Strangers in Company Read Free

notice at this godawful hour of the night? We’re nearly two hours late now. You’ve been out cold the whole time.”
    Marian laughed as she picked up her small zip-topped case. “A fine chaperone I make. Just as well Miss Oakland’s not here to see. Thanks for watching over me.”
    â€œNo trouble.” An odd expression in that so far unreadable face? Hard to tell.… And no time to be thinking about it, while they gathered together their possessions. As it was, they were the last through Gate Twelve and walked along the endless echoing Gatwick corridor well behind the rest of the party.
    â€œThey’ve been fraternising like mad.” Stella cast a darkling look forward. “Of course there are lots of other tours using this plane, but our labels are so ghastly unmistakable.”
    Marian yawned uncontrollably. “What time is it?”
    â€œTwo in the morning. We’ll just about get to Athens for breakfast. How I hate night flights.” The sentences came out jerkily, and Marian remembered that curious, unidentifiable feeling of something wrong that she had had before she fell asleep. Oh, well, night was the time for imagining things.
    The last to board the plane, they were greeted withunceremonious briskness by an exhausted-looking stewardess.
    â€œBack there. The two empty seats.” She turned away to put a coat in the luggage rack and remove a heavy-looking case. “On the floor, please.”
    â€œSounds like the end of a long, horrible day.” Stella, leading the way, had found the two vacant seats in one of the inevitable rows of three. The one by the window was already occupied by the blond young courier, who was on his feet at once, offering to change seats. But, “No, thanks.” Stella sat down firmly in the middle seat of the row. “There’s nothing to see anyway,” she pointed out, rising again to throw her red raincoat and Marian’s brown one expertly up into the rack, while he made ineffective attempts at helping her, hamstrung by the fact that he was cramped under the overhang.
    â€œThere.” She turned her back on him to tuck her small bag and Marian’s under the seats in front. “Something to put our feet on. I bet no one’s ever asked a woman to design a plane. Have you ever flown the Atlantic?”
    â€œNo.” The knife turned in the wound. “I saw my children off, the other day. Of course, I didn’t get near the plane.”
    â€œJust as bad as this one.” To Marian’s relief, Stella showed not the slightest interest in the fact of her children. “Nowhere to put your feet, and the minute you get almost settled, the seat in front falls back on you with a crash.” She fastened her seat belt with a quick, irritable movement of the hands, then turned the other way as the courier asked her the same question for the third time.
    â€œDid you get through in the end?” he had been asking.
    â€œThrough? Oh—on the telephone you mean. No, my friend must have been out.” She turned from him dismissively. “I thought I might as well say good-bye,” she explained to Marian.
    â€œYes.” The disastrous affair? She smiled wryly to herself, remembering how grateful she had been for Stella’s watching over her while she slept. The courier’s questionimplied, surely, a considerable number of attempts to make the call. Oh, well, poor Stella.…
    Fatigue was coming over her again, wave on wave of it, in the synthetic air of the plane. She fastened her seat belt, leaned back and closed her eyes.
    â€œMy name’s Cairnthorpe.” The young courier was trying again with Stella. “I’m your courier, heaven help me.”
    â€œOn a Mercury Classical Tour? Shouldn’t you be invoking Zeus?”
    â€œOh, well.” He was delighted to have got a real answer out of her. “Strictly speaking, that’s the guide’s job. We pick him up