6
The following morning, I woke at about six o’clock and pulled myself up, eager to look out of the window at the countryside flashing past us. The train slowed as we reached Marseille, and I wondered if the man with the Mickey Mouse socks would be leaving. I resisted the temptation to go out in the corridor and look. He’d have to be quick because according to the timetable the train only stopped for three minutes.
I checked my phone.
Ben
It was raining really hard so I didn’t like to chuck the cat out last night. This morning, I came down and it’s brought in three kittens. What should I do?
Me
I don’t know. Put their names down for Eton?
You’d better buy some cat food if you can’t find out where they have come from. Don’t get too attached to them. I know what you’re like! We are in the south of France, heading for Nice!
Ben
Where can I find cat food?
Me
Make an educated guess *smiley face emoji*
Once we left the station and the suburbs, the landscape was green with the first hints of autumn colour. Hedges and fields and houses where more French people would be waking up, having their petit déjeuner and heading off to work.
Anna leaned down from her bunk.
‘We should see the sea in a minute. I’ve been checking the map. First one to see it gets an ice cream.’
‘That’s exactly what my parents used to say.’ I laughed.
We passed a little bay where there were white waves up against the coast, and a big road which followed the railway for a while before we swooped off behind some trees and down into cuttings as we made our way towards Nice, our final destination.
We stopped at marvellous-sounding places that I had never expected to see: Toulon, Saint Raphaël, Cannes, where palm trees lined the railway line, and Antibes. These were places I associated with celebrities and glamour, and frankly they had neither.
At last, only one minute late, we arrived at Nice, which to me looked pretty much like any other large railway station, which, again, was slightly disappointing. I’d expected something a bit more opulent I suppose. Flowers or bright colours. A few film stars on their way to the Cannes film festival, although they were more likely to go in private jets or limousines weren’t they, not shuffle through the ticket barriers with everyone else. And wasn’t the film festival in May?
‘Now where do we go?’ I asked as we clambered down the steps onto the platform. ‘Any ideas?’
I looked around to see if Mr Grumpy was anywhere to be seen, so I could avoid him, but there was no sign of him. And he hadn’t actually been grumpy at all. He had been very kind and solicitous. It was quite possible he had got off already and was striding out purposefully to his office, or university, or whatever it was he did.
Perhaps he had an elegant wife with a complicated blonde hairstyle, waiting for him outside the station with a Maserati, and he would tell her all about his journey and the drunk who had fallen into his cabin last night and she would laugh and call himchèrie. He would bring out a present for her from London too, a teeny tiny turquoise box from Tiffany, tied with white ribbon… Did actual men do that sort of thing, or had I watched too many romcoms on television?
Harriet consulted her notebook.
‘Of course, if we were recreating the first time we were here we would just wander around looking for a B&B, but you’ll be pleased to hear Anna has booked us into a hotel in the Old Town which she is sure is the same place we stayed before. Honestly, I did tell you all this, several times. And I put it very clearly in the travel notes I sent you. You both agreed. And Anna said she had done it.’
‘Did I? Oh yes, I did, I remember, that was ages ago,’ Anna said.
‘And I’ve forgotten,’ I added.
Harriet rolled her eyes and shouldered her backpack.
‘You two are worse than Tom and Paul. And how they managed to get jobs on Wall Street I’ll never understand.’
We followed obediently through the ticket barriers and trundled our cases out into the early morning sunshine. The air was different again here, in the way that every place has its own particular scent and feel.
‘So do we get a taxi this time?’ Harriet asked hopefully.
