Exactly on time, the train started to silently glide out of the station. It was dark by then, and we were treated to the sight of the backs of Parisien houses and apartment blocks with their lights glowing.
People would be eating in there, watching the news perhaps. Maybe they would be bickering in French about whose turn it was to put the bins out, or where the television remote was. That was what had happened in my life for years. Never having a simple chat or a laugh about things, Fred never agreeing to do anything he didn’t want to without a lot of sighing and grumbling. But then it was probably the same in every country.
Then we passed through tunnels and dark cuttings and at last we were out beyond the suburbs, the petrol stations and the supermarkets and outside the land was dark, with just the occasional light from cars or a distant village.
We drank the wine out of disposable plastic mugs and played poker while Harriet kept up the score in her new notebook. At nearly eleven o’clock we agreed it was time to go for a last visit to the washroom at the end of the corridor before we went to bed and get what sleep we could.
‘Well, that was fun,’ Harriet said, looking at the final scores. ‘We must do that again. I won. Anna, you owe me nine thousand pounds and your car. Lizzie, you owe me twenty-three thousand pounds, a cruise to the Canaries and your house.’
‘Will you take a cheque?’ I asked.
Harriet smiled kindly. ‘Of course. But you really should stop saying double or quits. It’s done you no favours.’
‘Who knew you were such a card shark, and you look like such a sweet old lady sometimes,’ Anna sighed.
‘That was your first mistake,’ Harriet said waspishly. ‘I’m seldom sweet and by the way, I’m younger than you by six months. But getting older has its advantages. No one takes me seriously any more, you included. Right, stay here, you two, I’m off to clean the chocolate out of my teeth.’
‘We’re hardly going to go anywhere else,’ I shouted at her as she left.
I found my little toiletry bag ready for when it was my turn, and my nightie which was, I had discovered, the least bulky form of nightwear I could pack. Anna went off when Harriet came back, saying it wasn’t too bad, quite nice really, and then it was my turn.
The corridor to the washroom was empty and the door to the washroom ajar, so I stepped out quite confidently. Outside, the dark countryside was slipping past with just the lights from our train showing how fast we were travelling. All this was so far outside my everyday experience to be very exciting indeed.
As I passed the last compartment, the door slid open and the train gave a mighty rock to one side, as though it had crossed some points or something, and I lost my balance. Those two things together meant that I stumbled into the open doorway of the couchette with a very unladylike oath and fell on the floor.
‘I say, watch out, are you okay?’ said a male voice, and I felt someone grab my arm as my nose scraped along the carpet.
All sorts of scenarios flashed through my slightly tipsy brain at that moment.
The first thing was that I actually had fallen over for the first time in years. Which at my age was no joke.
I’d always thought one of the ways to find out if you are old is to fall over; if people laugh, you are still young, but if people rush to help you, you’re definitely old.
Then there was the possibility that I was being abducted, although why anyone would want to abduct a sixty-four-year-old woman in John Lewis jeans and a Joules T-shirt with a red wine stain down the front, on a moving train, was anyone’s guess.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ he repeated, sounding very concerned and not at all like a determined kidnapper.
I gathered my wits, which were only very slightly foggy from the red wine, and sat up.
In front of me were a pair of legs in some trendy multi-pocketed fabric trousers and beneath them some Mickey Mouse socks. I looked up.
‘Hello again,’ he said.
It was the man. The man with the laptop and the serious expression. The same man from the Eurostar train and the brasserie.
‘I thought you weren’t going to Disneyland,’ I said foolishly, pointing at his socks.
He chuckled and held out a hand to help me to my feet.
‘The socks were a present from my granddaughter,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘Are you quite all right?’
Hmm. Did he mean was I all right, or was he implying I was drunk and a bit disorderly?
I ignored his hand and pulled myself upright using the edge of the couchette, which was a mistake as I dragged his bedclothes off onto the floor.
‘Sorry. Sorry,’ I gasped, trying to put them back.
‘Can I get you anything? You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?’
