Chapter Seven
Whatever concerns I might’ve had about sharing a double bed on a moving train with a man I’d only met the day before were completely alleviated by two swigs of whisky, three glasses of red wine and the way Callum’s eyes twinkled when the conductor came to tell us he was shutting down the club car for the night.
‘Be quiet,’ Callum ordered, shushing me dramatically. ‘Everyone else is asleep.’
‘No one is asleep,’ I argued, pinballing down the carriage and bouncing off every door. ‘This train is bouncing more than a guinea pig on a trampoline.’
‘Have you ever seen a guinea pig on a trampoline?’
‘Yes. Once. God rest its soul.’
‘I have no further questions.’
He stopped outside our cabin and patted himself down for the key, exactly the same way his father had.
‘Train gets in at eight forty-five,’ he said, finally locating the key in the chest pocket of his corduroy trucker jacket, the sheepskin collar nestling against his jaw. ‘They bring breakfast to the room at half seven so if we want to be up and awake by then, that gives us …’
‘Seven whole hours to sleep,’ I replied. ‘That’s Sleeping Beauty numbers for a doctor.’
‘And a baker. I was at work by three a.m. for three years.’
‘Poor you,’ I said in a coddling voice. ‘Did you have to hold surgical instruments still while your boss poked around inside someone’s brain for five hours, blasting Coldplay over the stereo the entire time as well?’
He blanched, his pale skin turning somehow paler.
‘Five hours of Coldplay?’
‘Whoever is operating is in charge of the music,’ I nodded. ‘I’ve timed it: if you start the Eras Tour when you scrub in, you’re wrapping up a cranioplasty right before they shoot the confetti at the end of “Karma”.’
The miniscule scale of our cabin struck me all over again, the space shrinking in size when Callum joined me on what felt like the only open square foot of floor.
‘I’ll use the bathroom first, if that’s OK?’ he said, edging around the room to grab his bag from the bed. ‘Brush my teeth, change into my PJs.’
A sudden vision of myself snipping the tags off my brand new red tartan pyjamas and very cleverly packing them on the very top of my suitcase popped into my head.
Only it wasn’t very clever because my suitcase was somewhere in the luggage carriage and I would not see it again until 8. 45 in the morning.
‘My PJs …’ I groaned, slapping a hand against my face. ‘I left them in my suitcase.’
‘No worries, that’s all right, not a problem,’ Callum muttered, pawing through his bag, his face screwed up in concentration. ‘You can borrow mine.’
‘What will you sleep in?’
He pulled at his shirt then let the fabric spring back, tight around his chest.
‘I’ve got a T-shirt under this I can sleep in.’
‘Just a T-shirt? Like Winnie the Pooh?’
‘I was planning to keep my boxers on but since you’ve painted such a beautiful image …’ he replied with an eyeroll, handing me a wad of navy-coloured cotton. ‘Mum buys me a pair every year. They are clean, I washed them especially.’
I held up the blue drawstring trousers and matching button-up shirt, measuring each item up against my five-foot-three frame. The bottoms were bigger than I was.
‘Might be a bit on the roomy side,’ he said with a frown.
‘They’re perfect, thank you,’ I said, clutching them to me. Was I supposed to change in front of him or … ?
‘I’m going to clean my teeth,’ he announced, holding a toothbrush aloft like a tiny sceptre and backing into the bathroom. ‘Back in a tick.’
The moment the door locked, I dove across the bed to my backpack and rooted out my phone.
I hadn’t seen this many unread text notifications since the time Joel sat next to Harry Styles in Polpo in Soho and there was nobody there to witness it.
Making sense of his and Desi’s messages as I scrolled back was like trying to read War and Peace backwards but the general gist seemed to be that Desi didn’t like the look of Callum one little bit while Joel liked the look of him very much.
It was hardly a surprise: he was very much Joel’s type, six-foot-something, dark russet hair, pale white skin and prone to the occasional smouldering, the perfect man for anyone who had grown up on a daily dose of Edward Cullen.
Abandoning hope of making sense of their back and forth, I scrolled down to the most recent message, an all-caps plea from Desi to confirm I was still alive.
‘Still wearing my own skin for now,’ I muttered the words aloud as I typed, the added clarity needed for my wine-fogged mind. ‘Going to bed, will text in the morning if alive.’
The phone bounced on the thin but firm mattress when I dropped it before hastily peeling off my jumper, the whirr of a tiny motor and a tap running buzzing through the bathroom door.
Truly there would be no privacy in this cabin.
Shucking off my jeans, T-shirt and jumper, I yanked the pyjama top over my head.
I hadn’t changed clothes so fast since year eight swimming lessons.
The hem fell halfway down my thighs, the sleeves dangling way past the tips of my fingers.
Swathed in soft, navy-coloured cotton, I inhaled deeply.
Whatever Callum used to wash his clothes smelled divine, clean and fresh and cosy.
I was still inhaling the fabric of the bottoms when the bathroom door clicked open.
‘Are you sniffing my pyjamas?’
Callum stood in the open doorway like a backlit auburn-haired angel.
‘Yes.’ I hopped into the bottoms, pulling the drawstring tight around my waist then shuffling across the cabin, inches of excess fabric pooling over my feet. ‘Are you done in there?’
‘I am.’
He pressed himself back against the window to let me scoot past. ‘You’re sure you don’t mind sharing the bed? I’m very happy to sleep on the floor.’
‘No one is very happy to sleep on the floor,’ I replied, gesturing at the very small space between us. ‘Honestly, it’s fine. Believe me when I tell you I’ve slept in worse situations than this. Junior doctors will sleep ten to a wheelie bin if it’s the only option.’
‘As long as you’re sure.’
Perching on the edge of the bed, still in his trousers and T-shirt, he tested the mattress with one flat hand. ‘Would you rather have the inside or the outside?’
‘Outside. I’ve had wine and whisky and will almost certainly need to get up for a wee and I don’t know why I said that out loud.’
Callum laughed as I shut myself in the bathroom.
I furiously scrubbed at my teeth with the toothbrush I kept in my backpack, reminding myself of the other reason I wanted the outside of the bed.
Just because I was sworn off romance until I was fully qualified didn’t mean I’d signed up to celibacy.
At least, I wasn’t against the idea of sleeping with someone, as long as there was no prospect of mess or feelings, and even if feelings weren’t a problem here, I couldn’t think of anything messier than hooking up with my new landlord.
The idea of being caught between his enormous body and the wall of the train, surging along the tracks, the constant rhythmic rocking …
No, thank you. It wouldn’t take much, the accidental brush of a hand, a catch of breath, red wine, one bad decision.
I was trained to consider all outcomes in advance and the odds on this weren’t worth the risk.
Callum was already under the covers when I came out of the bathroom, waiting until I slid under the thin sheets to turn out the light.
‘I had fun tonight,’ he said into the semi-darkness.
‘You sound surprised.’
Even without the lights on, I could feel the smile in his voice. ‘I didn’t know what to expect. You’re very easy to talk to.’
I punched my anaemic pillow and curled my arm underneath my head, keeping as much distance as I was able. His body ran hot, I could tell that from here. ‘Good bedside nature is part of the job.’
‘That must be it,’ Callum replied. ‘Does that mean our conversations are covered by the Hippocratic oath?’
‘No, so don’t tell me anything you don’t want plastered all over the Fuck Callum McClay Facebook group.’
‘You’re joking but I’d be shocked if it doesn’t exist.’
It wasn’t quite dark enough in the cabin, the beige plastic recast in shades of grey as light leaked in from underneath the cabin door and all around the edges of the blind that covered the window.
‘It’s probably because I’m your fake girlfriend and you fake love me very much,’ I reasoned. ‘Caroline might be a lot of terrible things but she’s also a pretty good listener.’
A low chuckle rumbled out of his chest, vibrating across the meagre mattress and into me.
‘That must be it.’
‘Or because you know it’s not real,’ I suggested, gripping the edge of the bed, my back to Callum. ‘And this time next week, Caroline will be back in London, you’ll be off to Paris and who knows when we’ll even see each other again?’
‘Who knows?’ he said, the mattress shifting underneath me as he rolled over to face the wall. ‘But at least this week will be a laugh.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed weakly. ‘A real laugh.’