Meant-To-Be Mother. Ally Blake

excellent.

      A hard kick to the shins brought Siena back to the less than pleasant present.

      Blithely ignoring the pint-sized, cola-flinging, kick-boxing champ to her left, Siena tried to remember the meditation class she had once taken—close your eyes, take deep calming breaths and think of a happy place. A beach hut in Hawaii? A Swiss ski resort? That shoe shop on Madison Avenue she couldn’t walk into without spending a week’s pay?

      But Siena was surprised to find she could barely recollect the shapes and colours and sensation of being anywhere but the inside of a plane—

      ‘I am soooooo sorry it took me so long! We have a guy in the back row who can juggle soft drink cans. Seriously, soft drink cans! He was teaching me and I almost had it down.’

      Siena opened one eye to find a perky, blonde, perfectly groomed flight attendant with ‘Jessica’ scrawled on to her name badge. She smiled prettily as she handed over a baby-blue box of MaxAir brand moist towels to Siena and another drink to the pouting kick-boxer at Siena’s side.

      Her vague happy place feelings slipped away to naught as Siena realised her day was not about to get any better.

      Seven years as a sky girl and Siena could read people at first glance. She knew which passenger would try to sneak an illegal cigarette puff in the bathroom, which one would be a white knuckle flyer who would need a Bloody Mary as soon as they took off, and which one would try to pinch every female bottom and thus would be fast shifted to a window seat.

      Jessica had just given the kid beside her a new can of cola. Crayons and warm milk would have been the better option. Siena could read that Jessica was sweet but entirely hopeless.

      She wondered briefly if she ought to let Maximillian know when she met him. But no. Siena didn’t do meddling. Growing up with a brother twelve years her senior shoving unwanted advice down her neck her whole life had cured her of that.

      ‘Now, Freddy,’ Jessica cooed, ‘this time we have a cool bendy straw in the can so you can suck it up without spilling a drop.’

      Spilling? That whole move earlier had nothing do with spilling!

      Once Freddy was sucking away, Jessica smiled at Siena in apology. ‘You look awfully familiar,’ she said. ‘Do we know each other?’

      Here we go again…Siena was used to being recognised. For the past year her symmetrical, clear-skinned face had been smiling from billboards above motorways all over the country advertising the supreme, sassy, fun-in-the-air customer service one could expect from a MaxAir flight. For a small gig that had taken an hour in a photographic studio near her apartment in Melbourne, she suddenly feared it might well change the course of her life.

      Would Max really offer the promotional gig on a full-time basis, thus meaning a permanent move to Cairns as everyone expected? If he insisted, would she really have to turn her back on the company that had completely moulded her since she left school?

      Her identity, her friendships and her entire life were so intertwined with her job she so hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but then a move back to Cairns was utterly, sincerely, outright not an option…

      ‘Maybe from a work Christmas party,’ Siena said, telling the truth but skirting the issue all the same. ‘I’m a sky girl for Max too. On the international runs.’

      ‘Oh, okay!’ Jessica bubbled. ‘That must be it. Are you on annual leave or is it just a weekender to the beach?’

      If she mentioned her job interview word would be all over the Far North Queensland operation before they hit the tarmac. ‘My brother and his family live in Cairns,’ Siena said. ‘They just had a new baby.’ She kept back the fact that she hadn’t ever met Rick’s four-year-old twins either.

      ‘Gee,’ Jessica said, and, ‘wow!’

      But Siena could tell the girl wasn’t really listening. Siena only hoped for the airline’s sake that she was still new.

      ‘Okay then, well, happy trails,’ Jessica said, her eyes searching out the juggler in the back row again already.

      ‘Happy trails,’ Siena parroted back the MaxAir motto.

      She watched Jessica bounce her way back down the skinny domestic aisle, her French tipped fingernails clawing on to the backs of passengers’ seats for balance and her blonde ponytail bouncing.

      Siena blinked. It had been a long while since she had mastered the ability to walk an aisle in two-inch heels without needing a thing to help her balance.

      She was a pro. A lifer. Born to fly. Far far away…

      If only Max saw that she could be more to the company than a smiling face on a billboard. If only the rumour mill had Max offering her Rome.

      Siena sighed and slid further down in her seat. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Cool, cosmopolitan Rome was at the heart of the MaxAir international routes. The top of the heap. The pièce de résistance. Now that would be a fabulous career move.

      The hum of the engine altered and Siena knew the plane was descending. She looked out the small window to see hilly green land undulating down to twisting white sands and deep blue water peeking back at her from between patchy white cloud cover. Tropical Cairns. Paradise. Home…

      Siena peeled her clamped fingers from the armrests and shook life back into them.

      Okay, you have a few minutes, now deep breathe and focus on happy thoughts.

      As the overhead lights called for everyone to do up their seat belts, Siena toed her fake red Kelly handbag further under her seat. Shopping in Hong Kong was a happy place. Why hadn’t she conjured that thought? Next time. And she had a feeling she would be needing many of those next times over the coming weekend.

      Out of the corner of her eye, Siena noticed that young Freddy was sitting staring at his open seat belt with one half in each of his hands as his cola balanced precariously between his knobbly knees. He had a cola moustache on his upper lip and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. But her friendly neighbourhood flight attendant was nowhere to be seen.

      What sort of parents deemed him independent enough to look out for himself at the age of five? She’d seen it time and again in her job and had never been able to understand such thought processes. She of all people knew just how such an assumption of early independence could turn the poor kid—hostile, erratic, doing anything and everything to get attention. To get discipline. To get a parent to tell him no.

      She found herself experiencing an unexpected moment of empathy. Well, the kid hadn’t spilt anything on her in the last five minutes and she had to give him kudos for that.

      ‘Would you like me to help you with that?’ she found herself asking.

      ‘Yes, please,’ the boy said with a cherubic lisp.

      Siena shuffled in her seat and took a hold of the two halves of the seat belt. The young boy lifted his thin arms and Siena had a whiff of something sweet like a mix of cola and biscuits.

      When the belt clicked into place he gave a little sniff and Siena realised that two tracks of shiny tears were sliding down his cheeks. Oh, heck. A sniffly kid, and now tears? Was she being punished for something?

      In the end empathy won out again. For the next fifteen minutes she talked the kid down from his cola high, and up from his lonely low, so that when the plane landed, and Jessica and her bouncing ponytail took him away, she was sure that he had been replaced by a completely different kid.

      Siena waited until the plane was all but empty to grab her carry-on and suit bag containing her uniform for the working flight back to Melbourne on Saturday evening. She wasn’t in any hurry.

      When she disembarked on to the tarmac the Far North Queensland heat hit her like a slap in the face. The air was thick, hot and wet. She could taste her own sweat on her lips. The tangy scent of the nearby sea hung heavy in the air. She could feel her dark curls frizzing by the second, her feet sweating