The Legacy of Lucy Harte by Emma Heatherington

Author:Emma Heatherington
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007568826
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-09-30T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

I am giddy with excitement as I check in for my flight at Belfast International Airport, especially when I don’t recognise my own reflection in the mirrored wall as I pass it.

I did what Lucy never got to do. I had a damn good haircut and it feels like a weight has been, quite literally, lifted off my shoulders. For the first time in years, I went to a strange salon in the city instead of going to Flo because I was so afraid of changing my mind.

‘I like your tattoo,’ the hairdresser told me and I held my thumb over the little heart and rubbed it gently as I breathed in and out in preparation for my new look.

I love the new tattoo, now that I am sober enough to appreciate it. I have made my peace with Lucy again but I am more determined than ever to see this list through in a bid to find a new direction for me. I need her. I need her more than I thought I did and to let her go now would be foolish and would make me drift back in time to a life of misery and never-ending hangovers and returning to a job I am no longer sure that I really want to do.

‘Any luggage to check in?’ the stewardess on the desk asks me and I am delighted to tell her no. For this trip I am deliberately travelling one way, totally alone, with no baggage, not even in the most literal sense. I have a light rucksack that can hold my passport and a few pairs of shorts and vest tops and a light jacket, my make-up and that’s it.

She does a double-take when she looks at my passport photo. In it I am blonde and my hair goes down past my shoulders. In real life now I have a short, funky bob and I’m a feisty red head. Not ginger, not auburn – but red and I love it!

‘That’s you all checked in, then,’ says the lady with her lipstick smile and she hands me back my passport and boarding pass. ‘You will do a self-connection at New York for your connecting flight to Nashville. Have a nice trip, ma’am.’

It was like I handed my mother a million pounds when I arrived at her door last night. After my hair cut, I went to Tesco and bought the makings of a jam-and-cream sponge cake. I haven’t baked in years and had no equipment in the apartment, so I’d to start literally from scratch, but just like Lucy said, the feeling of doing something for someone when they aren’t expecting it was so rewarding and it felt so good inside.

I whipped the cream and I spread the jam and marvelled at the whole thing coming together, then I boxed it up and drove out into the countryside to deliver it personally to the two people who mean the most in the world to me.

Dad was on the tractor when I tooted the horn on the way past and he stood up and gave me the biggest wave.

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