The Secret Deep

Poppy peers out of the plane window, nose pressed against the glass, and I follow her gaze. Dark, lush-looking forest reaches to the coast, where it bites into a sea of shining metal.
‘I’m starving,’ she says.
‘We just had breakfast, and you left half of it.’
‘I wasn’t hungry then.’
‘That figures.’ There are no refreshments on this flight as it’s only an hour long. I rummage in my rucksack. ‘Well I’ve got apples and a banana . . . oh.’
I hold up the banana, split and oozing brown mush all over the apples. We pull identical faces of disgust, but my laugh feels hollow. If Mum were here, there’d be more than enough snacks for this epic journey, plastic boxes of pasta salad and chocolate brownies we’d made together.