“Do you think,” she says, the words emerging thickly, “we might have used up all our conversation last night?”
“Not possible,” says Oliver, and the way he says it, his mouth turned up in a smile, his voice full of warmth, unwinds the knot in Hadley’s stomach. “We haven’t even gotten to the really important stuff yet.”
“Like what?” she asks, trying to arrange her face in a way that disguises the relief she feels. “Like what’s so great about Dickens?”
“Not at all,” he says. “More like the plight of koalas. Or the fact that Venice is sinking.” He pauses, waiting for this to register, and when Hadley says nothing, he slaps his knee for emphasis. “Sinking! The whole city! Can you believe it?”
She frowns in mock seriousness. “That does sound pretty important.”
“It is,” Oliver insists. “And don’t even get me started on the size of our carbon footprint after this trip. Or the difference between crocodiles and alligators. Or the longest recorded flight of a chicken.”
“Please tell me you don’t actually know that.”
“Thirteen seconds,” he says, leaning forward to look past her and out the window. “This is a total disaster. We’re nearly to Heathrow and we haven’t even properly discussed flying chickens.” He jabs a finger at the window. “And see those clouds?”
“Hard to miss,” Hadley says; the plane is now almost fully enveloped in fog, the grayness pressing up against the windows as the plane dips lower and lower.
“Those are cumulus clouds. Did you know that?”
“I’m sure I should.”
“They’re the best ones.”
“How come?”
“Because they look the way clouds are supposed to look, the way you draw them when you’re a kid. Which is nice, you know? I mean, the sun never looks the way you drew it.”
“Like a wheel with spokes?”
“Exactly. And my family certainly never looked the way I drew them.”
“Stick figures?”
“Come on now,” he says. “Give me a little credit. They had hands and feet, too.”
“That looked like mittens?”
“But it’s nice, isn’t it? When something matches up like that?” He bobs his head with a satisfied smile. “Cumulus clouds. Best clouds ever.”
Hadley shrugs. “I guess I never really thought about it.”
“Well, then, see?” Oliver says. “There’s loads more to talk about. We’ve only just gotten started.”
Beyond the window the clouds are bottoming out, and the plane lowers itself gently into the silvery sky below. Hadley feels a rush of illogical relief at the sight of the ground, though it’s still too far away to make any sense, just a collection of quilted fields and shapeless buildings, the faint tracings of roads running through them like gray threads.
Oliver yawns and leans his head back against the seat. “I guess we probably should have slept more,” he says. “I’m pretty knackered.”
Hadley gives him a blank look.
“Tired,” he says, flattening the vowels and notching his voice up an octave so that he sounds American, though his accent has a vaguely Southern twang to it.
“I feel like I’ve embarked on some kind of foreign-language course.”
“Learn to speak British in just seven short hours!” Oliver says in his best announcer’s voice. “How could you pass up an advert like that?”
“Commercial,” she says, rolling her eyes. “How could you pass up a commercial like that?”
But Oliver only grins. “See how much you’ve learned already?”
They’ve nearly forgotten the old woman beside them, who’s been sleeping for so long that it’s the absence of her muffled snoring that finally startles them into looking over.
“What did I miss?” she asks, reaching for her purse, from which she carefully removes her glasses, a bottle of eye drops, and the small tin of mints.
“We’re almost there,” Hadley tells her. “But you’re lucky you slept. It was a long flight.”
“It was,” Oliver says, and though he’s facing away from her, Hadley can hear the smile in his voice. “It felt like forever.”
The woman stops what she’s doing, the eyeglasses dangling between her thumb and forefinger, and beams at them. “I told you,” she says simply, then returns to the contents of her purse. Hadley, feeling the full meaning of her statement, avoids Oliver’s searching look as the flight attendants do one last sweep of the aisle, reminding people to put their seat backs up, fasten their safety belts, and tuck away their bags.
“Looks like we could even be a few minutes early,” Oliver says. “So unless customs is a complete nightmare, you might actually have a shot at making this thing. Where’s the wedding?”
Hadley leans forward and pulls the Dickens book from her bag again, slipping the invitation out from near the back, where she has pressed it for safekeeping. “The Kensington Arms Hotel,” she says. “Sounds swanky.”
Oliver leans over to look at the elegant calligraphy scrawled across the cream-colored invitation. “That’s the reception,” he says, pointing just above it. “The ceremony’s at St Barnabas Church.”
“Is that close?”
“To Heathrow?” He shakes his head. “Not exactly. But nothing really is. You should be okay if you hurry.”
“Where’s yours?”
His jaw tightens. “Paddington.”
“Where’s that?”
“Near where I grew up,” he says. “West London.”
“Sounds nice,” she offers, but he doesn’t smile.
“It’s the church we used to go to as kids,” he says. “I haven’t been there in ages. I used to always get in trouble for climbing the statue of Mary out front.”
“Nice,” Hadley says, tucking the wedding invitation back inside the book and then shutting it a bit too hard, causing Oliver to flinch. He watches her shove it back into her bag.
“So will you still give it back to him?”
“I don’t know,” she says truthfully. “Probably.”
He considers this for a moment. “Will you at least wait till after the wedding?”
Hadley hadn’t planned on it. In fact, she’d envisioned herself marching right up to him before the ceremony and handing it over, mutinously, triumphantly. It was the only thing he’d given her since he left—really given her; not a gift mailed out for her birthday or Christmas, but something he’d handed to her himself—and there was something satisfying in the idea of giving it right back. If she was going to be made to attend his stupid wedding, then she was going to do it her way.