Hope thought fleetingly of the day she’d taken her driving test. She’d passed first time, which had both surprised and delighted her, and afterwards Charlie had driven them out to a country pub for a celebratory lunch. She could remember how proud she’d felt, and how she’d refused his offer of champagne because she’d wanted to drive the car back into Manchester. It was only a week later that Annette caught them.
‘Did you see the gold cross on the bridge?’ Hope asked Megan now, steering the conversation back to the city, and away from her memories.
‘I saw a lot of crosses.’
‘This one isn’t on a statue,’ Hope explained. ‘It’s on the wall of the bridge itself, at the spot where a saint was thrown off into the river.’
Megan was looking at her, nonplussed, so Hope told them all the story that she and Charlie had learned earlier that day.
‘I think it’s a load of gobbledegook,’ Charlie admitted sheepishly, putting his knife and fork together. ‘Just a story they tell tourists to keep them interested.’
‘You’re such an old cynic,’ Hope scolded. ‘I think it’s a beautiful idea.’
‘I’m going down there tomorrow to wish for a pay rise,’ Ollie said, causing Charlie to chuckle. The girls, however, were both looking thoughtful.
‘There is something magical about this city,’ Hope went on defiantly, picking up her wine. ‘You can feel it. There’s something in the air here, like a whispered secret drifting around on the wind. I sound mad, I know.’
‘You don’t.’ Megan was nodding in agreement now. ‘I know exactly what you mean. I felt it this morning on the Charles Bridge and at the monastery up on the hill. It’s as if the city is haunted, but not in a bad or a spooky way.’
‘I think you girls have had too much wine,’ Charlie joked.
Hope turned to Sophie. ‘You agree with us, don’t you, love?’
Sophie put her spoon down and nudged her plate forward a fraction. ‘I just love this place,’ she told them simply. ‘I’ve been all over the world, but this is the one place I keep coming back to – and it’s where I met Robin.’
‘There must be a reason why so many people keep coming back here year after year,’ Hope said.
‘The cheap beer?’ Ollie suggested.
Hope smiled, but she was glad she wasn’t the only one who had sensed something special about Prague. When she had made her silent wish on the Charles Bridge that morning, she’d truly believed in what she was asking. In that moment, with the cold wind biting at her cheeks and the distant sound of church bells ringing, she’d let herself believe in real magic. A year and a day was a long time to wait for her particular wish to come true, however. Perhaps what she should really be focusing on was how to create a little magic of her own.
When the last of the apple strudel and cream had been scraped off their plates and a generous tip had been heaped on to the table next to several empty wine bottles, Hope suggested that they all take a wander around the square before heading back to the hotel. She watched Sophie pull her oversized hat back on and button up her coat against the freezing night air. She was so tiny that Hope couldn’t help but feel a maternal pull towards her. She wanted to wrap her up in her arms and protect her from the world, which was of course ridiculous. Here was a girl who was not only here in the city on her own, but had also travelled around the whole world. She was probably far more capable of looking after herself than Hope ever could be, yet that overwhelming urge to mother was still there, refusing to dip below an urgent bubbling simmer. It must be because she was missing Annette.
While her daughter was outgoing and outspoken, she still came running to Hope whenever she was in trouble. Well, she had until recently. Hope found it impossible to look at Annette and see a mature twenty-five-year-old woman with her own career, relationship and home – all she saw was her baby. She didn’t think that would ever change, either. The fact that her own daughter now wanted nothing to do with her cut into Hope like a scalpel through the skin of a peach.
‘Will you look at this cheeky fellow,’ Charlie said, coming to a stop beside a makeshift set of stables. The floor of each stall was covered with straw, and there were three goats, one miniature pony and a donkey, all with their noses poking over the bolted doors. At the far end of the stables, a coin-operated sweet dispenser had been fixed to the wall, its plastic tub filled with pony nuts. The donkey, whose stall was at the end nearest this contraption, waited until he had their full attention before reaching his head around and curling his hairy grey upper lip over the dial in an attempt to make some nuts drop down.
‘How adorable!’ Hope cried, putting a timid hand between the donkey’s lopsided ears and rubbing his knotted fur.
Ollie was rooting in his pocket for change, and Megan already had her camera poised. Hope could hear her clicking away furiously as Ollie collected a generous serving of nuts and poured a heap into Hope’s hands, and then Sophie’s. The donkey barged forward immediately, lifting up his top lip and showing them his teeth.
‘He is very happy,’ the man looking after the stall told them, slapping his hands on his thighs as the donkey turned and gave his pony stablemate a warning nip.
Holding her palm flat under the donkey’s muzzle and watching him gobble up her offering, Hope guessed this floppy-eared creature’s little routine was keeping him very well fed, to judge from the size of his tummy. As she took a step back and wiped the dust from the nuts off her hands, she noticed that Charlie wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
‘Did you see where he went?’ she asked Megan, who was still holding her camera in her gloved hands.
Megan shook her head. ‘Sorry.’
‘He’s over there.’ Sophie pointed through the enormous ears of the donkey at another stall a few yards away. Charlie had his back to them, but his height and his bright red hat gave him away. Hope felt her stomach churn with unease as she noticed the mobile phone clamped against his ear. It couldn’t possibly be an estate agent at this time of night.
Ollie must have noticed the stricken look on her face, because he quickly inserted another coin into the pony-nut dispenser and beckoned for her to join him.
‘Come on,’ he said, excitement taking his voice up an octave. ‘Let’s see if we can get the donkey and the pony to have a punch-up.’
Hope held her hand out gratefully and crouched down to where the determined chestnut mare had forced her tiny nose through the slots in the fence. She could still see the top of Charlie’s head, and she heard rather than saw Megan begin to take photos again.
How had she ended up here? she wondered. A few days ago she had felt as if she’d found someone she could trust, someone who loved her, but now, here in Prague with her knees on the cold, damp cobbles and her fingers pink from the icy air, she realised with a creeping dread that she didn’t really know Charlie that well after all.
24
The sky the next morning was white and heavy with snow. Sophie could almost feel the weight of it as she slipped out of the hotel and crunched through the piles of grubby slush on the pavements. Stopping only to buy herself a cup of fresh ginger tea from a small vendor on the far side of the river, she headed down past the Kafka Museum until she was on the banks of the Vltava.
Ahead of her was a large, weathered tree, its roots poking up sporadically through the muddy ground and its lowest branches trailing down into the surface of the water. The only colours down here were whites, browns and greys, the Vltava River itself bleached into a murky beige by the reflection of the pale sky above. Sophie sniffed the somewhat stagnant air and wrinkled her nose, bringing her cup up to mask the aroma of duck dung with the sweet scent of ginger.
She had filled her coat pockets with bread from the breakfast buffet that morning, and now she settled herself down on a large tree root and began breaking it up into chunks. It didn’t take long for the local contingent of swans, ducks and seagulls to pick up the fresh, doughy scent on the air, and soon the puddles around Sophie’s feet were obscured
by a multitude of feathered scavengers.
She took her time choosing which ones to feed, throwing chunks right over the heads of the expectant swans that had barged aggressively to the front of the pack. Her reluctance to reward their bullying behaviour enraged them, and she cowered as one particularly affronted beast stretched out its wings and made a lunge for her ankles.
‘Sod off!’ she yelped, making shooing motions and almost losing her arm to the swan’s equally bolshie friend in the process. The way that the birds were all bashing against each other as they jostled for space reminded her of the Underground in London. So many people down there behaved just as these swans were, as if they were the most important people on the planet, and so should be treated as such. Sophie found them ridiculous, and she smiled as she thought fondly of the relative quiet of home. There was no need for anyone to push each other around in the village. When Sophie had been a child, she’d often lamented this fact to her parents, moaning that the village was ‘boring’ and that she was going to move to London as soon as she was old enough. What an idiot she’d been.
There was a sudden flurry of movement in front of her and several ducks set off squawking towards the water. At first Sophie thought one of the swans had kicked off again, but then she saw a flash of brown fur amid the melee of feathers.
‘What the hell?’ she gasped, drenching one of her gloves in lukewarm ginger tea as she recoiled in shock.
She had definitely seen fur. And some sort of tail. And teeth. But it couldn’t be a rat. She’d seen some big rats in her time – it was one of the many joys of living on a farm – but this thing was something else. It was bigger than the ducks that were now waddling away from it.
The urge to clamber up and run away was overwhelming, but Sophie found she couldn’t move. She could feel her skin tingling with discomfort, and for some reason her mind was conjuring up images of the wet, slimy creature scuttling up her legs. If ever she needed Robin to be here, it was now. He would know what to do – he wouldn’t be afraid.
She let out a huge shudder as the rodent re-emerged from behind a cluster of angry drakes and started sniffing at the rubbish that had washed up on shore a few metres down from her spot beneath the tree. From this safe distance, she realised that it wasn’t actually all that bad. In fact, it was quite sweet. Its face was flatter than a rat’s and its paws seemed to Sophie to look more like flippers than claws. As it turned its back on her and slithered down into the water, she caught sight of its tail again and actually laughed out loud at herself. It was a beaver, not a rat.
She and Robin had seen dolphins in Mexico, crocodiles in Australia, an eagle catching fish from a lagoon in Sri Lanka and countless thousands of pigeons as they’d made their way around the world, but they had never seen a beaver before. As her relief that it hadn’t been a giant rat slipped away, Sophie was hit by a new emotion: regret. She couldn’t believe that Robin hadn’t been here to see this.
Taking out her phone, Sophie padded through the mud to the edge of the water, looking in vain for the animal that she’d been desperate to run screaming from just a few minutes ago. She could at least take a photo. It wouldn’t be the same, though.
She and Robin had been through so much together. They’d barely spent a day apart since they’d met – and certainly not since he’d left his home in Cornwall and taken up residence in her attic bedroom at the farm. It felt intrinsically wrong that she was here alone now, having a new experience that he would never be a part of.
Her mind flickered involuntarily back to a memory she’d tried hard to bury – of an argument that had marked a shift in their relationship. He had arrived home later than planned, his breath laced with the yeasty stench of beer and his demeanour edgy and excited. When Robin was in this sort of mood he found it impossible to sit still, and would pace around the room fidgeting with things. When Sophie pointed this out and asked why he seemed so exhilarated, he’d suddenly turned coy and unusually mute.
‘What aren’t you telling me?’ she demanded, watching as he picked up a CD case and pretended to read the back.
‘Nothing.’
‘Why are you so late?’
A shrug. ‘I just went for a drink after work, that’s all.’
‘Who with?’
Sophie saw his shoulders tense up a fraction.
‘Just the lads, and …’ He put the CD down and tucked his hair behind his ears, his eyes on the carpet rather than her.
‘And who?’ She tried to stop her anguish from seeping into her words, but it was impossible. It wasn’t like Robin to be cagey like this.
He gave a deep sigh and looked at her finally.
‘Nobody,’ he said.
Sophie took a deep breath. He obviously wasn’t going to tell her the truth.
‘I see.’
Robin groaned and tapped his fingers impatiently on the dressing table. ‘This is exactly why I never tell you when I go out with the boys. I knew you’d overreact.’
‘I’m not overreacting. You’re the one who’s acting all guilty.’
‘Come on, Bug.’
‘That’s right,’ she snapped, turning her back on him as he tried to put his arms around her. ‘I’m an insignificant bug – no wonder you’d rather be out with your friends.’
‘Now you’re being really stupid.’ He was looking at her with a mixture of dismay and amusement, but it was the hint of laughter in his voice that really rankled. How dare he laugh at her?
Her face must have portrayed her feelings, because Robin took one look at her and backed down.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his bravado vanishing like water down a drain. ‘I should have invited you, too. The lads aren’t a threat to you, Bug – you should know that. You know you’re more important to me than any of them.’
‘I’m just scared of losing you,’ she said, her voice small, and he pulled her against his chest.
‘That’s never going to happen,’ he promised, and she felt him smile. ‘I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for life.’
The sob erupted from the very depths of her chest so suddenly that it startled the few ducks and seagulls that were still hovering around hoping for bread. She was being ridiculous now – there wasn’t any need for all these tears. That argument had happened months ago, and she and Robin had long since made up again.
Sophie wasn’t sure how long she sat there, lost in the past, but after a time the beaver popped its smooth head back through the surface of the water right in front of her and sniffed the air with interest. Sophie didn’t move a muscle as it made its way past her, so close that she could have reached out a hand and stroked a finger along the slick fur on its back.
The birds had quietened down now and on the opposite shore the city was coming to life. Sophie strained her ears and heard the tell-tale clicking sound coming from the crossing by the Charles Bridge, where the trams squealed up and down the banks of the Vltava. There was a faint trace of music drifting down from somewhere behind her, and the wind was busy chasing fallen leaves along the cobbles.
The temperature was slowly dropping, and Sophie sighed as she looked down at her sodden gloves. She was glad of her long coat, which would hide the wet patch on the back of her jeans. At least she would have a tale to tell the others that evening, she thought, cursing herself again for not getting a photo of the beaver. Perhaps if Megan came down here, then she would be able to take some, and she’d do a far better job of it.
They had all agreed to head out for dinner again as a group that evening, and she was grateful that they were all being so welcoming. She pictured Robin again, with his kind, smiling eyes and his untidy blond hair. How she missed him – his smell, his touch, the pure essence of him. After this trip, she was never going to let him get away from her again.
25
‘Have you ever had a go on a Segway?’
Megan pulled a face. ‘No.’ She stepped to one side as yet another group of tourists rumbled past them on the strange two-wheeled contraptions. �
��If anyone rode one to work in London, they’d definitely get lynched,’ she added, eyeing the Segways as they vanished around a cobbled corner up ahead. ‘Can you imagine?’
‘Yeah, they would,’ Ollie agreed. ‘And robbed. Remind me again why we live in that city.’
‘Because it’s where everything happens,’ she informed him. ‘If you want to be a somebody, then you can’t hide away in a little village.’
‘Is that why you’re there?’ He peered at her in interest. The cold wind had turned his nose the same colour as a ripe apple.
Megan shrugged uncomfortably. ‘I guess so. But it’s not that I want to be famous or anything like that, it’s just that there are more exhibitions and opportunities for photographers in London. If I’d stayed in the Kent countryside with my parents, I’d never have got anywhere.’
Ollie looked an awful lot like he didn’t believe her, and Megan felt herself bristle with mild irritation.
‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘I want people to look at my work, not at me.’
‘No, you hate people looking at you,’ he agreed.
She wasn’t sure from his neutral tone whether he meant exactly that, or if he was making a small dig about the night they’d met, when she’d squirmed uneasily under his gaze as they’d sat side by side on her sofa. She hadn’t been comfortable with the intensity of Ollie’s feelings towards her in that moment, that much was true – but it wasn’t because she hated the idea of being wanted by him. Or was it? Megan was feeling increasingly confused about the whole situation with every hour she spent here in Prague with Ollie. Just that morning, she’d woken up to find that he’d sneaked his hand into hers while they slept. She didn’t actually know if he’d done it intentionally – it could have been an unconscious movement – but the thing that had worried her most was how much she’d liked it. She’d genuinely felt sad when he’d started to stir and had rolled away from her.
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