that interested him. Chance would determine his holiday.
Chapter 6
A week later, having driven Eva and the girls to Heathrow and seen them disappear through the Departures Gate, Wilt came back to Oakhurst Avenue and took Tibby to the Bideawhile cats’ home in Oldsham secure in the knowledge that since he had paid cash and hadn’t used the usual cattery Eva always went to she was unlikely to find out. Having dealt with that problem Wilt had supper and went to bed. Next morning he was up early and out of the house by seven. He walked down to the railway station to catch a train to Birmingham. From there he would travel by bus. His escape from Ipford and the Tech had begun. That evening would find him comfortably installed in a pub with a log fire and with a good meal inside him and a pint of beer or better still real ale in front of him.
Eva wasn’t having quite the wonderful time she had expected. The flight had been delayed for over an hour. The plane had reached the end of the runway at Heathrow and was preparing for take-off when the Captain announced that a passenger in first class had been taken ill and was too sick to make the journey, and they were therefore having to return to the terminal to have him carried off. As a result they lost their turn in the take-off line and worse still, because they weren’t allowed to fly with the baggage of an absent passenger, his bags had to be found and removed too. Finding the sick man’s luggage meant taking all the bags out of the hold and sorting through them one by one. By that time they were well behind schedule and Eva, who had never flown in such a big plane before, was beginning to become genuinely alarmed. Of course she couldn’t show it in front of the girls who were thoroughly enjoying themselves pressing buttons so that the seats tilted backwards and trying on the earphones and letting down the tables from the seat in front and generally occupying themselves to the discomfort of other passengers.
Then Penelope had insisted in a loud voice that she had to go to the loo and Eva had had to squeeze past the man at the end of the row to go with her. When they got back and Eva had squeezed back to her seat, Josephine said she had to go too. Eva took her and Emmeline and Samantha just to be on the safe side. By this time–and they had taken their time trying out various buttons and the toilet water–Eva needed to go herself and just at that moment it was announced that passengers had to return to their seats for take-off. Eva once more made the difficult passage past the man at the end of the row who said something in a foreign language which she didn’t understand but which she suspected wasn’t very nice. Then when they had reached cruising height and she could go again and in something of a hurry too, what he had to say didn’t require any knowledge of a foreign language to tell her that it wasn’t nice at all. Eva got her own back by treading on his foot when she resumed her seat. This time there could be no mistaking his feelings. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Mind where you’re treading, lady. I ain’t no doormat.’
Eva pressed the button for the stewardess and reported the matter.
‘This man–I won’t call him a gentleman–said…’ She paused and remembered the quads. ‘Well, he used a rude word.’
‘He said ‘Fuck’,’ Josephine explained.
‘He said ‘Fuck you’,’ Penelope added.
The stewardess looked from Eva to the girls and knew it was going to be a bad trip.
‘Yes, well, some men do,’ she said pacifically.
‘No, they don’t,’ said Samantha. ‘Not impotent ones. They can’t.’
‘Shut your mouth,’ Eva snapped and tried to smile apologetically at the stewardess who wasn’t smiling at all.
