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Arrival
As we walked through the airport I began to sweat with the heat of
summer in Spain. I was so lucky to have been chosen as the pupil to go on
holiday with the teacher and her family, her husband and daughter. She hand
picks from the class based on who she thinks would benefit the most from the
trip, and she had smiled at me when she picked me and said 'Lucky you Nick, you
are coming with me this summer'. In fact I didn't even get the chance to say
yes, but I'm sure I would have if asked.
I nervously followed them through the concourse, they obviously knew
where they were going, as they had visited their holiday villa a lot, and with
other students before. My best friend went with them last year, and his texts
told of the great time he was having. In fact such a good time that he had
decided to move to Spain for good, without even coming back after the holiday.
I thought it was strange, but obviously he was happy here. His texts had
gradually stopped, as I thought they would with the new friends he would make.
I wondered if I might bump into him. That would be great, but as I thought
about it briefly I was shaken back to the here and now by Miss Williams calling
my name out loud. "Nick, come and get the bags from the carousel".
I'm sure she must have forgotten to say please because of the rush we were in,
so I walked to the moving belt and waited for cases to arrive.
"We'll meet you at the front of the building, we'll go and get a
taxi" she said. "Make sure you are out there in 5 minutes, no
more".
I said "Yes Miss", and thought to myself how I still had to
use that name even though we weren't in the classroom now, it just felt right
with the relationship we had with each other. I hoped other people would guess
at the situation, because it might sound a bit odd hearing me call her that.
Her husband smiled at me and walked off with her, their daughter walked
over to me.
"Don't be late little Nick, my mum doesn't have much
patience". With that she turned quickly and her short holiday skirt
swirled up, as she started to run after her parents. Even though she was 18,
she still had a young demeanour, I think because her parents kept her in check,
knowing that she was probably the centre of attention wherever they went.
I watched the cases coming round and spotted their family ones quickly,
with the big labels we had put on all of them. I took them off the carousel and
put them on the trolley I had managed to grab, and waited for mine to show up.
I waited and waited, but it never came out. Eventually all of them had
been removed and the carousel was lazily moving around, until eventually it
stopped. Damm, where was mine? Miss Williams' husband had taken them all
to the baggage check in to go in the hold and come back saying everything went
well, so I was sure it should be on there. What would I do without all my
stuff? I couldn't wear the same thing for 3 weeks.
Eventually, with no-one around to ask I pushed the trolley out of the
building, to find Miss Williams stood looking quite annoyed.
"Where have you been?" she bellowed. "I said 5 minutes!”
I was slightly taken aback, surprised by the sound of her voice. It was
as if she felt that I had disobeyed her. I tried to explain that I couldn't
find my suitcase, but she didn't seem concerned at all. In fact I would almost
say not surprised, but that could just be because she seemed so angry.
"Well, get our bags loaded in the taxi and let’s get going. It's a
long drive and I want to get there before it gets dark. You will just have find
something to wear when we get there, we have plenty of things in the
villa".
I loaded the bags while the family got in the cab. I couldn't help but
notice that Mr Williams didn't offer to help, in fact he almost looked like he
was enjoying seeing me get shouted at, and whispered something to his daughter
that made her giggle while looking at me.
‘Well that wasn't great start to the holiday’ I thought as I got in the
very back seat of the minivan on my own.
We set off into the sun soaked countryside, and as I looked at the passing
scenery I thought again how lucky I was to get picked, and what a great time
I'm sure I would have with Miss Williams and her family on this holiday. If
only I knew then what would happen to me, I might have got back on a plane back
home right then.
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