What happens in the video
At an airport counter overlooking the planes, a woman in a burgundy suit presents a paper to an employee in a white blouse. Both gesture towards the counter and the lounge entrance. A man in a blue jacket comes closer with a tablet and looks down at it while the customer holds the paper. The footage does not show whether she enters.
Continuation:
The handwriting on the back of the lounge voucher was unmistakably Theo’s. He still made the dot over every i so large that it looked like a second letter.
*Go sit by a window, Mum. Have something expensive for free.*
Jo had been saving that scrap of paper for the last flight home. Her son had bought it with his first proper pay cheque. He imagined airport lounges had chandeliers and people carrying silver trays. Looking through the glass, Jo could see a coffee machine and a man asleep with his mouth open. She wanted to go in all the same.
The woman at the counter scanned the voucher twice.
“It’s coming up as used.”
Jo felt her face grow warm. “I’ve had two buses and a delayed flight today. Where exactly would I have used it?”
The employee, Pia, turned the screen a little, trying to read the small print. The queue behind Jo shifted. She could already picture calling Theo from a plastic seat and telling him how lovely the lounge had been. She hated that she was planning to lie to him.
A supervisor approached with a tablet. Instead of asking Jo to repeat the whole story, he asked Pia to show him the time of the first scan.
“Fourteen twenty-three,” she read.
All three looked at the clock. Fourteen twenty-four.
The first scan had admitted one guest. The green confirmation had disappeared while Pia was reaching for the voucher, and every scan after it had quite correctly said the pass was used.
“That’s your entry,” Pia said. “You were standing here the whole time. I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”
Jo let out a laugh that was half relief. “And I’m sorry about the buses. You didn’t put me on either of them.”
Pia handed the paper back. Jo had assumed they would keep it, but the supervisor had noticed the writing on the reverse. He pointed out a window seat with a view of the runway.
She took a photograph for Theo. On the table she arranged a cappuccino, an apple and two little packets of biscuits. Then she moved one biscuit out of the picture, ate it and put the empty wrapper back. The whole arrangement had looked too tidy for him to believe it was hers.
His reply came before she finished her coffee. *Expensive enough?*
*Ruinously,* she wrote.
At home she used the old voucher as a bookmark. Months later, a biscuit crumb fell from the pages onto her lap. For a second she was back in that window seat, watching the planes turn, with no emails to answer and a cup of coffee bought by a boy whose lunches she could still remember packing.
