I’d respond to my husband but that would mean lifting my head into a typhoon

IT’S 4.30pm in Cork and my husband and I are setting off towards the airport on foot, at a fast trot.

So far, our journey has proceeded exactly as it always has, in every regard: my husband has parked the car in his secret parking spot miles away from the airport and it is starting to rain; I am wearing no coat and the wrong boots.

“Perhaps now that we’re unequivocally proper grown ups,” I say, trotting alongside my husband, “we could start parking our car in the short-stay car park like other grown-ups. You know, update our airport routine.”

“We might be grown-ups,” my husband says, gallantly taking my luggage and breaking into a faster trot, “but we’re not old and infirm. This is all part of the fun.”

I could respond but that would mean lifting up my head into a typhoon, so that the rain might gain even more purchase on my mascara, which is already pouring off my jaws.

4.40. It is now raining horizontally and my husband has taken my hand, so as to break me into a canter.

4.45. My thoughts are turning dark: “It is a very inconvenient habit of married couples,” I think, “that they do what they have always done.”

4.46. We burst into Departures, as if shot from a canon.

As usual, after the customary 15 minute gallop in the rain, I am suddenly, overwhelmingly boiling.

“That’s the very last time I’m doing that,” I pant.

“Really?” my husband pants, “I feel really invigorated after that.”

I peel off my outer layer of sodden wool. Rain evaporates from my head into steam. Disapproval radiates from me like heat-waves. Quivering, fast-spreading heat-waves.

I imagine my husband can feel them even from down here where I’m hunched over my suitcase on the floor, trying to force a small side-compartment into accommodating a large amount of sodden wool.

4.49. I look all around me.

4.50. No, he cannot feel them; my waves cannot radiate all the way over there to the shop, where my husband stands with his back to me, buying what looks like a banana.

5pm. We are on the escalator.

“Oh shit,” my husband says, patting himself down, “where are the boarding cards?”

5.01. I feel the first familiar symptom arrive in my chest: a fluttering sensation. My husband rummages in his coat.

“I thought I gave them to you downstairs.”

5.02. The second symptom strikes: a couple of extra heartbeats.

5.06. My husband has unpacked his bag at the top of the escalator.

“I definitely gave them to you downstairs,” he says.

5.07. Third symptom: lightheadedness.

5.09. “Panic over!” my husband says.

5.11. We join the queue for Customs. He has the passports. I have full-blown arrythmia.

“Well this is nice,” my husband says, “just you and me going to London on our own.”

5.20. We are going through customs.

“And that’s another habit we need to update,” I say, “It’s not as if we have four children travelling with us anymore. From now on, you take possession of your documents, I take possession of mine.”

5.25. I am standing in front of the conveyor belt, waiting for my luggage to reappear on its tray. My husband is tying his laces.

“And while I think about it,” I say, spotting my tray, “now that we’re through to Departures, maybe we could break with another tradition.”

“What tradition?” he says.

“You know exactly what tradition, Lord Lucan,” I say, “the one where the minute you hit Departures, you vanish into thin air, with all the documents until three seconds before the gate closes.”

“So on that note,” I say, standing upright, “you can hand me my documents. Right now,” I say, looking left.

“This minute,” I say, looking right.

But Lucan has gone. Lucan is nowhere to be seen.