Against You

Miami

Oscar POV

A night flight from England to the USA is never a good idea. Because of the time difference you can end up leaving at night and arriving eight hours later in the middle of the night too, feeling like you've missed an entire day of your life. It ruins your body clock, nobody does it like this. Except, apparently, the McLaren Formula One Team.

The flight is a disaster before we've even taken off, and not only because of the time.

As I take my seat next to one of my engineers, an extremely thin man with even thinner hair, the pilot comes on the radio to tell us that the in-flight entertainment system is broken, as is the WiFi. I groan with the rest of them. That's the last thing we need.

Next he says that the in-flight meal service will be severely limited due to strikes in the production line. That one hits even closer to the heart. I'm starving.

"What do we pay them for?" my seat-mate asks the cabin at large. "Chartering a whole plane just for us, and they can't even feed us properly?"

"At least tell us there's alcohol!" someone from Lando's camp offers loudly. There's a murmur of agreement and a member of the cabin crew grimaces before retreating to the back of the cabin, presumably to check.

The journey always takes longer in this direction than on the way back because the plane has to fly against the jet stream, a strong wind which blows from west to east over the Atlantic Ocean. The final misery of which the pilot helpfully informs us before take-off, is that not only is the jet stream especially strong tonight, but we're going to have to take a detour because of a hurricane in the middle of our flight path.

So a calamity all around, then.

I press my forehead to the window as we take off and get a view of London. It glistens, growing smaller and smaller in the distance as we leave Great Britain behind. Usually I enjoy travelling but I can tell tonight will be a different story altogether.

The first hour goes okay, with the cabin crew serving drinks and some old biscuits they found in a back cupboard. I try to read my book but then the pilot dims the cabin lights and I don't want to bother everyone with my overhead light so I have to put it away.

There's no hope of sleeping. Lando's crew start singing sea shanties to keep up team spirit and my psychologist Chris keeps leaning over the back of my chair to remind me that it's better not to sleep until we get there in case it interferes with my circadian rhythms. My eyes have a mind of their own, though, and close whenever there's a break between the verses of the sailor songs up in front.

My eyes close and sometimes I see visions, myself wiping the stupid smiles off all of Lando's team's faces, but I never actually fall asleep. The roar of the engines stays loud in my ears, the air from the conditioners is too cold. The best sleep of the eight-hour flights comes right towards the end when the singing finally finishes. But then the wheels hit hard tarmac and I jolt back to a delirious kind of reality.

I step off the plane in Miami in one of the worst moods of my life. That idiotic song Welcome to Miami has been stuck in my head ever since I saw the sign on the airport terminal. To make matters worse, those three words are the only ones I know out of the whole song.

I plod down the metal stairs into the hot and humid North American air. At least Lando's team look just as haggard and exhausted as I feel. Florida has never been one of my favourite places, but I do enjoy Disney World, and the alligators remind me of the crocodiles we have back home. I open my phone, connect to the airport WiFi and download that infernal song to listen to and finally get it out of my head.

I begin to feel sick in the taxi to the hotel. The bright neon lights around us fill the car with flashes whilst paradoxically lulling me to sleep. When we finally I arrive I stumble out of the car, grab my small suitcase from the back and hurtle to my room as fast as possible.