You can fit the entire cremated remains of a 5ft 2” woman inside a hot water bottle. It’ll be snug, but you can do it. Don’t expect it to have the bouncy feel of one filled with water or make the same sloshy noises. It will be more like a fancy memory foam mattress, the kind that holds an imprint for a few seconds after you poke it before slowly bulging back. If you can get over the thought of just a few millimetres of rubber separating your face from the deceased’s ashes, it makes for a surprisingly good travel pillow.
This discovery came to Daniel halfway through his Kenya Airways flight from London to Nairobi. After four restless hours trying to come down from the stress of making it through security, Daniel placed the hot water bottle between himself and the window and finally drifted off to sleep, his head cradled by the tightly packed powder that had once been his mother.
The stress wasn’t because what Daniel was doing was illegal. Craig from the crematorium had confirmed that transporting ‘occupied urns’ was permitted, provided Daniel had a copy of the death certificate and that his mother was stowed in hand luggage. What Craig had failed to mention was that travelling ashes were subject to an additional X-ray check that prohibited metal containers, like the stainless-steel urn he had handed over Violet Reilly in three months before.
Craig was a busy man, though, and could hardly be blamed for not keeping track of which person he’d put in what type of container. Violet’s cremation was unattended too, so there was no reason why hers would have stood out from the rest.
Thanks to this critical omission, Daniel only learned about Subsection 18 of the IATA’s Compassionate Transportation Guidelines when he was already at security, his flight due to take off in 28 minutes.
‘With Gatwick airport’s, erm, greatest sympathy, the container your mother is currently, um, travelling in, is sadly not X-ray compliant, meaning we cannot perform the checks necessary to permit its – her – passage.’
It had taken three escalations in management to reach this conclusion. Either nobody had known the correct procedure, or nobody wanted to be the one to break the news to the weary-eyed young man with scruffy brown hair that, of the three possessions he had deemed necessary for his 6,199-mile flight to Kenya, only his crossword puzzles and battered notebook would be allowed on the plane.
Daniel was good at taking no for an answer – too good – and teetered for a moment on whether this was a sign to cancel his maternal extraction mission. It wasn’t too late, he was still in the country after all. He checked his phone and saw eleven missed calls from Dad. It would be as easy as ringing him back, admitting where he was and asking if he could be picked up. Daniel would have to apologise, but luckily he was good at that, too. He’d explain how it was his grief that had made him behave so impulsively. Surely after Dad’s re-marriage fiasco he wouldn’t begrudge him that?
But Daniel didn’t ring his father. In fact he turned his phone off. He wasn’t taking no for an answer today. He was tired of pretending like nothing had happened. Tired of avoidance. Tired of letting other people dictate how things should be. He was getting on that flight, and so was Mum.
Seizing the urn from the security desk, Daniel careered away in search of a non-metallic container, expletives of all languages trailing in his wake.
He sprinted towards WHSmith, bounding in with enough momentum to slide the full length of the aisle before clattering headfirst into a magazine rack, sending a copy of Hello flying. Staggering back, Daniel was struck by a familiar face staring hypnotically up at him from the front page between his feet. Flora. Beneath her blue-haired portrait, the caption read, ‘I can communicate with my late mother using her star chart – this is what she said’.
‘No, Flora, you can’t,’ Daniel muttered under his breath. He didn’t have time for his sister’s nonsense.
Kicking the magazine away, Daniel refocused on finding a container as the final call for flight 2458 to Nairobi sounded. His desperate eyes raked the shop for something, anything, until finally landing on his salvation. A lilac hot water bottle.
It was at this point Daniel realised he didn’t have enough money to pay the eye-watering £36.99 WHSmith were charging. All his savings had gone on the one-way flight ticket, a return being too expensive. This left two options: steal, or beg the lady on the till to give it to him for free.
Getting caught shoplifting would end Daniel’s plan there and then, so he began hastily piecing together his entreaty while hurrying to the counter. If he was going to have any chance of making the flight, this had to work.
Daniel took a deep breath, closed his eyes and listened for a moment to the sound of his heart thudding amidst the pulsing blackness. He imagined it was his grief knocking at a door and, for the first time since saying goodbye to his mother, opened it.
But surfacing all his emotions overloaded Daniel. He was like a learner driver letting loose on the revs with no clutch control. His words stalled, sputtered and crashed out in a lurching and deeply unsettling shout.
‘I have no money! But I need... this! PLEASE!’
Janet stared into the deep anguish of Daniel’s eyes, the first dew of tears forming a thin, wet membrane on his bottom eyelid. It was a look that told of a particular kind of pain. A pain she herself had known and recognised instantly.
She too had reached for the warm, soothing relief of a hot water bottle many times before in her most unbearable moments of IBS. The idea of boarding a flight in as much discomfort as this young man clearly was simply didn’t bear thinking about. And besides, WHSmith had been steadily losing her loyalty the more they hiked their prices and the further their product range drifted from what she believed the company was set up to do: sell good quality stationery. £36.99 for a hot water bottle, for goodness’ sake.
Janet gave a solemn nod of solidarity and pushed the hot water bottle across the counter. But no sooner had she committed her act of subversive charity than the moment was punctured. Janet watched aghast as Daniel plucked a metal urn from nowhere and, in a whirlwind of panicked precision, poured the entire contents into the hot water bottle, not stopping until he’d banged every last clump of fine, grey-white powder into its new resting place.
*
‘Excuse me, sir, can you please open the window and put your tray up? We will be landing shortly.’
Daniel woke groggily and looked around. There were empty seats everywhere. Kenya wasn’t the easiest place to travel nowadays, what with everything going on there.
He noticed a strange sensation emanating from his cheek. Daniel’s face had been buried in the hot water bottle for so long that the entire right side had become indented with the herringbone pattern from the rubber. He ran his fingers over the grooves, their texture spelling out the reality of the past 24 hours. Had he actually stolen Mum’s ashes from Dad’s new apartment? The thought set off a pang of anxiety in his chest.
But he hadn’t really stolen it, Daniel reasoned. Technically you could say he’d entered the house without permission, but by the letter of the law he owned a quarter of it and had only set foot in one of the four rooms, which could be argued reflected his share exactly. And anyway, for it to be stealing, the ashes would need to have belonged to his dad in the first place, which they didn’t. They weren’t property, they were a person, and it was Daniel’s duty to do right by his mum.
Needing to calm his nerves, Daniel took out the battered notebook. He had meant to use the nine-hour flight to check key contacts and locations, but that would now have to wait. Instead, he flicked to the final page, as he had done so many times, and read the final entry in his mother’s diary, dated September 5th, 1977:
I can’t believe the day has come around, but I’m packing my things and leaving Machakos. Kenya has really got into my soul and I feel I will always carry a part of it with me. It will be the shame of my life if I never come back here.
A raw and roiling wave of sadness bubbled inside Daniel and he locked his eyes shut to stop it spilling out again. This is what Mum would have wanted. It was written right there by her own hand. He was doing the right thing.
Probably.
