The Road Ahead Read online

  The Road Ahead

  Book One in the Around the World Series

  Amanda Radley

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Book Two in the Around the World Series

  Patreon

  Reviews

  About the Author

  Also by Amanda Radley

  Also by Amanda Radley

  Also by Amanda Radley

  Also by Amanda Radley

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  Chapter One

  “Excuse me! Sorry!”

  Rebecca rushed past an elderly couple. She looked at her watch and started to run towards the terminal building. Time was running out. She had to catch her flight, she couldn’t afford to miss it. Around the corner, she almost collided with another elderly couple.

  Apparently, the Algarve was full of them. Slowly meandering around, not caring if they were in the way. Usually appearing to be in a world of their own. They eyed her with confusion, probably wondering what the fuss was about. The concept of time seemed to be lost on most of them.

  “Sorry!” she called over her shoulder as she sidestepped them and sprinted towards the airport entrance.

  She knew she shouldn’t have relied on the taxi service her hotel recommended. It seemed a little too much of a coincidence that the lazy receptionist shared a surname with the taxi driver. When he’d finally turned up, he seemed less interested in getting to the airport and more interested in his telephone call. So much so that they missed the turn to the airport, adding to the delay.

  The automatic doors parted, and she entered the building. She slowed her running to a jog, looking around in confusion. The departures terminal was packed with people standing around. Angry-looking people. Arms were folded, and a combined murmuring of displeasure filled the air. Something was definitely up.

  Rebecca took a few steps forward and looked up at the ceiling monitors. Her eyes widened. Each and every flight on the departure board was marked as delayed.

  “No, no, no,” she whispered to herself.

  A businessman was standing beside her, looking at his phone and shaking his head.

  Rebecca turned towards him. “Excuse me, do you know what’s happening?”

  He looked up. “Some massive computer failure. Knocked out air traffic control in all of Portugal and Spain. Everything is grounded.”

  Rebecca swallowed. “Everything?” She removed her heavy backpack and lowered it to the floor.

  He nodded. “Yeah, speak to a check-in assistant, but that’s what they told me.” He held up his phone for her to see the screen. “And that’s what the news says.”

  “Did they say how long it would be?” Rebecca felt cold fear grip at her. She had to get home, she didn’t have time for delays.

  “No idea, could be ten minutes, could be ten hours. Personally, I don’t think it will be that long. It can’t be.” He lowered his phone and gestured to the growing crowd. “This close to Christmas, they’ll be calling everyone in to get it sorted out.”

  Rebecca looked around at the people in the departure hall. In her mind, people and planes were like water and glasses. Water spilt from a glass always looked like so much more compared to water contained in one. It was the same with people. Sat on a plane, the number of people looked reasonable, but sprawled out in an airport, they seemed like enough to fill hundreds of flights.

  She turned back to the businessman. He looked authoritative, some kind of higher-up executive, she assumed. In her experience, people like that didn’t always have the best grasp on reality. They assumed that their personal assistant, faithful Marjorie, would fix everything in a jiffy. They didn’t know that Marjorie had sold her kidneys, killed a man, and bribed law officials to do what needed to be done because she had a large mortgage, three children, and a beagle, and needed her job whatever the cost.

  “Thanks,” she said. She picked up her bag and made her way through the crowds to the check-in desks.

  The long row of desks was manned by exhausted-looking staff who seemed to be struggling to maintain a customer-facing smile. Luckily, there were no queues. Most people had given up speaking to the airline staff and were now standing around looking discontent, delivering filthy looks to any staff member who made eye contact.

  Hoping against hope, Rebecca walked towards a free desk.

  “Hi, Rebecca Edwards,” she introduced herself to the woman. She took her passport and her boarding pass from her pocket and handed them over. “I’m due to fly to Heathrow, but I hear there is a delay?”

  “All flights are delayed at the moment. There is a computer problem and no flights can land or take off.” The woman didn’t even make a move to pick up her passport or boarding pass.

  “Right,” Rebecca said. She chewed her lip. “Any idea of time?”

  “As soon as we hear anything, it will be announced over the speaker and on the screens.” The woman pointed up towards the screens that hung from the ceiling.

  “Okay…” Rebecca knew that there was nothing more to be done, but she couldn’t bring herself to walk away from the desk. She lowered her heavy bag to the floor again, her mind racing as she wondered what to do next.

  The illogical part of her felt that standing around the check-in desk would somehow help her predicament. The desk was a critical part in the whole boarding process. Somehow, being there gave her hope. But in her heart, she knew it was futile.

  “I’m sorry, there really is nothing I can do.” The check-in assistant offered an apologetic smile.

  “I really need to get home,” Rebecca said. She leaned on the high check-in desk, pushing aside a stand-up marketing message regarding the airline’s award-winning customer service. “When do you think the next plane will leave?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any information to give you.” The assistant, Beatriz if her nametag was to be believed, tapped some buttons on her keyboard while squinting at the screen.

  “I know it’s not your fault,” Rebecca added.

  She watched as an irate German woman yelled at the poor check-in assistant beside her. She’d never understand how someone could be so mean, especially to the people on the front line. Yes, the airport had a massive computer failure. Yes, planes were grounded. Yes, it was the twenty-third of December. But that was no reason to take it out on the minimum wage check-in assistants.

  “Sorry about a
ll the people shouting at you, it must really suck,” Rebecca said. She knew she didn’t have to apologise for someone else’s behaviour, but she wanted to.

  The German woman left, blasting out obscenities as she went.

  “It is a busy time of year,” Beatriz replied. “Many people want to get home. The air traffic control systems have been down since early this morning, and we have no idea when they will be back up and running. It isn’t just Faro Airport that’s affected, it’s many airports throughout the country. And in Spain, too.”

  “Must be horrible for you to have to deal with it,” Rebecca sympathised. She fretted with her hair tie. She couldn’t imagine having to tell hundreds of irate passengers that news, over and over again.

  “In all my years of flying, I’ve never seen such incompetence!”

  Rebecca winced at the British voice. She turned to look at who had taken over from the German woman to be in the running for rudest passenger of the morning.

  The woman was approximately in her forties and wore a black skirt suit. Her long, blonde hair was perfectly styled in soft curls that fell to her shoulders. Rebecca glanced down at the woman’s feet, noting a plaster cast on one foot, which looked at odds with the business attire. For a brief second, she wondered what had happened and felt a pang of sympathy towards her.

  “I need to get back to London, now. How are you going to make that happen?” the woman demanded. She smacked her passport onto the check-in desk.

  Rebecca’s eyes widened at the tone. Her sympathy at the woman’s cast evaporated. She turned back to Beatriz.

  “Wow,” she whispered and tilted her head towards the loud woman. “Rude.”

  Beatriz smiled and nodded in agreement.

  “Don’t know why she’s complaining, she should fly her broom home,” Rebecca muttered.

  Beatriz chuckled. She looked thoughtfully at Rebecca for a moment. She leaned forward, gesturing for Rebecca to do the same.

  Rebecca stood on her tiptoes and pivoted forward. She wondered why airport check-in desks were often so high. She was hardly short, but even she struggled to see over them sometimes.

  “There were two planes to London due before yours,” Beatriz explained, gesturing around the busy airport.

  Rebecca turned around. She regarded the angry passengers standing around, most of them shaking their heads. The occasional tut could be heard.

  “I can’t say when the computer system will be up and running, but even if it sprang to life right now, the two planes from this morning would take priority. We don’t have enough planes to take everyone today, and we can’t divert from other airports as it’s so close to Christmas.”

  Rebecca’s heart rate picked up as she began to understand the reality of the situation.

  “All of the other airlines will be fully booked,” Beatriz concluded.

  “You’re telling me that my chance of getting home for Christmas is bad, right?” Rebecca guessed.

  Beatriz nodded. “By plane, yes.”

  Rebecca frowned. “Is there another way? What about the trains?”

  “Altogether impractical, miss. To travel from Faro to London, you would have to get to Lisbon, then take a night train to the Spanish-French border. Then, you’d have to switch to travel to Paris, and then switch again for the high-speed rail to London.” The assistant frowned as if to emphasise her point. “A lot of transfers, and it could be expensive.”

  Rebecca’s heart sank. “Not to mention the timing. I’d never get home for Christmas.”

  Something about her plight must have resonated with Beatriz. The woman gestured for Rebecca to come a little closer. She did the best she could, standing on the very tips of her Converse All-Stars. “Very soon, these people are going to realise that time is running out, and they are going to look for alternative methods of transport. You can, technically, drive to London and get home for Christmas. But there will be a limited number of cars available for hire…”

  The penny dropped. Rebecca slowly nodded as she understood. Beatriz smiled, picked up Rebecca’s passport and boarding pass, and handed them back to her.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Edwards, there’s nothing I can do,” she said loudly.

  “Thank you, thank you so much,” Rebecca whispered as she grabbed the items and hoisted her rucksack onto her shoulder.

  “You better hurry,” Beatriz advised quietly.

  “I will, thank you again,” Rebecca said. She turned and looked at the airport signage, searching for a pictogram of a car and her way home.

  Chapter Two

  Arabella Henley awkwardly stalked the departure hall, leaning heavily on her crutch as she did. She couldn’t believe the incompetence she was facing.

  Air travel predated computers, and yet it was supposedly completely impossible to take off while the system remained down. No matter whom she spoke to, she couldn’t get a proper answer on how long it would be until the situation was fixed.

  She’d spoken to three separate customer service advisors, all of whom were completely useless. In the end, she had demanded to speak to a manager, and they’d sent her a fourteen-year-old boy. She chewed him out and then requested another manager. A grown-up emerged, only to mansplain that the computers were all down.

  Of course, she already knew that the computers were all down. That was obvious. What she wanted to know was what they were going to do about it. And how, precisely, she was going to get back to London. Unsurprisingly, no one seemed to know the answer.

  Eventually, she had grabbed her crutch and limped away from the check-in desks. If she’d stayed there a moment longer she would have been arrested by the Portuguese police for throttling a member of the staff.

  As she left, she heard the assistant mumble something in Portuguese, presumably something not flattering. She decided to ignore it. She knew she was a difficult customer, maybe even rude. But that was how you got things done. That was how you ensured that people didn’t walk all over you. Business was tough, life was tough, and so she was tough.

  She stopped her circles of the departure hall. She leaned against a pillar and let out a sigh. The terminal building was busy. Extremely busy. It seemed that everyone wanted to get somewhere for Christmas.

  “Do you know how long the computers have been down?” she asked a nearby couple. She knew they were British, she could tell by the pink skin and the dreadful clothes.

  “Since this morning,” the man replied. “We were supposed to take off at six o’clock.”

  She nodded and turned away, not wanting to encourage further conversation. She wanted information, not friendly chatter and new best friends for the next few hours. She looked at the clock on her phone, it was eight in the morning. The system had been down for at least two hours.

  She glanced around the terminal building again. There were hundreds, probably even thousands, of people. All standing around, waiting for information.

  She’d seen this before. When ice had closed Heathrow for a day, the results had been disastrous. A lack of planes, lack of runway take-off slots, and an abundance of people had led to severe delays. And that was a major London hub, more prepared to deal with large-scale problems than Faro on the Portuguese coast.

  A middle-aged couple caught her eye. They were calmly piling their bags onto an airport trolley. Trying to look discreet, trying not to draw attention to themselves. Trying but failing. The look of panic in the man’s eye gave him away.

  What are you up to? she wondered.

  The mother grabbed her escaping toddler by the wrist and pulled him towards the exit. The man was already hurriedly pushing the airport trolley that way, seemingly trying not to run.

  Arabella watched them with interest, her gaze drifting up towards the airport signage.

  “Of course,” she mumbled to herself.

  Rebecca felt faint. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that again?”

  “Two thousand five hundred and fifty-eight euros.”

  She knew she couldn’t afford it. Even s
o, she desperately tapped the amount into the conversion app on her mobile phone. It looked just as hideous in British pounds.

  “It is one of the last vehicles we have.”

  She looked up and read his nametag. “Look, Jose, it’s nearly Christmas and I have to get home. Surely you can help me out?”

  Jose shook his head. “I’m sorry, there are many people in that terminal who would be willing to pay for that vehicle.”

  Rebecca heard the door to the car hire office open behind her. She turned to see a couple with a toddler hurry in and approach the desk next to her.

  “We need to hire a car to drive back to England,” the man explained to Jose’s colleague.

  Jose raised his eyebrow and looked at Rebecca. “See?”

  Perhaps in the spirit of the holiday, this young family would like to car share back to the UK.

  She tried to get the couple’s attention, but they purposely busied themselves with their toddler and their phones to avoid eye contact. Christmas spirit, my arse. She was running out of options.

  “Can I pay half now, half later?” Rebecca tried.

  “No. Maybe try one of the other hire agencies?” Jose gestured towards the door with his pen.

  “They’re either closed or don’t have any cars,” Rebecca said. Inspiration struck her. “What about bikes? Do you have any bikes I can hire?”