Chapter 13
Grace collected the rest of the glasses with Frank and they went behind the bar to wash them up in the sink there.
‘You going to be all right sharing with a stranger?’ Frank asked her.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said.
‘Still, it would have been nice for you and me to be together. I mean, here we are on this train and when are we ever going to get the chance again to be on something like it?’
‘Well, we can hardly ask everyone to swap around now, can we?’
‘Maybe we could book a trip on a train in the summer. Across the Alps or some’ing. Like we said we would, when we had the money.’
‘Frank, I’ve already had enough of trains to last me a lifetime, thank you.’ Grace huffed as she plunged another glass into the soapy water. ‘I certainly don’t want to think about paying to holiday on one.’
You mean you don’t want to think about holidaying with me, he didn’t say, because she would just fly off, accuse him of reading meaning into her words that wasn’t there – except it was.
‘I said we should have stayed at home,’ she muttered then, putting the crystal brandy balloon down on the draining mat too hard and knowing she had been lucky not to break it, this constant mood of hers bleeding out in rough gestures, barks, noises of frustration.
‘Yes, well, we’re all a lot wiser in retrospect,’ replied Frank to that, a rare impatient tone creeping into his voice.
His reserves of endurance had worn out long ago and he was now running on a ghost-like residue of them.
‘I didn’t know there would be all this snow, you didn’t know there would be all this snow.
The experts didn’t know. No one knew there would be all this snow, Grace. ’
‘The moment they told you they’d made a mistake with the booking, you should have insisted on getting your money back, like I told you. Mistletoe Nook – ha. Looks like my granny’s house in the nineteen seventies.’
‘I wanted us to have a nice break, Grace. A change of scene.’
She turned fully to face him.
‘Talking of “change of scene”, is that really why we moved to Seapoint?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve thought about this quite a lot recently, how you pushed to buy that pub more than any of the others you’d looked at.’
‘We chose it together,’ Frank said, hoping she hadn’t seen him swallow, hoping she hadn’t seen his Adam’s apple rise and fall like the weight on a fairground high striker machine.
‘You pushed it hard on me. More than the rest. I felt obliged to choose it.’
‘Because I thought you’d be happiest there,’ said Frank.
‘How can I be happy anywhere with—’
She cut off the word, but he could work out what it was: you.
He’d given this years to burn out, for her to start recalibrating, healing, and they were no further on from day one.
The chasm between them was never going to be bridged by a cosy Christmas in a cottage with smoked salmon and champagne in the fridge.
It certainly wasn’t going to be bridged by a Christmas spent in the middle of god-knows-where with a bunch of strangers in a stranded glorified link of metal boxes, however luxurious.
Something in the quiet creaked and it felt as if the sound came from deep within him, like something about to break, to give way under too much strain.
Grace pulled the plug out of the sink.
‘Whatever you thought I was going to say, I wasn’t,’ she said quietly, meekly, as if found out and trying to plaster up the damage.
‘I’m going to check around and make sure everything’s all right,’ Frank said, flatly, as if he didn’t believe her and needed distance between them. ‘Goodnight, Grace.’
He was close enough to place his lips against her cheek. He always gave her a kiss goodnight, but tonight he didn’t and she minded more than she thought she would about that.
In his cabin, Tim undid his suitcase and pulled out his toiletry bag.
He shouldn’t have said he’d have a cabin to himself.
He was sick of being alone and yet he shunned company when it sought him out.
He felt as if he had built a wall around himself with no exit.
He was a mess. A mess of his own making and unless he found Doctor Who’s TARDIS in his Christmas stocking to take him back in time, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to change it.
The shower was warm and more powerful than Jane imagined it would be.
She didn’t linger too long in consideration for her fellow passengers, in case there was only a limited amount of hot water, but she allowed herself an extra fifteen seconds, breathing in the beautiful scent of the milky shower lotion that was there available for use.
She’d been unashamedly liberal with it. Another marvellous glimmer.
And another with the softness of the white towel she used to pat herself dry.
And another smoothing on the silky ‘Après’ lotion in the glass bottle at the side of the sink, it felt like double cream against her skin and smelt of apricots and spices.
And yet another delicious moment after she’d slipped into her nightie: pulling the robe over her shoulders which was every bit as plush as she’d hoped it would be.
She wondered if Mr Dwight J. Ingleton would have savoured that first shower aboard his new toy with as much joy as she just had. He couldn’t have savoured it more.
The present really was so well named, the gift of the here and now, all anyone was really sure of. And Jane’s here and now was infinitely more preferable to what she knew she had to come in the near future.
Frank walked to the end of the train, more to burn off some negative energy than to ‘check that all was well’, as he’d intimated to his wife.
If he’d been at home, he’d have lifted some heavy weights or taken himself off for a jog around the block, whatever the time of day or night, but he couldn’t exactly venture out in this and he did need to calm his irritated nerves.
‘Liberty’, ‘Uglich’, past the locked cabins of ‘Sigismund’ and ‘Mingun’.
Then it was around here that he felt it again, a change in atmosphere that made his skull tingle as if it had been doused in icy water.
‘Anyone there?’ he called ahead of him, as he opened the door to ‘Yongle’, stole past the locked cabins and into the space where the fridges and the linen stores were.
Nothing replied to him, but he’d gone far enough and didn’t want to venture on into ‘Pummerin’.
There was no need. There was obviously no one in there, how could there be?
The Abominable Snowman himself couldn’t have crossed the snow to get to them.
Maybe a night away from his wife would be a blessing in disguise, thought Frank, as he made his way down the train. At least it would save him from the sight of her back as she turned from him in bed, as purposefully as she once used to turn towards him.