I closed my eyes, squeezing them shut. Si began to snore softly. The doors kept hissing open and shut every few minutes and I could hear a group of lads shrieking with laughter in the next carriage along. Surely there must be a quieter spot somewhere on this train? I could go and sit somewhere else, just for a little while. The change of scenery might do me good. I pulled my straw shoulder bag onto my lap, careful not to disturb Si. Then I stood up, chucking my cardigan on the seat because it was still boiling and I didn’t think I’d need it. My suitcase was in the rack by the door; it would be fine there, I’d be back to pick it up in the morning. I hesitated for a second or two, fingering my camera strap, thinking I should write a note. I’d only be an hour or two anyway, he probably wouldn’t even notice I’d gone. With one last look at Si, I stumbled toward the front of the train.
2
I finally found a pair of empty seats in carriage A and threw myself into them, scooting across so that I could rest against the window. I hadn’t intended to come this far up, but aside from the trio of wasted blokes making a massive racket in the carriage one up from ours, the one after that had smelled like mold, as though someone had left their clothes festering in the washing machine for days on end. Ridiculous of me to be so fussy, really; we were on a night train across Europe, what had I expected? In any case, I was here now and carriage A was seemingly the least offensive option, even if I would have to endure the tinny sound of crap dance music blasting out of some guy’s headphones a few seats back. Was he playing the same song on loop? I looked over my shoulder at him, intending to give him a dirty look, but he was slumped on top of his bag with his eyes firmly closed. What kind of person fell asleep with their music on that loud?
In desperation I raked through my bag again, deciding I might as well put my own music on as an antidote to his. I almost cheered out loud when I pulled out my earplugs instead, which hadn’t been left in Venice after all but had been tucked inside a leaflet advertising guided tours of the Gallerie dell’Accademia. I pressed them in, slipped off my shoes and tried to get some sleep.
* * *
• • •
Early-morning light was streaming through the carriage when I next opened my eyes. Disoriented, I reached for Si, forgetting that he wasn’t next to me, that he was somewhere farther back, oblivious—hopefully—to the fact I’d moved seats at all. I took out my earplugs and rotated my head to the left and then the right, rubbing my aching neck, annoyed with myself for not having had the forethought to bring my cardigan so that at least I could have used it as a pillow.
I looked out the window, wondering where we were, watching the world slide silently by, the details all fuzzy and diffused, like one of those old-fashioned home movies shot on cine camera. The sun was almost entirely hidden by tumbling clouds, elephant-gray on the inside, then edged with a brilliant silvery white. I pressed my nose against the glass as we rocketed through a pretty village made up of fifteen or twenty houses with whitewashed walls and terra-cotta roofs. Its tiny, deserted station reminded me of a piece from a toy I used to have: the train set Dad had bought me for my seventh birthday. I could still recall that day, sitting cross-legged on the brown corduroy sofa in our living room, waiting for him to come home from work so that we could tuck into the hedgehog cake Mum had made. I remembered he’d come in after a day on the building site, all dusty and tired, brandishing a huge box wrapped in shiny red paper. He’d left us a few weeks later, which must have been why the memory was so entrenched in my mind. Birthdays had never been the same after that.
I rotated my ankles to get some life back into them and scraped my hair up into a bun using the frayed elastic band that had carved an angry pink circle around my wrist overnight. Looking for the nude ballet pumps I’d flung off in the early hours of the morning, I jabbed around under the seat in front, eventually finding them and hooking them onto my feet. Then, yawning, I levered myself to standing, had a stretch and looked up and down the carriage. Most people seemed to be awake, flicking through guidebooks and magazines, stuffing sweaty, microwaved toasties into their mouths. The smell was making my stomach rumble. When I got back, I’d nip to the buffet car, grab Si and myself some breakfast. Croissants with jam and butter were his favorite; I’d get him two, and a nice strong coffee.
I picked up my bag and set off down the aisle, retracing my steps from the night before. The train kept lurching forward and I had to concentrate quite hard on not stacking it to the side, failing dismally at least once as my hip slammed into someone’s shoulder. The train was getting livelier the farther toward the middle of it I went, with each carriage more populated than the last. I carried on, digging my fingernails into the felt fabric of the seats, nosing over people’s shoulders to see what they were eating, until suddenly I couldn’t go any farther. There was a door blocking my way with no window and no buttons to press and no way of getting through to the next carriage.
I stared at it, confused. Perhaps lack of sleep had made me delirious. I needed to think. I must have gone wrong somewhere, walked past my actual seat and the rack with my suitcase in it, which contained the change of underwear I was desperate for, and my wash bag so that I could nip to the loos and scrub my face and clean my teeth. I tried turning the handle, but it didn’t budge. I’d only walked through four carriages and I knew, knew the train had been longer than this.
I turned round and headed back the way I’d come, clutching at seat backs as the train tipped and undulated, my head twisting from one side to the other, searching for Si’s face, his shock of blond hair, the black cardigan I’d left on my seat. I was cold in my thin summer camisole now that we were farther north, in France, maybe, or in Holland already. The air-conditioning had finally kicked in, and I had nowhere near enough layers on. I passed the seat I’d slept in, arriving at yet another gray door, which, given that it said No Entry in three different languages, I could only assume was the driver’s cabin. I leaned my back against it, looking down the aisle at a sea of heads and sticking-out feet.
I took a deep breath. My mind must be playing tricks on me. Obviously I’d missed something. Si must have been in the loo before, it would be as simple as that. I’d do the length of the train again and I’d find him. I checked the time on my phone: 6:14 a.m. We weren’t due into Amsterdam until 10-something, so I had plenty of time.
I set out again, this time searching for any face I recognized: the American family, the Dutch couple who’d been sitting behind us, but I couldn’t see any of them. A pulse throbbed in my throat. I reached the back end of the train again, turned and headed for the front, searching for clues.
After another futile round trip I sat back down in the seat I’d slept in with my hands clasped together in my lap, my palms now slick with sweat. I looked out the window again, trying to make sense of the landscape, seeing if I could work out where we might be stopping next. I searched for something recognizable: a building, a road sign. There were station names, but we were screeching past so fast that I couldn’t make them out. I had the stirrings of a distant memory, a snapshot of something that flickered into my mind and then out again.
There was nothing for it, I would have to wake Si and ask him where he was. I got out my phone, prodding at the screen with clumsy fingers, dialing his number, waiting for him to answer. He wasn’t going to be happy when he found out what I’d done. It rang and rang, eventually going to voice mail. I didn’t bother leaving a message, he was obviously still asleep. The best thing would be to sort all this out before he realized anything was wrong.
I dipped my head out into the aisle, wondering whether I could ask someone, and what I could say:
Excuse me, but do you know where the rest of this train has gone?
Or perhaps Hello, I seem to have lost my boyfriend.
And then I heard someone barking Italian into a crackling radio and I perched on the edge of my seat, ready to pounce.
“Mi scusi,” I trilled as a guard sail
ed past, head held high, doing his best to avoid making eye contact with anyone.
“Madam?” he said, elongating the m sound at each end of the word and flashing a toothy smile. Resplendent in a navy-blue uniform and gold-trimmed hat, he clutched a ticket machine between his hands. He was an officious type, I could tell.
“Un problema,” I said to him, thinking he might appreciate an attempt to speak his native language. I tried to recall the few words I’d picked up at our school’s Italian club, which I’d only joined because Ellie had persuaded me that we’d then be fully equipped to go Interrailing around Italy for the summer, where we could have flirty conversations with Italian boys, which of course we’d never had the money to actually do. “I cannot find my seat. It was back there, I think. Carriage F?” I waved my arm toward the other end of the train.
“What is your destination, madam?”
“Amsterdam.”
He sucked air through his teeth. “Nooooo,” he said, shaking his head slowly, as if to make sure I’d noticed. “No, madam, you are not on the right train. We are in Paris now. Look.”
“What?” I said, my eyes darting toward the window. The wide boulevards lined with trees were just visible between the huge, brutalist apartment blocks and offices that sat alongside the tracks and blocked out almost all of the light. Paris. Of course. I recognized it now. I turned back to him, swallowing hard.
“But I was on the Amsterdam train!” I said.
“Madam, the train separated in Geneva at 3:38 this morning. There were many announcements. You did not hear them?”
“No,” I said, covering my mouth with my hands. “I didn’t hear anything.”
My earplugs, I thought.
“The eight coaches at the back go to Amsterdam Centraal and this section here,” he said, making a circular motion with a stubby finger, “will arrive in Paris Gare de Lyon in approximately seven minutes. This happens often with international travel in Europe, madam. And we always ensure that our passengers are sitting on the correct segment of the train.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but you definitely did not do that this time.”
I bit my lip so hard I could feel it tingle. This was crazy. It didn’t seem possible that despite getting on the same train and sitting next to each other for several hours, I was now in one country and Si would soon be arriving in another. What about the wedding? And all my stuff? And Si’s schedule, which was now well and truly in tatters? I already knew he was not going to take it well.
I looked around wildly, hoping for others who had made the same mistake, a group of us who could stick together, stage a protest, although what good that would do I didn’t know; they were hardly going to turn the train round, were they? Was I really the only one who’d done this? Could I be the only person on this whole train who had no idea it was going to split quietly into two in the dead of the night? I noticed the guy with the giant headphones and the bad taste in music was poking his head above the seats. When he spotted the ticket inspector he stood up and staggered over to us, looking half asleep.
“Did you say this train is going to Paris, monsieur?” he said to the guard, running his hands through his dark hair, which was sticking out at all angles. He looked as confused as I felt. He was French, then, judging by his accent. I gave him a dirty look. If it wasn’t for him, I would have heard the announcements in the first place.
“Sir, as I have already explained to this young lady, the train separated in Geneva at 3:38 this morning,” said the guard wearily.
“We are not going to Amsterdam?” said the French guy, clutching his chest dramatically.
At least I wasn’t the only one. “No, we’re not,” I snapped, catching his eye. “We’re in Paris. See for yourself,” I said, jabbing my finger on the windowpane.
He looked at me as though he’d only just noticed I was there.
“And by the way, if you hadn’t disturbed everyone,” I said, swiveling in my seat so that I could look directly at him, “then maybe both of us would have heard the announcements in the first place.”
He looked at me, screwing up his face with apparent confusion. “You are blaming me?”
“Yes, I am,” I said. I thought I might be being a little unreasonable, but I was on a roll now. “I had to put my earplugs in to drown out all the noise you were making.”
“What noise?” he said, seemingly incredulous.
“Your music?” I said, tutting. “It was far too loud. You probably kept half the carriage awake.”
He shook his head at me as though I wasn’t worth bothering with, turning his attention back to the guard, who was looking at his watch with barely disguised irritation.
“Monsieur,” he said to the guard, “this is not acceptable. Not at all. I have a very important meeting in Amsterdam which I absolument must get to.”
“Excuse me, but I was talking to the inspector first. We all have important things to do in Amsterdam,” I snapped at him.
“There were many announcements, sir,” said the inspector, “and madam,” he added, smiling tightly, obviously unsure which one of us he should be addressing.
“Well, they were not loud enough!” said the French guy, looking as though he was about to start kicking things.
“There must be something you can do,” I said to the guard, deciding I’d try to appeal to his more reasonable side. He must have one. “What’s the best way to sort all this out?”
“If you wish to reach Amsterdam by train, you will need to travel across Paris to Gare du Nord, madam.”
I closed my eyes for a second or two, trying to muster up a less defeatist attitude. “And how soon might there be a train from there?” I asked, doing my best to hold it together. All I could think about was Si, and what he was going to say when he finally worked out where I was. He already treated me like a child at times, and when I did stuff like this, it gave him the ammunition he needed to carry on doing it.
“You must inquire at the ticket office at Gare du Nord,” said the guard. “There is nothing more I can do for you here, I am sorry.”
“Sorry does not help us,” said the French guy, who was now thumbing frantically through his phone.
“I presume you both have tickets for your journey?” asked the guard.
“Of course we have tickets,” said the French guy, looking up. “Do you think we are idiots?”
I, on the other hand, began scrabbling around inside my bag knowing, almost instantly, that Si had our tickets, and our passports, for that matter, both of them, in the back pocket of his jeans. I closed it again.
“My boyfriend has mine,” I said.
Si was much better at looking after things than I was; it had made sense for him to hold on to everything. Out of the corner of my eye, I was sure I saw the French guy roll his eyes. I was about to have a go at him for being so rude, but thought better of it. I had to stay focused on what was important: getting to Amsterdam in time to see Catherine get married. That was all that mattered.
“I wish you both good luck,” said the guard, patting his machine. He was taking great pleasure in this, I was sure, and would regale his colleagues later with his tale of the stupid British girl who woke up on the wrong train in the wrong city. The French guy shook his head at both of us and stomped off back to his seat, muttering under his breath. At least when I explained all this to Si later, I could tell him that two of us had ended up on the wrong train. It might soften the blow.
I turned back to the window, resting my cheek against the pane to cool my skin, which felt all tingly and hot, the way it tended to when I started to panic about something. I tried to even out my breathing, counting eight tracks to my right and a never-ending tangle of wires above our heads. Graffiti was everywhere, sprayed onto the walls lining the tracks, most of it nothing more than fat white words that I didn’t understand. I wondered how long it had been there; whether there was
a chance I would have seen it last time I’d been here, almost ten years ago now. When other people talked of romantic weekends strolling along the banks of the Seine, my stomach actually turned, because I hadn’t been on some cutesy mini-break. I’d been completely alone and looking for someone who didn’t want to be found. It still hurt, and the memories of it seemed to seep into every inch of this city, and I’d rather be anywhere else in the world than here.
A crackly announcement in French, then Italian and then English, let us know that we would shortly be arriving at Paris Gare de Lyon and that the local time was 6:31 a.m. A blue double-decker train slinked past in the opposite direction and I wondered where it was going; how difficult it was going to be to find my way to Amsterdam from here. People were getting up out of their seats, shaking out their limbs, tidying their rubbish, gathering their things together. I got my phone out again, dialing Si’s number, nibbling on my thumbnail while it rang. Voice mail again. Why wasn’t he answering his phone? I knew it wasn’t out of battery because he always, without fail, charged it overnight. Plus I’d seen him crawling around on the floor of our hotel room the morning before, unplugging the charger, packing it neatly into his bag. Given that he wouldn’t be arriving in Amsterdam for more than three hours, he was probably still asleep, that would be it. Then I remembered: I’d put the damn thing on silent.
I left a self-conscious message, paranoid that half the carriage was listening in.
“Si, it’s me. You won’t believe this but I’m pulling into Paris. The train separated in Geneva, apparently. I had no idea, did you? Shall I try and get a train from Paris to Amsterdam, do you think? Apparently, I’ve got to trek right across the city to a different station. I’m so sorry, Si. Call me, okay? As soon as you can. I really need to speak to you.”
I put my phone in my lap, staring at the screen and willing it to ring. Si would know what to do, he was excellent in a crisis. Metal ground on metal as the train came to a stop, its brakes letting out a hiss of relief. The platform outside my window was laced with luggage trolleys waiting to be loaded up or, as in my case, not. I raked through my straw bag to see exactly what I had in there and what, if anything, might be of use. I had my credit card, at least, although I was pretty sure it was maxed out. Stupidly, in hindsight, I’d left my purse in Si’s bag because he’d shoved it in there when we’d retrieved it from the gift shop in Venice and Si had paid for everything since then. I only had a few euros with me now—thirty at most—plus my book, three pens, a crushed biscuit and a ton of receipts. And still around my neck: my camera. If Si didn’t get back to me soon, I’d head over to Gare du Nord, see what I could find out about the trains while I waited to hear from him. I made my way to the door noticing that, of course, the obnoxious French guy was at the front of the queue, first to step out onto the platform.
The Paris Connection Page 3