Just Carly
Copyright© 2026 by Marc Nobbs
Chapter 2: London
An Ocean Away
Tuesday, January 7, 2014 · 10:47 p.m. · London · Private
I’m in bed in London.
My guitar is beside the desk. My coat is hanging in the closet. There’s a little bag from the airplane on the bedside table because I’ve decided the socks are mine now, and I’m keeping them.
Outside my window is a street I don’t know the name of yet. I can hear a car going past, and somewhere farther away somebody just sounded their horn.
I keep getting up to look.
Nothing particularly exciting is happening out there. People walking. Cars. A man stood underneath a light across the street looking at his phone for a while, then put it away and went somewhere.
But it’s London out there.
I ought to sleep. I know I ought to sleep. Glenn has told me, Mom has told me, and my own eyes are making a fairly persuasive argument. But if I don’t write some of this down now, tomorrow will happen and I’ll lose the little things.
I don’t want to lose them.
The airplane bed was wonderful.
I’m starting there because I made a considerable fuss about it this morning and ought to report back. I slept for several hours. Properly slept, with a pillow and a blanket and my feet somewhere comfortable. Woke up with my mouth open, which probably took some of the glamour out of the experience for anyone walking past.
Glenn was asleep too. That pleased me more than I expected. He’d spent so much time sorting everything out that I don’t think I’d seen him stop worrying since Nashville.
We ate again before we landed. I couldn’t tell whether it was lunch or dinner, so I stopped trying and just ate it. Then I washed my face and brushed my teeth in the little bathroom and tried to persuade my hair that we were going somewhere important.
By the time they told us to put our seats upright, it was dark outside.
That caught me off guard. I knew what time we were supposed to land, but I’d still pictured seeing England in daylight. Little fields and houses and roads, like the pictures. I’d been looking forward to finding out whether it really looked like that.
For a while there was just my own reflection in the window.
Then we came through some cloud and there were lights underneath us.
I cupped my hands around my face to see better. Little clusters at first, with stretches of darkness between them, then more and more until I couldn’t work out where one place stopped and another started. Some of the roads curved around, and some ran straight for a while before disappearing under the wing. I kept trying to match what I could see to the map on the screen.
I couldn’t.
Glenn leaned over enough to look and said we were nearly there.
I know that sounds like nothing. Of course we were nearly there. We’d been going there all day.
But those were people’s houses. People in England, putting dinner on the table or watching television or looking for something they’d lost down the side of the couch. Whole lives going on underneath us, and I was about to get off an airplane and walk around among them.
I felt very far from Mom then.
Excited, too. Both things at once, so strongly I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.
As we got lower, I could make out moving cars. Then rooftops. Then everything started passing faster and there were runway lights and the wheels hit the ground.
I grabbed the armrest.
Glenn looked over.
“I know,” I told him. “We’re supposed to do that.”
He hadn’t said anything.
We landed around a quarter past six, but it took a while before we could get off. I sat there with everything ready, trying not to be the person who stands up before she’s allowed.
When I finally stepped out of the airplane, I had this ridiculous urge to stop.
My first time standing in another country, and it was in a passage with people behind me wanting to get their bags and go home.
So I kept walking.
Heathrow seemed to involve a great deal of walking.
I’ve been through Atlanta. I know airports can be enormous. But I knew how things worked in Atlanta, or at least I knew that if I got confused, I’d be confused at home. At Heathrow I kept watching Glenn to make sure I hadn’t missed an instruction everybody else understood.
I had my passport out much too early. Put it away because I was frightened of dropping it, then got it out again because we went around a corner and I thought we might need it.
I was very well prepared for the next corner.
There were so many voices. English ones, obviously, but all kinds of English ones, and other languages I couldn’t have named. People in suits and people carrying sleeping children, people greeting each other across the hall. I wanted to look at everything and also wanted somewhere quiet to sit down.
Passport control was fine. Much less dramatic than whatever I’d been rehearsing in my head.
I said I was here to sing at a film premiere, and hearing myself explain that to somebody who needed an actual answer made it sound suddenly improbable.
I had to remind myself that it was true.
Then there were the bags, and checking we had everything, and following more signs until we came out into a crowd of people waiting for other people.
A man was holding a board with KAYLA VALENTINE on it.
I have seen my name on things before. I know that.
I was still awfully glad to see it there.
Somebody knew we were coming. Somebody had a car and knew where the hotel was. I could stop trying to remember which way to walk.
He took us out to the car and helped with the bags. I was careful about my guitar, and he was careful with it too, without making me feel silly for watching.
Then he got into the driver’s seat on the other side.
Yes, Carly. You knew about that.
Knowing didn’t stop the first turn from feeling wrong. I caught myself pressing my foot against the floor, which I’m sure was a tremendous help to a man who drives here for a living.
Once we were properly on the road, I settled down and looked out the window.
At first it was mostly the sort of things you see around airports. Hotels, signs, traffic, buildings where people probably do very important things that don’t look interesting from a car. I tried to read every sign anyway.
Glenn was on his phone, letting people know we were through and on our way. Every so often he’d tell me something about tomorrow and I’d have to turn away from the window and ask him to repeat the last part.
Eventually he said we could go over it at the hotel.
I think he realized he was competing with an entire country.
The streets changed as we got farther in. More shops, more people walking, buildings close together with windows glowing above the stores. Some of the houses had steps up to the doors and railings out front, and I wanted to know what they looked like inside. Where did people put their cars? Did those windows belong to one house or several apartments? How old was that building? What about that one?
I asked a few questions. Kept most of them to myself.
Then a red bus pulled up beside us.
A real one, with people sitting upstairs.
I watched a woman by one of the windows taking something out of her bag. She wasn’t looking around or taking pictures. She was just on the bus, going wherever she went on Tuesdays.
I suppose if you live here, you can’t spend all day being excited about buses.
A little later we passed another one with Chloë on the side.
I actually said her name out loud.
There she was, with John Latham and the title of the movie, enormous and lit up and travelling past shops while people walked underneath without even looking.
I turned around in my seat to keep watching until I couldn’t see it anymore.
Glenn asked what I’d seen, and when I told him, he smiled.
“You’ll see plenty more.”
I hope I don’t get used to that too quickly.
All those people could go and see that movie. They could hear the song. They wouldn’t have to know anything about Nashville or my albums or who I was before they sat down. They’d hear me because somebody had put my voice in the film.
I hadn’t quite thought of it that way until I saw the bus.
The driver pointed out Hyde Park when we were beside it. Mostly I could see darkness beyond the lights, but I tried to look properly anyway. Then we were near Marble Arch, and he told me Oxford Street was just there.
The street I’d picked the hotel for.
I’d looked at maps when Glenn sent me the choices, imagining coming out of the door and going shopping. Now we were turning toward the actual hotel, and I suddenly couldn’t wait to get out of the car.
It was about twenty to nine when we arrived.
There was a woman from the publicity team waiting in the lobby. She knew our names and apologized about the journey, even though I don’t think she had personally arranged the weather.
She was lovely. Handed Glenn a schedule, gave me a copy too, and explained who would collect us in the morning. There would be rehearsal and press things and time to get ready for the screening. She asked whether I needed anything tonight.
I said I didn’t think so.
Then immediately wondered if there was something I ought to have asked for.
She gave me her number and said I could call if I remembered something after she’d gone. I liked her very much for that.
Check-in happened around us while we talked. People knew where the bags should go. Somebody explained breakfast. Glenn asked a question about the car in the morning and got an answer.
I stood in the middle of all this looking at the lobby and trying to remember to close my mouth.
It’s a four-star hotel. I knew that when I chose it, but stars on a booking page don’t tell you what it feels like to walk into somewhere after a very long journey and find everything warm and softly lit, with people who seem completely certain they can take care of whatever you need.
My room is a normal room. A bedroom and bathroom, with a desk and a chair and a closet.
I love it.
The bed is big, and the sheets feel lovely, and there are proper lamps on both sides. The curtains are heavy. The towels are thick enough that I stood in the bathroom holding one for a moment, which would have been difficult to explain if anybody had come in.
There are little bottles by the sink. I’ve smelled all of them.
The view is the street outside and some buildings opposite. I went straight to the window anyway.
I could stay here for weeks and still keep doing that.
I sent Mom a picture of the room before I’d even taken my shoes off. She sent back, “That looks lovely, honey. Have you eaten?”
Some things travel very well.
I washed my face and changed my top, then met Glenn downstairs. We ate in the lounge. Soup and a warm chicken sandwich for me, which doesn’t sound like a thrilling first meal in England, but it was exactly what I wanted.
I couldn’t face making an adventure out of dinner.
The soup was hot, the chair was comfortable, and nobody needed me to move for half an hour.
Glenn went through tomorrow’s schedule with me while we ate. This time I listened. Properly.
Seeing it written down made my stomach turn over a little. There’s a difference between saying you’re going to a premiere and being told what time you need to be ready for the car.
I asked whether we’d lost anything important by getting here so late.
“Some rest,” he said. “We’ll manage everything else.”
I appreciated that he didn’t pretend we hadn’t lost anything.
Then he told me I was ready for the performance, and that I needed to trust the work I’d already done.
I wanted to ask him if he was sure.
I ate some more sandwich instead.
Chloë sent me a message while we were downstairs. Welcomed me to London, said she was sorry we’d had such an awful journey, and told me to get some sleep because tomorrow would be busy. She said she was looking forward to seeing me.
I read it twice.
Then I showed Glenn, even though he was sitting right there when my phone lit up.
Back upstairs, I had a shower and hung up the things I’ll need tomorrow. Found the adapter, which is thankfully an adapter, and plugged everything in.
I called Mom.
She sounded exactly like Mom. I don’t know what else I expected, but after a whole evening of unfamiliar voices, hearing her in my ear nearly made me cry.
I told her about the airplane bed, and the driver, and the hotel, and seeing Chloë on the bus. She asked whether I’d seen any of the famous places. I said I’d seen a great deal of England through glass and hoped to improve on that.
She laughed.
I asked her to let Pappy know we were here safely. Told her I’d send a picture he could look at, too. She said he’d been asking.
Of course he had.
I wish I could have brought them.
I’m glad I get to do this, and I know they’re glad for me, but there are moments when I see something and turn to tell somebody, and the person I want is thousands of miles away.
I don’t think I understood that part of travelling before today.
Still, I’m here. My clothes are hung up. I know when I need to be downstairs. My guitar made it across the ocean, and I’ve checked that it’s all right.
I’ve also been to the window twice while writing this.
Tomorrow I’ll get up, have breakfast and go wherever the schedule says I’m supposed to go. I’ll meet people, try to remember names, and probably spend far too much time worrying about something nobody else notices.
Then I’ll sing.
That part I know how to do.