Chapter 3
‘Oh dear, I don’t like this at all, Des,’ said the woman in the front passenger seat of the car, for the twentieth time at least – a rough estimate, because Ruby ‘Roo’ Cooper had given up taking a tally after thirteen.
Nora and Des Woolley, friends of Roo’s neighbour, were travelling north to spend Christmas with her sister Sandra and they’d offered her a lift to Whitby en route.
But if Roo had known how much Nora talked, she’d have taken her chances hitching a lift from a dodgy lorry driver with an axe on his dashboard.
The woman didn’t stop to draw a breath. And it was all nonsense, trivia, word soup, which was a bit unfair on soup.
Des was driving and in his own little steering-wheel world, cut off from Nora after forty-plus years of refining the art.
In the last three-quarters of an hour though, Nora’s tone had altered from chirpy chirpy cheep cheep cheerful to worry worry weep weep which was even harder on the ears.
The snow looked as if it was falling horizontally, such was the wind-force outside. The snowflakes were like swan’s feathers, huge and downy.
‘Oh deary, deary me,’ said Nora then, throwing in a bit of variation on a theme. ‘What do you think, Des?’
For once, she left some space for Des to actually answer the question she’d posed.
‘I think we should turn back, that’s what I think,’ he said after some moments of contemplation, then grumbling under his breath that they’d have been there now if they’d set off this morning as he’d wanted to.
‘Sandra’s got a twenty-pound turkey in though,’ Nora answered with a gasp. ‘She’s made her own stuffing.’
‘We won’t be able to eat it if we’re dead,’ said Des to that, his irritation with his wife clearly evident in his tone. ‘I don’t even like flipping turkey.’
‘Yes, let’s make an executive decision and go home.’ Nora nodded decisively, then, as if she remembered they had a passenger reliant on their goodwill, she gave a little start. ‘Oh, Ruby, where will that leave you?’
Up shit creek without a paddle, Roo didn’t say.
Another two hours of Nora’s incessant babble would do her head in, but that was the least of the reasons why she didn’t want to return home with them.
Anything but going back. But she couldn’t expect them to carry on their journey when it was dangerous. ‘Erm… well…’
Then she saw it through the window – the left-arrow sign with a train graphic on it and ‘Derringbury 500 yards’ written underneath.
‘Des, can you drop me at the train station please? I’ll get to Whitby that way.’
‘Ooh. Are you sure?’ Nora said. ‘Train.’ She screwed up her face as if the word was rotten-fish-flavoured. She didn’t do public transport or mix with the hoi polloi.
‘You could come back with us,’ Des offered.
It would be the wisest option by far to just go home.
She could hole herself up, read books, drink wine, eat crisps and keep the TV switched off so she wasn’t bombarded with the sounds of jingle bells, carols, and Paul bloody McCartney singing about him having a wonderful Christmas, nor the sight of celebrities in red fur-trimmed hats making an arse of themselves on game shows for charity. But…
She scrabbled in the side of the bag for her coin, gave it a rub, tossed it into the air and slapped it on the back of her hand. Do I risk the train? she silently asked the cosmos, before lifting her hand to see the YES facing her. Decided then.
‘Thank you, Des, but my friends are expecting me.’
Des insisted on getting her case out of the boot at the station, even though Roo had told him to stay in the warm.
He pipped the horn as he drove off, his wheels roaring as they struggled for purchase on the ground.
Roo’s suitcase wheels had the same problem.
She didn’t suppose anyone had thought of inventing suitcase wheels designed for British winters.
Maybe they had them in Norway though, where snow was a way of life.
She headed across the car park towards the small station and, through the windows of the waiting room, she could see people inside which boded well.
She opened up the door and walked in to find an old lady and what she presumed were a couple – middle-aged, him swiping his finger across the screen of his mobile.
‘Excuse me,’ Roo began after wiping her mouth clear of snowflakes. ‘Do you happen to know when the next train is due and where it’s going?’
‘That, I’m afraid, is the million-dollar question, love,’ the man answered her with something that was – and yet also wasn’t quite – a smile.