She had settled on Rovaniemi as it was a more achievablefive hundred miles, but even that was going to take over twelve hours on atrain. Under any normal circumstances that wouldn’t have mattered, but thesewere not normal circumstances.
She only had one day, and she wasn’t even sure how much ofthat day she had. Would it end at midnight, whisking her away back to thedismal reality of her flat? Or would she get a full twenty-four hours? Sheshould have asked the angel when she had the chance.
It was clear that with the flight delayed, reachingRovaniemi in one day wasn’t going to be possible by road or rail. But the angelhad said it was achievable, and there was one other option open to her.
She reached into her purse where she had a wallet containingher cash and traveller’s cheques. The money was meant to last three months, butshe didn’t need it to last that long anymore. It only had to last a day, so shemay as well make use of it.
Because of the cost, she had not originally planned to takeany additional air travel other than the Helsinki flight and a flight back fromAthens in September. Now things had changed. She could afford to get a domesticflight north once she arrived in Helsinki.
There was no way for her to find out what flights wereavailable at the moment; she would have to wait until she got there. If she hadbeen in the modern world, her smartphone would have been able to give her thisinformation in minutes but she wasn’t, so she was just going to have to trustto luck that things worked out for her when she got to Helsinki.
Despite not being able to find out anything about flightsshe was actually feeling quite glad that she did not have a mobile phone. Itgave her quite a liberating feeling. Not only was she not a slave to Facebookor feeling the temptation to take selfies of everything she was doing, but italso meant she could not be contacted.
That meant she did not have to cope with calls, texts andmessages from Alan, pleading pathetically at her not to go. Thankfully she wasgoing to be spared all of that. The less technological past was not a bad placeto be right now at all. She was to all intents and purposes incommunicado, andshe liked it.
She munched on her cheese and pickle sandwich and watchedthe board, willing the red DELAYED label to disappear from next to her flight.Once she had finished eating, she passed some time by wandering into theduty-free shop to check out the prices of the alcohol and tobacco.
Although her forty-three-year-old self had taken up smokingin a big way, she had never touched cigarettes as a clean-living teenager.Looking at the incredibly cheap duty-free prices on offer now for boxes of 200,she realised she no longer felt any desire to smoke.
Why was that? she pondered. She was reminded of her libidothat morning after she had woken. It seemed that the messages her body wassending to her brain were the genuine physical reactions of hernineteen-year-old self. Yet the cognitive parts of her brain and her memorieswere very definitely those of her older self.
It was a powerful combination – the unspoiled body of youthwith the wisdom and experience of age. Most people never got to experiencethose things working in tandem. By the time they had gained the latter, theformer was gone. But today she had it all and felt like she could conquer theworld.
Looking at the cigarettes right now, she felt repulsed andmade a mental note that as soon as she got back to 2018 she would do her utmostto stop, even if that old, addicted body’s cravings were telling her otherwise.Stopping smoking could be her first step in the right direction. It wasunlikely she would have come to this conclusion if she had not come here. Theangel had said experiencing the past would help her change the future. Perhapsthis was the first example.
Alcohol was another matter. The bottles of half-pricespirits were very tempting. She was pleased to see that there were norestrictions on their purchase, recalling that in modern times you couldn’t getthe duty-free deals if you were travelling within the EU. It seemed that in1995 these restrictions had not yet been implemented, so she picked herself upa duty-free bottle of vodka. She had no qualms at all about this. Vodka hadbeen her favourite drink since she had started sneaking into The Railway Armswith all the other underage drinkers when she was seventeen.
Maybe she should cut down on her booze, too, but not today.If all went according to plan, she hoped to be celebrating come midnight with adrink in her hand as if it were New Year’s Eve. With this in mind, she alsopicked up a half-bottle of champagne. Why not? It would be extra weight to lugabout, and she had no way of chilling it, but if there was ever a specialoccasion that demanded it, tonight would be it.
Emerging from the duty-free shop, she was delighted to seethat the delay was over and her gate was being called.
As she wandered through the airport, it struck her thatthings had not changed very much in the world of air travel in the past quarterof a century. There was very little around her to suggest that she was spendinga day in the past.
She had found more signs of change in her handbag than inher surroundings. The lack of a mobile phone was compensated for by otherdevices that did jobs that her phone did in 2018 – a disposable camera and acassette Walkman. Looking inside, she had found a TDK D90 cassette tape with“Kay Compilation Volume 4” written on it.
Seeing the tape brought a host of memories flooding back.She had spent hours in her teens recording tracks from CDs onto cassettes,trying to create the perfect compilation tape. It was a much more complexprocess than the modern equivalent of dragging tracks into a playlist.
When making a
