Martin hailed the cab that would take him from Swiss Airways HQ back to Geneva airport, though Oskar’s words were still ringing in his ears. You can start in June. It was…more than he had hoped, he realised now. All this time, through the waiting and the build-up and the letter that took so long to arrive, at no point during all of that had he actually, solidly believed that a day like this would ever come.
Which was a pity, because perhaps if he had imagined what it would be like, he would have imagined how he would feel, too. He would know what he was supposed to feel now, hunched up in the back of a taxicab, racing across Switzerland to catch a plane back to the people whose lives he was about to pull the plug on. The woman whose business he was about to sink and the colleague whose job he was about to ruin and Arthur, Arthur who would try to be happy about it, but whose life Martin was about to change irrevocably.
He couldn’t see a way this would end happily, if he told them the truth.
Not all good endings are happy. Sometimes it’s enough to end well, Douglas had told him once, during a game of Film Title Dominoes that had spiralled into a discussion of classics and favourites. That sort of thing had started happening more and more, the longer they knew each other – games stumbled into discussions, discussions into talking, and somewhere, without either of them noticing, they’d each found themselves enjoying the other’s company. No, Martin had said, but the happy ones are always more satisfying. Arthur had backed him up on that one, naturally.
This, too, was a staple he would miss.
The taxi turned a corner suddenly, and after the jolt Martin settled back into his seat and turned to stare out of the window, watching the trilingual signposts whizz past. He would have to get a book on French, he supposed. German, too, at some point, though Theresa would be a great help with that. Theresa. Martin got his phone out of his pocket, and sent her a text.
I’ve got the job! I start in June. Can’t wait to see you xxx
It was all true except the exclamation mark. For the moment, Martin didn’t feel much like exclaiming it. Mixed up as it was in his brain, it was more something to be mumbled, passed around in hushed tones, because incredible as it was, it was going to wreak a version of havoc that not even Douglas could magic away. Not that they’d miss him half as much as – well, not that they would miss him very much, Martin was sure. But in economic terms, the hole he would leave behind would be too unique a shape for anyone else to fill – too cheap, too free.
What would they all do?
What would he do, come to that? Painful as it was to think of the Flap & Throttle era, Martin was under no delusions that he was a fitter-in, somebody who slotted well into just any workplace environment. But with Douglas and Arthur – even Carolyn, more recently – he’d found that slot, found that particular way of existing among these people that was no longer an effort, it was easier than breathing, it was jokes and bets and teasing, and arguments, advice and adulation. It was trust. Trust that he knew them, trust that they knew him, trust that together, something could always be worked out. They’d not been backed into any corners yet which couldn’t be escaped from. There was always a trap door, a secret passageway – and where there wasn’t, Douglas carved one, with Martin to mark the corners and Carolyn to keep watch and Arthur to cheer them all on. They each knew their function. In many ways, they were a machine more reliable than the one they flew.
Once, he’d decried them as worse even than the manuals’ examples of crews behaving badly – and it was true - they broke rules, they cut corners, they cruised along as close as possible to the Line without ever technically crossing it. But at the same time, they’d…shared more with him than any of that could tarnish. Douglas and Arthur had driven two hundred miles in his van to collect a piano, and neither of them – not Douglas, even – had ever called in a favour big enough to match it. Carolyn had point blank told Martin to apply for Swiss Airways, despite what it would do to her, to MJN, to everything she’d worked to build since leaving her old life behind. All three of them had banded together to deal with Martin’s family – just as they had all done with Gordon, really, and just as they had all done on a minor scale so many times – whenever it had come down to us or them, MJN had closed ranks and left no doubt as to what the answer was. Us. Often divided within their own portacabin - never against the outside world.
They cheated and they taunted and they battled each other, but at the same time, they confided, co-conspired, joined forces and won.
They never behaved like the crews in the manuals.
Martin’s own words, all that time ago, facing down Nancy Dean Liebhart with a fire in his belly and a lemon on his hat. He’d been more right than he realised. They do things no manual’s ever thought of.
No protocol could explain them, no procedure list could tie them down. There wasn’t a manual in the world that could do them justice. Nor would there ever be.
When Nagito blows up the hotel lobby the arcade machine Chiaki had frequented for the entire game up to that point gets destroyed and if you talk to her she just................
