Posted: Jun 24, 08 1:06pm

Abby felt herself beaming slightly. She loved airports. She loved walking into the noise and the bustle, loved it when those electric doors closed behind her and that rush of airport air shot a little buzz of satisfaction into her jitterbug spirit. She loved looking back at the place she was leaving. It was already gone, already left behind. The border had been crossed. To her the airport was fresh soil, the first territory of her destination - almost, the arrival. And Abby liked to arrive in style.

To this end she travelled light. Not for her the airport trolley with the rebellious wheel, the half-dozen cases piled hopelessly high, the fuss and bluster of that guy over there running late and letting everyone know it. She had her own routine, and it was all about relaxation, peace, ease, pleasure. Abby knew all the tricks. If it meant paying a little extra, so what? She had money. She'd take every fast-track option - check in, security, departure - just to give her more time to take it all in, soak up the atmosphere.

And Paris Charles de Gaulle was one of her favourite airports - so clean, so bright and polished. So unlike, well, Paris. Not that she didn't admire all that ancient murk, that dedication to preserving the scars of centuries - it just meant the airport had an even greater sense of otherness, of getting there or, in this case, of getting home. Of course the French would always try to maintain their own standards and culture, but the airport was out of control, a lost cause. There was so much here to remind Abby of home.

Everything was in English for a start, and the shops - Marks and Spencers, WH Smith - straight out of her own Manchester high street. There was even a McDonalds. You had to have a map to find one in Paris. They were always slotted down some side street like an annoyance, a genuine threat of American glee come to saltify the tender palates of the French young. It made her laugh to walk past the airport concession and watch all the exiting tourists - done with the refinements of Gaul - gulping down towers of processed stodge like health-packs in a videogame. In another place, another airport, she might have joined them. Abby was no snob. She'd chowed down on Ronald's salty saviour more than once. But in Paris CDG there was a particular indulgence that existed nowhere else on earth, a taste so refined and exceptional that, as she made her way passed the big yellow M to the fast-track check-in, she found herself salivating at the mere thought of it.

First things first though. She checked in her one small case and strolled off towards the WC to freshen up. She stood before the mirror. No major reconstruction required. Her journey so far had been an unruffled glide, so there wasn't much out of place. Not too bad, she thought. Could pass for thirty five…ish. There was still a glow to her, a fleshiness to the cheeks that had not yet been surrendered to middle-age. If she held her head a certain way there was hardly a line, though maybe the promise of a wrinkle here and there. And her eyes were bright and youthful, well maintained. She pouted her lips, applied a single stroke of glaze and then left, satisfied, for Madame Jean's cookie stall.

Here was the aberration of Paris Charles de Gaulle. The quirk. The one thing that drew Abby out of her preferred view of the airport as neutral soil. Madame Jean's was pure Paris. Madame Jean's was the enlightened French hand on the American classic, the difference, the sure touch, the exception, the stateside cookie refined to the point where one might suggest the humble baker had become, at last, the regal biscuiteer. Madame Jean's confection did not so much melt in the mouth as disappear in a flash of dense flavour, gone in an instant and yet the tongue abuzz with the unlocked ghosts of her ingredients. And yet Madame Jean's existed nowhere else but here, in the airport. Hers was not some all-pervading franchise, but a single shop in a single place, to be found nowhere else in Paris, or, indeed, the world. How had this happened? Had the airport been built around her, or had she, defiant in the face of Anglo Saxon encroachment, unfurled her tri-colour for the honour of French soil?

"Choc chip, si vous plais. Ten of please. Dix."

What did it matter, other than such mighty forces had come together, such fates?

Abby walked now to the departure lounge. In order to partake of this indulgence it was her custom to sit in front of the great window looking out onto the runway. She avoided the various cafes - too much angst, nervousness, dusty, careless food and murky coffee. She had her cookies and all was fine.

"Hi!"

She looked up as she placed her handbag and the paper sack of Madame Jean's on the floor beside her.

"Nice view."

Abby nodded, smiled nervously. The woman was large, imposing. From this angle she had a kind of bullfrog quality, the sweep of her dangling second chin baring forth the promise of moonlit chatter. She had thick, bottle top glasses, the type you'd usually see in comedy sketches, a hard, orangey perm, and she wore a massive floral dress that struggled to discipline her bust and square-set hips.

"May I?"

Abby glanced around. There were empty seats everywhere.

- Why does she want to sit next to me? Doesn't she realise she's overweight? Oh God, maybe she wants to talk. What will we talk about? I'll pretend I need to text someone -

As the lady sat down Abby lowered a hand into her bag to locate her phone. Instinctively she found herself fumbling for the sack of Madame Jean's and lowering them into her handbag - a kind of motherly reaction to protect the threatened young.

She began to tap hesitantly on her mobile, relaxing a little as it appeared her stout intruder had got the message.

- Who should I text?-

When a quiet moment had passed Abby let her free hand slide into her bag to manipulate the gummed clasp of her cookie sack, determined to have her chocolaty indulgence no matter what. She felt around for a moment and then…

- Oh God, oh God -

Abby withdrew as though electrocuted - her cookie sack open, fleshy, alien fingers within, a sweaty palm grasping, searching.

- Oh God. What's going on? She's a nutcase. I've got myself a nutter -

Abby swallowed noiselessly. It took a moment to gather her wits from the hot numbness that had poured into the front of her mind. As it receded she found herself visualising a number of possible reactions - indignation, a wordy rebuke, a polite gesture to inform the lady of her mistake, a hard stare, a companionable giggle to defuse any embarrassment. She dismissed them all.

- What to do, what to do? Play it cool. Let her take one but don’t acknowledge it. Take one myself as though there's nothing wrong -

Abby grasped one of the small round biscuits and brought it to her mouth. She looked sideways sheepishly, to find her rotund companion beaming at her, nodding happily. Abby's mouth cracked into an awkward smile as her own Madame Jean's disappeared on her palate like a wisp of flavourless air.

- Oh God, she's going for another one. She's actually reaching for another one. What to do? Maybe she's a psychotic? She is. She's a psychotic nutcase and this is her crazy-play. What if she's got a gun. Should I alert the authorities? Oh God, why did this have to happen? -

Abby sat back and listened in hopeless dejection as the woman crunched into a second Madame Jean's. She felt curiously hyped. Emotions seemed to be gathering above her like storm clouds - fear, anger, submission, defiance, shame, Shakespearean quotes: Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.

- Sod this. I'll just get up and go. No, no. that would just provoke her. She's a big girl. They tend to be abnormally strong, don't they? I'll just sit here and eat my own cookies and say nothing. You have to feel sorry for them really. I'll just take what's mine and forget about her. That's what -

Abby reached down again, looking straight ahead as an Easyjet lifted from the runway in a fizz of hot, white noise. Once more her sack of Madame Jean's was being unlawfully encroached upon. Abby tried hard not to flinch. She let her fingers wrestle two or three cookies into her palm and craned them up in defiance.

- What I eat now I eat as a matter of principal. I will not succumb to you, you bloody nutcase. Why did they have to let you out? -

Abby crammed her mouth full but her senses were aroused and on fire, her palate rendered less than useless by her ordeal.

- Bitch -

After long moments of angst she felt a tap, more of a nudge, on her shoulder.

- Oh God, this is it. The full nut-job treatment -

She turned slowly to face her tormentor.

- I'll just try to placate her. They say that's the best way. Try to get on their side -

In the woman's podgy hand was Abby's near-empty sack of Madame Jean's. Two left.

- Oh God. Jesus, Jesus. She's actually offering me one. She's actually offering me one of my own fucking cookies -

Abby's mouth dropped open slightly, a little pearl of drool appearing at the corner. She had no control over her movements and yet her hand was slowly lifting into the paper sack - a moment of automation, loss of will, instinct. Quietly she munched on the tasteless morsel, gripped the handle of her bag, raised herself, and, without a word, walked to the shops.

*

For the next hour before her flight Abby maintained her usual airport routine. She read at news-stands but heeded no news. She sniffed at expensive perfumes but could not distinguish their scents from the pervading air. She did all she usually did but in a daze, a wandering, semi-unconscious glide.

Even when she strapped herself in for take-off and lifted her unopened sack of Madame Jean's from her handbag the stupor did not lift, but was merely coloured by that sense of Shakespearean other-death which must come when one realises that man can never summon courage great enough to parry the finger of accusing fate.