Chapter 46
It was early the next morning when Roo awoke, but someone was already up because she could hear them walking down the passageway.
She lifted up the blinds to peer out and saw many patches of green on the ground.
The colour looked too intense to be real, she could feel her pupils contract to let it in slowly, cautiously.
Elizabeth stirred. She had no idea how she’d managed to sleep with all that had been racing around in her head. It was like a washing machine, her thoughts on a fast relentless spin.
‘Morning, Elizabeth. I see mucho colour outside. We will soon be on our way, I reckon.’
‘Lovely,’ said Elizabeth, affecting brightness. Last night’s bravery had retreated to the corner where it usually resided, like a shivering beaten dog. Elizabeth the walkover. Elizabeth the inconsequential pawn. Elizabeth the dutiful, doing what was best for everyone bar herself.
‘Goodbye, robe,’ said Roo, giving it an affectionate stroke as if it were a pet. ‘You were the best.’
She was in such a good mood, so many things to look forward to.
The top one being telling her boss she was leaving.
Mandrea Billington was one of those women who delighted in putting other women down, not a sistah; a sour-faced old cow, although she wasn’t that old, but her many petty jealousies and resentments had aged her.
If she’d bit into a lemon, it would have been the lemon that said ‘ugh’.
Roo couldn’t wait to tell her that she was moving to Norfolk to manage an exciting new creative venture after she’d been offered a job over Christmas, which she just happened to have spent on one of the world’s most luxurious trains.
Miserable Mandrea would spontaneously combust.
As she was brushing her teeth in the sink, Roo realised that Elizabeth had barely spoken a word. Something was up, she felt it. She swilled her mouth out and sat down on the bed where Elizabeth was putting things into her suitcase.
‘What are you going to do when you get up to Durham?’ she asked her.
‘What do you mean?’ Elizabeth replied.
‘Well… I’m not being daft, but we’ve talked a lot and…
are you really in love with Gregory? Is he what you want?
I mean, you’re not coming across as someone who is desperate to see the man you should have been formally engaged to this week.
Also, I need a machete to cut the sexual tension in the air between you and Vincent. ’
Oh my god, was it that obvious? Elizabeth felt her perfidious neck start to warm.
‘I wouldn’t worry, I don’t think it’s common knowledge, but you know me, I can read people. I harvest them for poetry. And you’ve got that face back again.’
Elizabeth halted her packing.
‘What face?’
‘That face.’ Roo pointed at her and Elizabeth remembered the poem she had found in Roo’s notebook.
You have sad grey eyes
Wearing the ring of your not-really prince
That reminded her. She reached into her handbag and pulled out her engagement ring, slipped it back onto her finger. It looked way too big and weighty for her small hand, as if it had grown in size since she’d last worn it.
‘You and Vince… you have so much in common. You should have seen his face when you were singing that song about the bantam cock.’
Elizabeth wanted to ask about his face, she wanted to squeeze every detail from Roo like the juice from a Christingle orange.
But what good would it do? Everything was heightened here with the romance of the train, the snow, the magic of Christmas.
It wasn’t real life and they couldn’t exist in such a bubble forever.
She’d got things all out of proportion, she was sure; silly commitment worries sending her into a reverse thrust. She would settle.
‘I shall be going up to Topston as planned and hopefully we can arrange the party on a different date.’
It’s a good job she wasn’t a war commander.
As a blueprint, it was weak as dishwater, but she also knew that she couldn’t just run off from everything as if she were living in a fairy story.
She’d talk to Gregory alone. Tell him that she was having doubts and needed time to iron out what was wrong between them.
And she’d just have to hold firm and not be rushed into anything, whatever her father and in-laws said.
Maybe in time, everything would be okay.
And it would be easier, so much easier to mend their relationship, rebuild it even from the ground up, than upend her whole life because some man she’d known for a few days held her hand for a couple of hundred yards.
‘Well, if you’re sure.’ Roo smiled. It wasn’t up to her to try and disassemble someone else’s life when she’d made such a crap job of her own so far. ‘You’ll stay in touch with me, won’t you?’ she said.
‘Of course I will,’ said Elizabeth, handing over her phone so that Roo could type in her number, though there was still no signal, no intrusion of the world outside bleeding into this one. Not yet.
‘Morning, Mrs O’Carroll,’ said Frank, as Grace opened her eyes and found him staring at her.
‘You been watching me sleep?’ she asked him.
‘Only for an hour. Turns me on when you dribble and snore.’
He reached over, cupped her face in his warm palm and kissed her. They both had morning breath, but it didn’t matter. It was a kiss that was loaded with sweetness and hope and love.
‘I think you were right when you said let’s sell up and buy our own train, Frank. I’m going to put another line on the lottery when we get back.’
Frank laughed. ‘We’re spoilt now, aren’t we? How are we going to fit back into normal life?’
But normal life sounded good to Grace because normal was what she was craving.
She was a work in progress and would be for a long time, but at least there was progress, there was light breaking through the cloud.
She was looking forward to going home with her man.
She didn’t want to lose him and she didn’t like to let the thought intrude that if Frank hadn’t hurt his ankle, if they’d had to drive rather than catch trains and break down in a freezing carriage, she probably would have.
‘Remember what you once said you were going to do to me on a train, Frank?’
‘I do.’
‘Well, you’ve still got time,’ she said.
Everyone stripped their beds and left the sheets and towels and used robes in a big bundle in the upper vestibule of ‘Uglich’.
Tim and Vincent had given the galley a final spruce.
Frank had checked the bar was as pristine as the first time he’d walked behind it.
He was going to fill up the ice bucket, but someone had beaten him to it.
He wished he could find one like it for The Salty Cockle.
It must have been a really clever insulation design, for the ice never melted however long it was sitting there.
He’d left a note half-tucked underneath it with his details on it should Mr Ingleton want to charge them for what they’d eaten and drunk.
If he was contacted, however, Frank wouldn’t be in touch with the others to divvy up the costs.
What these days on board had given him would be cheap at any price.
He felt like a man injected with a shot of new life this morning.
They assembled in the bar, where Grace distributed coffees. All their cases stood nearby. Outside, the thaw was making up for lost time. Roo had switched on the radio to see if Brian had changed his mind about not broadcasting, but all she could get on it was white noise.
When they were done, Elizabeth collected the cups and put them on a tray. She could feel Vincent’s eyes on her, like the heat from a sun on a summer’s day, holding her face in its hands as she sat outside a small pub, the air full of scent from salty chips and lemony scampi.
‘I can see a car heading towards us,’ said Tim, standing by the window. It was coming from the direction where they had last seen the guard and engine driver.
Real life had arrived.