‘Oh, hello there.’
The small girl with the short hair who she’d seen that morning was sitting alone at a table next to the window, a half-full glass of white wine in front of her and a faraway look on her face.
‘Hi,’ she replied, her voice subdued.
‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’ Hope took in the dark shadows underneath the big, startled eyes. ‘You look miles away.’
The girl shook her head and smiled. ‘I was. It’s been a long day.’
The barman appeared next to them and asked Hope what she’d like.
‘Do you mind?’ Hope pointed to the chair next to the girl and she nodded.
‘In that case,’ she beamed at the barman, ‘I’ll have a large gin and tonic, please.’
‘Very good.’ He trotted off.
‘My other half had to go up ahead of me,’ Hope said, wriggling out of her coat. ‘I think he overindulged at dinner.’
‘Where did you go?’ the girl asked. She had a slight accent, but Hope wasn’t sure where it heralded from. Close up she was stunningly pretty and so elfin in size that Hope half-expected her to have tiny wings sprouting out from between her shoulder blades.
‘Oh God, the name escapes me now. All these long Czech words get into a tangle on my tongue, but it was on the other side of the river, down by the water.’
The girl’s eyes widened. ‘I know the one, Kampa – it’s quite posh, isn’t it?’
Hope flushed. ‘Do you know what, it was a bit! But Charlie, that’s who I’m here with, he wanted to spoil me.’
‘And so he should.’ The girl smiled and took a sip of wine. She was wearing a thick cable-knit jumper, the sleeves rolled up to reveal twig-like wrists. ‘Was the food any good?’
‘Well.’ Hope looked over in the direction of the door. ‘I’ll have to let you know about that when I find out what’s happened upstairs.’
The girl laughed at that and held up her hands. ‘I don’t need details – honestly!’
‘I’m Hope, by the way.’
‘Sophie.’ The girl smiled back.
‘It’s lovely to meet you. Are you here alone?’ Hope asked, realising a fraction too late that it was probably a bit nosy of her to enquire.
‘Just for a few days.’ Sophie sipped at her wine. ‘My boyfriend – actually, he’s my fiancé now, I keep forgetting that – he’s coming to join me.’
‘Congratulations!’ Hope picked up her glass to toast the engagement. ‘I’m guessing it’s a recent thing?’
‘He proposed last month.’ Sophie had a faraway look on her face again. ‘It was a total surprise, which I suppose is why I’m still getting used to the idea.’
‘Was it very romantic?’ Hope asked. She loved a good proposal story.
Sophie smiled. ‘Not really, to be honest. I was drying my hair and he was still in bed. He actually chucked a pillow at me to get my attention, and then I turned around to tell him off and he just had this really serious look on his face all of a sudden.’
‘Oh, but that is romantic,’ Hope assured her. ‘I had bubbly and flowers and music and everything for mine, and the marriage ended up being a total sham.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Sophie was all concern. ‘The man upstairs isn’t your husband, then?’
‘Charlie? God, no! He’s my upgrade.’ She laughed and Sophie politely followed suit, but the amusement didn’t quite reach her eyes.
‘My husband and I … we’d been having problems for years. Well, probably forever.’ She took a gulp of gin. ‘I decided to have driving lessons, because I’d never bothered to learn, and there Charlie was – my knight in a shining white Vauxhall Corsa.’
What Hope failed to mention was that she and Charlie had started up their relationship quite a while before she’d ended her marriage, but it was a tough thing to admit to someone you’d just met. Sophie had only just got engaged, too – Hope didn’t want to put a dampener on the mood by reminding her that people cheat on each other.
If Sophie suspected there was more to the story, she didn’t say. She simply smiled at Hope and asked, ‘Do you love each other?’
Hope nodded.
‘Well, that’s all that really matters.’
Was it? Hope wasn’t sure, but Sophie looked so sincere and non-judgemental. Hope was reminded horribly of Annette, looking at her with such disgust, her hatred and bewilderment clear as she raged at her mother that she was a slut. And she was right, too – Hope agreed that her behaviour had been abhorrent. She never imagined that she would turn her back on the vows that had once meant so much to her, that she would take the coward’s way out and choose infidelity over decency.
Getting together with Charlie had felt like the ultimate rebellion, the first purely selfish thing that Hope had ever done in her life. Of course, she should have ended her marriage before starting a new relationship, but she had convinced herself that Dave wouldn’t care even if he did find out – there were plenty of couples in open relationships, after all. But it was a lie. While there was no doubt in her mind that Dave didn’t love her the way he once had, that didn’t give her an excuse to play away. She tried to imagine how she would have felt if it had been him instead of her who had found someone else. Would she have cared? It was impossible to know that now, after so much had happened. What she did know was that she hadn’t loved Dave for a very long time – and she hadn’t loved herself either. But how could she explain all of that to Annette? She’d made such a mess of everything, and now she was paying the price.
‘I hope you’re right.’ She smiled at Sophie and took another sip of her drink.
‘I just think that when you know, you know.’ Sophie had finished her own drink and thanked the barman as he scurried over to take her order.
‘I guess.’ Hope was well aware that she had been spurred into a flurry of probably inappropriate oversharing by all the alcohol she’d had over the past few hours, but she couldn’t seem to stop. It felt nice to talk to someone who wasn’t a part of her inner circle. Her mum had been appalled when she left Dave, despite knowing full well how unhappy she had been for so long, and her friends didn’t understand it either.
‘I’ve only ever loved one boy,’ Sophie said now, a dreamy expression clouding her Bambi eyes.
‘Have you been together long?’ Hope asked, sensing her turn to spill was over.
‘Ten years.’
‘Wow!’ Hope almost choked. ‘Did you meet at nursery school?’
Sophie laughed. ‘I’m twenty-eight!’
Hope shook her head in disbelief. ‘Are you taking the mickey?’
‘No.’ Sophie was amused. ‘I’m definitely twenty-eight, I promise. And we met here, in Prague, Robin and me. We were both backpacking around Europe, as you do, and he just walked up to me.’
‘Is that why you’re here?’ Hope guessed. ‘Is it your ten-year anniversary?’
Sophie nodded.
‘Well, that is just the loveliest thing.’ Hope reached over and gave her an awkward one-armed hug. ‘And what a place to meet.’
‘It’s very special,’ Sophie agreed, her fingers playing with the stem of her glass. ‘Robin and me, we come back here every year.’
‘How soon is he arriving?’ Hope asked.
‘He should be here in a few days,’ she said, her voice small again. ‘Probably Sunday.’
‘I’m here until Monday.’ Hope clapped in delight. ‘I should so like to shake his hand and tell him how lucky he is to have you.’
Sophie blushed.
‘No, I mean it – you’re a beautiful girl with a kind heart and a good soul. You don’t get to the age of fifty without learning a few things along the way, I can tell you – and I know a good person when I meet them.’
They both looked up as there was a crashing sound and Megan’s face appeared at the door, bright pink from the cold. The guy she was with was in a terribly drunken state, and Hope barely had time to get a look at him before he stumbled through the door leading to the gents. She wa
sn’t all that surprised when Megan turned down her offer of a nightcap – they’d all had such a long day.
‘That’s Megan,’ Hope told Sophie when the two of them had gone. ‘I met her this morning. She’s very nice.’
‘Her friend’s very drunk.’ Sophie giggled.
‘Speaking of which …’ Hope picked up her empty glass and lifted it up to her lips, tapping the bottom in an attempt to get every last drop. ‘I should get upstairs and check on Charlie – but we should do this again.’
‘I’d like that.’ Sophie smiled at her. The wine had added some colour to her cheeks and Hope felt herself drawn again to the younger girl. A motherly instinct is a hard habit to shrug off, she told herself as she walked up the stairs. She was just feeling protective towards Sophie because she hadn’t seen Annette in so long.
All the same, she thought, letting herself into the bedroom and groaning as she saw light streaking out from under the closed bathroom door, there was something about Sophie that made her want to wrap the girl up in a wad of cotton wool and put her somewhere safe.
13
It was still dark when Megan crept along the deserted hotel corridor and down the stairs. A bad dream had woken her an hour ago and left her feeling so shaken that sleep was an impossibility. Ollie was passed out beside her, totally oblivious, his mouth hanging open and his breath faintly metallic from all the tequila.
Instead of staying put, where she knew she’d only fidget with frustration until she ended up waking him, Megan stole carefully out from under the covers and quietly got dressed, cleaning her teeth by the light of her phone and tiptoeing around to get her clothes in the manner of a sneaky cartoon character. Her plan was simple: head to the Charles Bridge to take some photos as the sun came up. She felt a tiny bit guilty that she would be seeing it for the first time alone, without Ollie, but she needed some space. Plus, the upcoming exhibition was at the front of her mind, wagging its finger and telling her to get a move on. It was so important, and so much of her future hinged on it, that of course this just made it feel like a tyrant. She had been at this point in her career before, her memory helpfully reminded her. It had been hers for the taking, until somebody else took it all away.
Any lingering tiredness she might have felt vanished as soon as she stepped outside into the freezing early-morning air. The sky was dark grey, rather than black, with a hint of dawn at its corners. Knotting up her scarf and pulling her hat further down over her ears, Megan set off determinedly through the crunchy frost.
She wasn’t going to think about what Ollie had said to her last night, because it obviously didn’t mean anything. Even if he had meant to say that he loved her, it was only in an affectionate, friendly way, because she had been helping carry his drunken arse back to the hotel. If he said anything about it today she would just laugh it off, she decided. Tell him that he’d said no such thing and that his hungover brain must be playing tricks on him. She had a sneaking suspicion that her nightmare had been triggered by Ollie’s words, and if that were the case then she needed to discourage him from saying anything else. Megan had never been a particularly open person, and struggled to tell her own mother that she loved her, let alone her friends. She had thought that Ollie was the same, but perhaps not.
The Old Town Square was deserted, piles of rubbish from last night’s revellers sitting morosely by overflowing bins. It still looked beautiful, though, the rich gold from the Astronomical Clock gleaming under its spotlights and the proud, Gothic spires of the big church staring down at her from their lofty perch above the cobbles. Again Megan felt that sense of history seeping into her. So much had happened in this place, and now she was making her way across it, creating her own path through the course of history. It made her feel very small, yet at the same time important.
Despite the fact she’d only been in Prague for a single day, Megan already found it familiar and welcoming, even at this time in the morning when she was practically the only person out on the streets. It was so easy to navigate, and she only needed a brief glance at the map in order to find her way through the twisty maze of streets leading to the vast and imposing Old Town Bridge Tower, which served as the ancient gateway to the Charles Bridge. Once she was on the threshold, Megan found herself unable to take another step, the sight before her too awesome and too mesmerising. She didn’t even reach for her camera, instead preferring to let her eyes survey the scene first and wait for the inevitable rush of emotions that would follow.
The light was just beginning to creep its fingers up from the water and over the stone edges of the bridge walls, illuminating the thick fog. The dark ridges of the bridge’s many statues were just visible through the gloom, their bold silhouettes cutting eerie holes in the gently shifting mist. Megan crouched down on the smooth, curved cobbles and started to record the scene, her fingers expertly caressing the rough casing of the lens as she went in for a closer look, before pulling back again, capturing the bridge in all its glory.
It had been a while since she’d experienced a rush like this, where the images slipped faultlessly into their own narrative and she had the sense that she was merely the tool allowing them to do so. The story was already there, and it was simply up to her to uncover it. It was at moments like this that Megan knew she was at her most whole, as if the entire reason for her existence was to take these photos, to record an event that she could show to others – hopefully to the entire world – so they could feel transported, just as she did.
Was this it? Could her inspiration have been waiting for her on this bridge for all this time? The more photos she took, the more she started to believe it could be true, and as the fog began to be chased away by the unstoppable power of the dawn, more shapes revealed themselves on the horizon. There was Prague Castle, its outline faint but regal up on the far right, and beside it the dark spires of St Vitus’s Cathedral. As she made her way further along the bridge, she could even make out the green domed roof of the Church of St Nicholas, which she’d read about in her guidebook and desperately wanted to see.
Megan’s heart was racing, her breath in the cold air rising upwards like a halo. She knew she was capturing something very special here, something unlike anything she ever had before, and the knowledge made her feel giddy with excitement, as if she were light enough to take flight and soar off the edge of the bridge to join the swans on the surface of the Vltava River below. She was exhilarated, and the feeling was better than anything she had encountered before.
She was brought back down to earth by the sound of bells ringing, and took out her phone to check the time. It was eight already – she’d been out here for ninety minutes and she’d barely been aware of the time passing. Her fingers were stinging from the cold, but she could hardly feel them. All she wanted to do was keep going, right into the depths of the city where she now knew that a wealth of visual treasures awaited her, but she hesitated. She couldn’t very well go wandering off all day and leave Ollie on his own.
Megan groaned with the unfairness of it all and gazed longingly over at the left bank. This was exactly the reason she’d halted that first kiss with Ollie all those months ago – boyfriends got in the way of her plans. How could she throw herself on the mercy of her inspiration when she was chained down by commitment and responsibility? She’d allowed herself to believe that she could have both once before, and look how that had ended. With tears and jealousy and destruction. Nope, if she was ever going to make a go of it as a professional photographer, then she had to be willing to give it everything. Half measures were not going to be enough. And anyway, if the past few hours had taught Megan anything, it was that this feeling, the one she had experienced as soon as she first set eyes on the Charles Bridge, was what she wanted to experience every day. A relationship just couldn’t compete with it, and that was a fact.
The bells had stopped, but in the echoing silence that followed, Megan began to hear signs of life, of car doors slamming shut, shutters being pulled upwards and radios starting up
. The city of Prague was beginning to awake, and the magical sense of being alone in a moment melted slowly away as Megan made her way back to face Ollie.
‘Why did you let me order tequila? Why?’
Ollie was talking to her through the bathroom door, where he’d been since she returned from her early morning adventure.
‘I feel absolutely fine,’ she told him cheerily. It wasn’t strictly true – she’d actually woken up with a clanging headache, but the cold air had soon cleared it.
‘I hate you,’ he groaned, and she laughed, ridiculously relieved to have him back being cheeky rather than soppy.
‘I think we should go up to the castle today,’ she called, peeling off her jumper and swapping it for a thicker one. ‘We can go through the park – the walk will do you good.’
‘Pah,’ came the response.
‘Well, that’s what I’m doing – it’s up to you if you want to come or not.’
There was a pause, and Megan wondered if she’d gone a bit far.
‘What happened to me being the boss?’ he said at last, his tone not altogether sincere.
‘You milked that one yesterday,’ she informed him. ‘Pints of beer in the airport at seven in the morning, tequilas in the bar …’
‘Don’t say that word!’
‘Tequila, tequila, tequilaaaaaaaa,’ she sang, her mouth up against the door.
Ollie groaned and kicked the wood.
‘I’m going to go downstairs and get breakfast,’ she said, slipping her camera into its bag and zipping it up carefully. ‘Shall I see you down there?’
‘Okay.’
She sighed. ‘Don’t be grumpy – I promise you’ll feel better as soon as we’re outside.’
She didn’t hear his response, but it sounded like a cross between a swear word and another moan. God, he really was suffering. She’d have to make sure she cheered him up today.
‘Morning!’
It was Hope, and this time she had her boyfriend with her. He also looked a bit green round the gills, Megan noticed, as she shook his hand and joined them at their table.
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