Homesick by Roshi Fernando

airport, they are dreadfully alone. Mike has kissed Lucas again and again, and Lucas has kissed Mike tenderly and carefully. Jenny allows him to kiss her cheek. It is night, almost ten. Lucas is tired as Mike picks him up, holds his full length against him as if to memorise it. Lucas walks backward through the security doors. Jenny looks back once, sees Mike brush a tear away. She and Lucas have to become a team again. She pushes the trolley, and he carries his rucksack. She tries to check in, but they havenot opened the desk yet, so she sits Lucas on the trolley and they wait, watching the men and women in their flowing robes. She is grateful for the air conditioning, the vacuum of the airport. An Omani manager is kind and beckons them to a different desk. The bags are on the conveyor belt when Lucas says, “My turtle.” It is a low-pitched gurgle of a noise.
    “Did you pack these bags yourself?”
    “Yes.”
    “Mummy,” he whispers. “My turtle.”
    “Lucas,” she says sharply.
“Wait!”
She has learnt that his feelings are not always precious, and that he will not break.
    “Did anyone ask you to carry any packages for them?”
    “No,” she says, talking to both of them. Lucas looks as if he needs the toilet. “Do you need to go?”
    “Yes,” he says urgently. “Mummy, my turtle. It’s hatching. It is.”
    The man at the desk smiles at Lucas.
    “It isn’t, Lucas,” she says chattily. She wants to get through this, get back to England, and the cold and dark, which make her safe. The taxi is booked to meet their flight. The old shuffling George, who takes them to Lucas’s appointments, will be there, white bristles on his cheeks, hair unkempt and the black anorak pervading smoke and Fisherman’s Friends. Lucas jumps from one foot to the other. He is going red.
    “He needs toilet?” the man says.
    “I think so.” She is embarrassed, the way she always is, in a matter-of-fact, my-child-is-special-needs way.
    “Go—go,” he says with a smile, and points toward the lavatories across the hall. She takes Lucas’s hand roughly, and they go through the double doors.
    “See?” Lucas says, unzipping his rucksack. Inside, clambering over his muslin, his colouring pencils, and his shells is a small black creature. It is comical, its head bobbing about, and it tries to climb up the black nylon interior. Its eyes look up at her, and Jenny yelps. Someone is coming in. Jenny pulls Lucas into the toilet and locks it.
    “Oh, God, what are we going to do?”
    “I want to take him home,” Lucas says stoutly. He slides to the floor with the bag on his lap. Jenny looks at him and sees Mike. She thinks of Mike carrying the yoghurt pot through Oman, and it makes her cry, the suddenness of the turtle’s appearance. Oh, Mike, she thinks.
    “We have to take him home,” Lucas whines. He is looking at Jenny, the way he looks at her when she is to say no—no, Lucas, we can’t.
    “Take him home? Where to?” she asks him. She will not say no.
    “To the beach, of course,” he says. She was sure he meant his little room, with its dinosaur mural and plastic animals on the floor.
    “Lucas! We’re just about to get on a plane! We’re going home!”
    “No! Jenny.” He calls her Jenny in moments of crisis, like an old man, like a friend. “We need to take him to his beach.”
    “Lucas …” As Lucas begins to shout, she realises she had never imagined a time when Mike was not part of her, when she was simply Jenny again.
    She calls Mike from the desk, but he is not home. She cannot remember his mobile number in her fluster. She takes the bags off the conveyor belt, tells the man they are not going. They fight their way out of security, and all the while Lucas laughs and is manic, allowing his rucksack tobe held safely by his mother while he runs up and down the concourse, skidding on his knees, getting in the way of busy men and tourists. It is nearly midnight. She should take a cab, but instead she goes to a