Chapter Text
I finally get off shift at ’Spoons and trudge back to the apartment through the cold and dark. I hate how it gets so dark here in winter. Feels like I’ve just had lunch and suddenly it’s midnight, and then midnight just lasts forever and ever. I barely even saw the sun today.
I unlock the front door and the twinkling fairy lights strung up in the hallway greet me, their cheery stupid little ‘icicle’ vibes suddenly making sense for the first time in my life. People need this stuff here.
Uncle Olly has made one of his famously random dinners – tonight it’s instant noodles and boiled eggs. At least it’s not a peanut butter tortilla. But I’m grateful; my staff meal was hours ago, and I’m absolutely buggered. He hands me a hot chocolate piled with marshmallows, which I’m also finally coming to understand for the first time in my life. Here, now, I can see that non-coffee hot drinks are not just a mildly enjoyable novelty. They’re the only thing standing between us and the infinite blackness of the void.
Working my arse off for peanuts in a chain pub isn’t really how I saw my glamorous London life unfurling. I was going to take the London comedy scene by storm. So far I’ve barely taken it by mild spit of rain. But at least I’ve got people here to sponge off, and let’s be fair, Olly’s a riot. He does PR for Greenpeace, and his friends are pretty cool, and they seem to think I’m funny, so I guess I won’t give up quite yet.
“You packed, Green Bean?” he asks me. “We leave for the airport at 4:30am.”
I moan helplessly.
—
The next morning – if you could even call it ‘morning’ – we stumble into the rideshare, and I watch the endless streets of London slide by in a cold, rainy smear of street lamps as bleary as I am.
Heathrow is a shitshow. The security queues are bonkers, and I inevitably get pulled aside for a pat-down. Olly gets sprung with a 120ml tube of lube, which is fucking classic. Our gate gets moved twice. But eventually, we get squeezed into our pleather prisons and cue up some trash movies for the first leg of our 23-hour slog.
No matter how many times I take this flight, it always feels like being put through a laundry mangle. This time we’re stopping in Doha, which is a new one for me. There’s a nice garden, but mostly, it feels like being trapped at Chadstone Shopping Centre: a special hell full of crap food and $10,000 ugly designer handbags you can’t even imagine wanting.
—
We finally get through customs and out the gates, and Dad is waiting there to greet us. He wraps himself around Olly and me like a vice. He might look skinny, but I sometimes forget how strong he is.
“Owwww, Dad, you’re crushing meee,” I complain. I’m not really complaining though. I might actually be crying a little bit.
“Everyone’s at your Gran’s house,” he says to me, after we’ve all extracted ourselves from the third group hug. He can’t fool me, though. I can see him wiping his eyes surreptitiously.
On the freeway, I stare out the window at the vivid blue sky, that goes all the way down to the gumtree-sprinkled horizon without fading into a haze of pale smog, and nearly burst into tears. This is a real blue sky. How the fuck did I miss the sky?
We pull up at Gran’s place, and the first people to greet me are Bunyip and Chook, who come barrelling out of the house into the front yard, tails flying, to greet me with unbridled doggy enthusiasm, followed by Daisy, who creaks her way gamely out after them. Then Papa and Melodie run out and I’m in the centre of a big Nelson-Spring love-fest.
“We’ve missed you so much, baby girl,” Papa whispers, squeezing me tightly. “Welcome home. Everyone’s out back. Let me get you a glass of something.”