’t
know,” I tell him, feeling suddenly nervous about landing and nervous about why
I’m going there.

“You don’t know?” he repeats. “Didn’t you have to get a
visa?”

I turn my head to look at him, “I have dual citizenship, so
I don’t need one. My um, father, is from the UK”

“Oh,” he says, looking slightly uncomfortable, “I ah… heard
you tell Connie that your family had passed. I’m sorry to hear that.” We lock
eyes for a moment - he’s so sincere that I break the connection, suddenly
uncomfortable with the lie.

To cut a long story short my mother went to London for some
sort of business meeting when she was in her early 30s, when she came home, she
was pregnant with me. The catch was she was already married to the man whom I
always thought was my father.

I never understood why I was treated so differently from my
siblings until after I'd been kicked out of home and ordered a copy of my birth
certificate. My real father is some English guy called Daniel Ashdown. It
explains so much about my life. I always thought that my parents looked at me with
disappointment in their eyes because I wasn’t the star athlete or pupil that my
siblings were. Now I think it was sadness, sadness for a lost love and sadness
because I was a constant reminder of an infidelity.

I’m going to London to find out who the other half of my
biology belongs to. I don’t know what I’ll do once I see him. I don’t even know
what I’m expecting, but I need to know who he is because he’s affected my life
so greatly without ever being there.

I press my lips together in a tight smile, “It’s fine
Elliot.” I start to pick at my breakfast again before focusing the conversation
on him. “So how long are you in London for?”

“Three months,” he answers quickly. “I’m going to be working
at one of the big health clubs in the gym.”

“Are you an instructor or something?”

He nods, “I’m a personal trainer. I saw that you could go
over there for a working holiday on the net. So I signed up, found a flat with
some other Aussies, and here I am.”

“So what are you going to do if you find yourself in the UK,
and then you have to leave it all behind?”

He lets his head fall against the back of his seat, looks up
and shrugs, then shakes his head slightly before looking at me again to answer,
“I don’t know.”

I hadn’t even thought about that, now I’m suddenly worried.
What does happen if I find myself again and then when I leave and go back to my
old life, I lose it? I look over at her, and she’s studying me as she seems
wont to do, strangely it doesn’t make me uncomfortable. I kind of like having
her eyes on me.

“So you’ve already sorted out a job and a place to stay?”
she asks.

“Um, yeah, a friend of a friend is in a share house with a
spare room, so I’m moving in there. It’s like, five minutes from a train
station. So it’s an easy commute for work.”

She nods her head, looking slightly impressed, “It’s good
that you have everything mapped out.”

“What about you?”

She laughs, “I obviously didn’t think this through as well
as you did. I have a room booked for a couple of weeks at a cheap and probably
very nasty hotel. I'll look for work when I get there.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“A little bit of everything,” she tells me vaguely. The
flight attendant comes past us again and takes our trays.

I check my watch. We only have another half-hour before
we’re due to land. My leg starts bouncing up and down - fuck I’m nervous.

The seatbelt sign pings and lights up, as the captain’s
voice comes over the speakers to tell us that we’re making our descent into
London’s Heathrow Airport. He thanks us all for flying with him, and tells us
that it is overcast and cold, which will be a bit of a shock to the system.
We’re all used to Sydney’s summer weather.

“Here we go,” Elliot says to me as he clips in his seat
belt.

I nod and take a deep breath to calm my nerves. I
desperately need this fresh start away from everything that defined me up until
now. When you get kicked out of home at 15, you fall into a lot of different
situations in an effort to take care of yourself. People have very long
memories and love reminding you of what you once were.

When I get to London, I will be Paige, the girl from
Australia. I don’t need to be any more than that.

Waiting at the baggage claim I look around to see if I can
find Paige, I lost her at some point as we went through all of our passport
checks. I manage to spot her as she hauls her bag off the carousel and starts
to wheel it away.

“Paige!” I call after her. She stops and looks around for
the source of her name, eventually spotting me.

She smiles at me, and I feel lucky all of a sudden. “Hi
Elliot, have you found your bags?”

I look at the crowded carousel and shake my head, “No, not
yet, I just wanted to say bye I guess. Maybe see which direction you're headed,
we could share a cab?”

She shakes her head, “There’s no need. There is a shuttle
bus that takes me to where I’m staying.”

My hopes deflate as I realise this is good bye. I’ve really
enjoyed her company. “Oh, well… maybe I’ll see you around some time.”

She laughs, “I doubt that Elliot, London is a lot bigger
than Sydney - it was nice to meet you though. Good luck finding yourself.” She
lifts her bag and starts to walk away, waving over her shoulder at me as I
stand here doing nothing.

“Yeah, you too,” I call after her as I watch her walk out of
my life.

My room is tiny - I can maybe take four steps in one
direction and only three in the other. There’s a small wardrobe, a minuscule
desk and chair as well as a single bed with a polka-dot quilt on top. The
carpet is royal blue, and the walls are stark white. It's clean and doesn’t
have any funky odours hanging about, so for that I’m thankful.

I drop my bag at the foot of the bed and lay down, the jet
lag already seeping in and dragging my eyes closed. I sit up, not wanting to
fall asleep and ruin my night by being wide awake. With no TV in my room, I
would actually like to spend it sleeping.

Reaching into my bag, I find the folder of papers I had
printed out before I left Australia. I’m a trained hairdresser, so I made a
list of salons to call about work in an area close to the city, that I thought
I might be able to afford to live in. I’d done some research on share
accommodation but got really confused with what the different ‘zones’ meant.
I’m planning to go and have a look around to see what’s what tomorrow. But for
today, I’ll make phone calls to enquire about a job; I have limited funds so a
job is high priority.

Leaving my room, I head for the hotel shop, sucking in my
breath when I'm blasted by the cold air the moment I open the main door to
cross the small courtyard. Still hugging myself against the cold, I purchase a
prepaid phone card and return to my room to activate it. The first place I call
is a shop called ‘Stylz’ in Waterloo.

I get out of the black cab in front of the block of flats I
am staying in and look around. It feels so strange knowing it’s the end of
January but feeling so freaking freezing. Lifting my bag, I climb the short
flight of concrete steps leading up to the rendered white building and press
the button for number twelve.

“Hello?”, a female Australian voice answers.

“Hi, it’s Elliot. I just arrived from the airport.”

“Of course, I’ll just buzz you in.”

As I hear the buzz from the entry door I push, “Got it,
thanks,” I call out.

“Great, see you up here,” she says, I can hear the clunk
over the intercom as she replaces the handset.

As I ascend the stairs, I can’t get that stupid Abba song
out of my head, it’s the name of the town I’m staying in - Waterloo. I hope I
get over that fast because I’m not an Abba fan and three months with that song
in my head is going to drive me mad.