When You Know

There was amazement to be held in just how many people could fill a tiny, barely significant place. Murphy had seen it countless times in venues across the world, praying someone somewhere along the line had done their calculations right, thoughts of crushes and pulses in a crowd being at the forefront of her mind. But has anyone actually calculated the capacity of an airport? Or had it just slipped everyone's mind. It was, after all, just the crossing point between home and somewhere else. Nobody paid it any attention, they just rifled through shop after shop and spent their hours before every flight with eyes darting toward the departures board, making a speedy beeline for their allocated gates with no real explanation as to why.

Even waiting in a long line of arrivals, Murphy was viciously aware of how crowded they could be. Maybe this wasn't even crowded; maybe she'd grown so comfortably used to seeing barely anyone that the headache she was getting was just a product of the noise that surrounded her. Either way, she hated it, and she hadn't been more happy to see a border agent since she first started travelling.

'Long trip?' The girl joked, holding up Murphy's passport so the face in the photo was in line with her real one.

'Rough paper round,' Murphy smiled politely, fingers rapping rhythmically on the side of the booth. Her aura must have spelled defeat as the woman handed her passport back without another world, not before stamping it and clearing her in. The noises were still so loud, a symphony of chaos after just a few short weeks of tranquil solitude. She almost missed it; the silence of the mountains of Chile. She missed it even more when she stepped outside, forgetting that snow was a possibility in Belfast. Passengers had long trampled the snow into a grey slurry, but the cold was still biting, even through her leather jacket. Jackets and t-shirts would have to go back in the case for now, replaced with hoodies she'd barely touched in months.

'Alice,' a voice called. Of course her Dad hadn't pulled into the pick up point, he had a vendetta against those. No, he was parked in short stay, meaning Murphy would have to carry her heavy backpack all the way over to his car before he found any relief. Still, her Dad's hug was warm and welcoming, and he always smiled at her like it was her first time home in years. A few months, it had been, but this was his third airport pick up since then and his smile remained unchanged.

'How was it?' He patted her on the back a few times. Sean Murphy was clearly a man who'd longed for a son, but treated his daughter with all the love a man could hold for a child. It was a fact that Murphy realised aged eight, when her mother went away again and her christmas present that year had been a biker's jacket. That had been the Christmas her dad had driven her up to Scotland and they ate a can of lukewarm beans he'd cooked on his engine, since he'd forgotten most places would be closed for the occasion. The leather jacket had been used for warmth as she slept most of the journey back, and two months later she'd learnt what her mother's life was like when she went away.

Now, at twenty-six, she was a far cry away from folding t-shirts on the back of a minivan or sewing patches through leather, and as much as she hated it, she was a product of both her parents equally. Her Dad still looked like he was stuck in the 70's, though his own dyed black hair was now showing hints of grey around the roots again, and his old Led Zeppelin shirt was likely doing nothing against the winter air. Still, when Murphy smiled and actually looked at him, she saw the faint reflection of herself beaming back.

'It was great, really,' Murphy chimed. 'I tried those long exposure shots you said, but I didn't get anywhere to look at them so they could be shit.'

'Tomorrow's problem,' he waved off, stepping into his car carefully. 'Meet anyone out there?'

'Yeah, actually,' Murphy nodded. 'I met this really nice physics student named Mateo. We had drinks by the beach and he asked me to be his wife. We got married on the beach, did the invite not arrive?'