"For the hundredth time," Fay said, exasperated, "we're not going to crash! Stop looking up airplane statistics and turn your dratted phone off."
"Mum!" Tom sounded aggrieved. They were sitting in First Class on a BA flight from London Heathrow to Orlando International Airport, and they hadn't even taken off yet. "Did you know that when a plane crashes you're almost a hundred per cent likely to die? Horribly?"
If her son had been eight instead of eighteen she would have smacked his bottom and told him he wasn't allowed to go to Disneyland. But he wasn't a child anymore. So she'd just have to reason with him instead. If that reasoning had a hectoring tone, well, so be it.
"I kept telling you that watching Air Crash Investigation before your first ever plane journey was a bad idea. Here's a statistic for you - you're more likely to die in a car crash than in an airplane. Have you died yet?"
Tom smiled. He had a cute smile. "No, Mum."
"Well, then." She sniffed, mollified. "Now turn your phone off and put it away before one of the trolley dollies has a go."
"This is the twenty-first century," he said, powering the device down and putting it in his pocket. "You can't call them that anymore."
"Oh, excuse me." Fay's contrition was exaggerated. "I happen to come from a generation that still refers to them as trolley dollies."
Tom burst into laughter. "What generation? Nanna might have called them that, but you're only forty!"
Fay's laughter joined her son's. "Smooth talker. Remind me to up your pocket money."
Tom rolled his eyes. "You haven't given me pocket money since I was fourteen and got a paper round."
"There you go, then." She patted his knee and settled back in the seat. "Something is better than nothing, right?"
"My mother, the last of the big spenders." He threw his hands up in mock exasperation.
The Captain's voice came over the intercom and minutes later the plane was moving. Tom's ghoulish fascination with plane crashes vanished. His good humour vanished. He almost vanished himself; sinking back into the seat, hands clenching the arm rests, face as pale as a sheet. Fay's forehead creased in a sympathetic frown.
"Why don't you try to sleep?" she suggested.
"Yeah. Sleep. Good idea."
Fay woke from a light doze a few hours later. The First Class compartment was dim, the lighting lowered as they flew through the night. She was so glad she'd decided not to go cattle class. Half the seats here were empty. Their nearest neighbours were two rows ahead. They were virtually alone.
Tom really was going to Disneyland. He and his best friend had both turned eighteen less than two weeks ago, so to celebrate leaving their childhood behind they were going to embrace it one last time. That, apparently, meant hitting on Cinderella, taking the 'It's a Small World' ride until their brains bled out through their ears, and buying goofy stuffed toys. Fay didn't mind. She'd managed to combine it with a business trip to Orlando, knowing it was his first time on a plane and remembering just how damned nervous she'd been during her own first flight years ago.
Tom finally drifted into a fitful sleep. She watched him now. He'd grown into a beautiful young man, and in just a few years' time he was going to be devastating. Sleepy dark eyes, a broad chin and tousled black hair. His cheeks were smooth. He'd tried to grow a beard but, like his father - who'd left them years ago - he'd never look good with facial hair.
The plane shuddered - they'd hit a pocket of air or, perhaps, a UFO. Tom snapped awake and once more resumed his white-knuckled death grip on the arms of his seat.
"Relax," Fay soothed. "We must be halfway there by now. Just go back to sleep."
"Sleep?" There was a touch of hysteria in his hoarse whisper. "How the hell am I supposed to sleep when we're thirty-five thousand feet up in the air, and there's nothing between us and the Atlantic Ocean except a few metres of metal and plastic?"
"That's enough." Fay's voice was firm. "Calm down."
But even though he kept his mouth shut, she could see he wasn't going to calm. His lips were a thin white line in his face. His knuckles were so tight she could see the outline of cartilage.
He needs to let off some steam, Fay thought, glancing at him sideways. Her mind flashed back to a similar plane journey, years ago, when she and her mother - Tom's Nanna - had flown with her brother Peter. Thinking Fay had been asleep, Nanna had helped Pete relieve his stress by masturbating him under a blanket.
Fay hadn't thought about that in years. But it popped into her mind now, the memory as clear and fresh as if it had happened yesterday rather than over two decades ago. More than that - it brought with it a wave of arousal that made her press her legs together.
In the privacy of her mind she wondered now if her mother and brother had been sleeping together. The idea of it should have shocked her - should have revolted her - but she felt none of those emotions. Her mother had loved them both, showing it every day in the way she cared for them, the way she worked her fingers to the bone to provide. She'd scrimped and saved and gone without to send them both to University. It didn't seem wrong to her that they might have had a sexual relationship. It would have been a natural extension of their love. And what two consenting adults got up to was nobody's business but their own.
If they'd slept together then... were they still sleeping together now? Pete was two years older than her. Their mother was only in her sixties, still a fit, active and attractive woman.
Moisture pooled between her legs.
