1. London-bound

I can’t believe it’s really happening. I can’t believe that in thirty minutes I will no longer be roaming the streets of Manhattan like some fabulous Jimmy-Choo-wearing-martini-sipping fashionista from Sex and the City, but back in London where I came from. It didn’t really hit me until the pilot came over the loudspeaker with the, ‘We will now be preparing for our initial descent into Heathrow. Please notify a flight attendant if you are not a citizen of the European Union and require a landing card,’ speech. I immediately hit the call button. 

‘How may I help you?’ asks the flight attendant who resembles a porcelain doll. For a moment I’m distracted by her bright red lips puckering at me like two fat slugs covered in strawberry jam and I have to quickly snap myself out of it.

‘Is it too late to order another gin and tonic?’ I ask, glancing around as I slip two empty mini Beefeater bottles into the bin bag she’s holding.

She glances at the third bottle that I’ve unsuccessfully tried to hide in the pocket of the seat in front of me. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she says.

The eyes of the old woman across the aisle also maneuver to the third gin bottle and I can feel her judgment. As if that’s what someone drinking four gin and tonics really needs. And anyway, she is wasting her time; my mother took it upon herself to fill the role of judgmental elder in my life long ago, thus giving me ample time to become the professional Non-Carer that the lady in 17C can see here today.

‘Here you are, love,’ the attendant says, setting down my fourth gin and tonic, ‘Please fasten your seat belt and make sure both your seat and tray table are in the upright position.’

‘Thanks,’ I mutter, popping open the tonic and ignoring her instructions about the tray table so I can use it as a bar top.

In truth, I’m not leaving behind a fabulous New York lifestyle. I’m leaving behind an escape and returning to a reality.

If anyone asked me why I had chosen to spend the last year of my Master’s degree studying abroad in New York, I would have given the pretentious answer that I was widening my artistic horizons and breathing in the culture. This would always be followed by an impressed ‘Oh, how exciting.’ Truthfully, however, I went because it was the furthest program I could find from London that wasn’t in Cambodia or Uganda and that I could sign up for at the last minute.

That’s where I lost the perks.

My last minute decision to up and leave London as quickly as possible put me in a rather quaint dormitory living situation. And by ‘quaint’ I mean a convent. Yes—an actual convent. With nuns and priests. The communal kitchen on my floor actually had a sign on the door that read: ‘Quiet-floor below occupied by the Benedictine Friars’. Try bringing a guy home to that.

But why did I need to leave the wonderful city of London in such haste and get far, far away? I wish the answer were something more interesting like perhaps I was the real-life Angelina Jolie spy in Salt and my identity had been discovered. Or I was in the Witness Protection Program because I alone had witnessed the attempted murder of the Queen (long live the Queen!). Or even because I was a Colombian drug lord and the authorities were after me. But none of those apply. In reality, I left for only one reason. 

I had been stabbed in the heart.