The journey home was exhausting. I woke up at 6am, left the house with Doris at 7, and got dropped off by Rafael at 7.30. The queue to check in was the worst I’ve ever seen; it snaked around the entire airport and it took me nearly an hour to get to the front. When it finally came round to my turn, I sent my suitcase away and was about to rush to Departures when a security guard stopped me. He told me to come with him and there was nothing I could do but obey.
All the way into the back room, I was trying to find out what was going on, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. My passport and all my belongings were taken from me without a word and I was instructed to stand by and watch while everything was searched - including the suitcase I’d just seen go onto the conveyor belt.
I tried to suppress the feeling of panic that was beginning to take over my body, racking my brain for anything that could possibly have aroused their suspicion about my luggage. The man checking my hold luggage spoke quickly and in a barely decipherable mumble; it was lucky I spoke good Spanish, or I don’t know what I would have done. I answered every question as honestly as I could, even telling him about the presents I had in my suitcase from my Peruvian family, even though I knew they were completely safe.
After what felt like hours but could only have been minutes, my belongings were thrown back into my cases and I was given back my passport and sent on my way. I was never told why I was stopped, but I can only think it has something to do with the two English girls my age who got stopped a few weeks ago for drug smuggling and are now locked up in Peruvian prison. Whatever the reason, it was terrifying and I never want to have to go through it again.
Once released from the back room, I had to rush to get through to the gate on time, queuing at migration and again for the usual hand luggage security checks. By the time I got on the plane, I was exhausted.
Typically for me, I made another friend on the plane journey to Madrid, a really cool artsy, kind-of-emo girl a few years older than me called Inés. I knew I’d like her as soon as I saw her board the plane in her knitted jumper, teal biker boots and purple trilby. She’d been born in Lima and had lived in Spain for a few years, then gone back to Lima, and was now moving back to Barcelona again to live with her parents and finish her degree. She’d been studying as a journalist in Lima but seemed to be pretty talented at art and photography, too, and was going back to Barcelona to study restaurant management. The bad thing was that she was leaving behind her friends and her girlfriend who was clearly perfect for her. She had a letter and some pictures of her girlfriend in an envelope, which she was keen to show me.
We spent a lot of the journey chatting to each other and showing each other photos, when we weren’t trying (and failing) to sleep or making our own interpretations of the awful film they’d put on, watching it without sound. When we finally landed in Madrid at 4.30am (10.30pm for us), we exchanged names and said we’d stay in touch.
I then had another three hours to wait for my connecting flight to London. Luckily, there were no delays this time and I got straight through. I even arrived at Gatwick early and got on an earlier train to Reading; unfortunately I couldn’t change my ticket from Reading to Birmingham, but I spent the hour sitting in a little cafe run by a lovely local woman. When I reached Birmingham, I jumped straight on the connecting train to Wolverhampton and was there at 2.45. Ten minutes later, my mum was pulling up in the Audi I’d always moaned about, but had never been so glad to see. I ran into my mum’s arms and suddenly realised how good it was to be home.
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