We woke the next morning to the sound of Anna’s alarm going off at seven thirty. I didn’t know about the other two but I felt every one of my years. Too much brandy the previous evening hadn’t helped either. We picked up the few things we had unpacked the previous evening and made our way downstairs.
The indefatigable Arturo was still there behind the reception desk, looking positively bright eyed. But then as we agreed later, everything about him including his liver was younger than ours and more able to cope with this sort of fast lifestyle.
The car was waiting for us outside and we piled our cases into the boot in no time, put Harriet into the front seat and then we were off.
‘This is more like it,’ I said as we watched the town we had plodded through a few days before whizzing past.
‘Much better,’ Harriet agreed.
Less than forty minutes later we were standing on the platform at Ventimiglia, admiring our next train, which was bright red, sleek and rather sexy. We boarded, stowed away our suitcases and found our seats.
There were the usual four seats around a table, plus fairly reasonable loos at the end of the compartment, and two large vending machines serving hot drinks and snacks.
‘Better use cash,’ Harriet said. ‘It’s all coming back to me now. I read about it. Cards only work in the machines when there is good enough Wi-Fi.’
Looking forward to getting some proper food at Milan station when we would change trains for the last time, we stocked up with some snacks and perfectly decent coffee, investigated the loo, which was spotlessly clean and very acceptable, and then settled in our seats for the journey.
All the misgivings and worries of the previous evening seemed to have faded and I for one was excited about the trip ahead of us. We were luckily on the right side of the train so we would be able to see the wonderful views of the coast during our journey, and the weather outside was glorious too.
There were just a few minutes remaining until the train started off on the next leg of our escapade. We played with the expanding table, peered into the little rubbish container at the end, found our travel adaptors and cables and put our phones on to charge. We were seasoned travellers now. Yes, we had known some sticky moments and Harriet without a doubt had come off worst with her sore knee, but we had made it this far and scooped up a trophy too. Perhaps we weren’t past it after all. I leaned forward and looked across Anna to see out of the window as the train silently started to move out of the station.
‘Hello again,’ said a voice, and just for a moment, I ignored it.
‘Seems like we really are following each other around.’
This time I turned my head to look and found myself looking up at that man. The same man I had seen on the Eurostar, the sleeper train and last night in the bar as we collected our award. He was standing about three seats in front of us and was putting his laptop bag up into the overhead locker.
‘This is ridiculous,’ I said.
He grinned and gave a funny little shrug as if in agreement.
The other two looked to see who I was talking to and Harriet gasped.
‘It’s the stalker,’ she hissed in a poor stage whisper. ‘The one with the socks, whose wife sent him out to get the cat food.’
‘Huh?’ Anna looked puzzled.
The newcomer raised his eyebrows. ‘As I don’t have a wife or a cat, I think that’s unlikely. I do have socks though.’
He went off to sit down in his seat and all I could see of him was the back of his grey hair between the headrests. The three of us had a whispered conference.
‘What the heck is Mr Grumpy doing here?’
‘That is him, isn’t it?’
‘Do we know him from somewhere? He seems to know us.’
‘No, Anna, we don’t actually know him. He’s the man from the Eurostar who sat next to me, and he’s the same man whose compartment I fell into on the sleeper train from Paris, and I thought I saw him last night too. In the bar, but I didn’t believe it.’
‘Then he’s definitely stalking you,’ Anna said. ‘I wonder why?’
I wrestled with the ridiculousness of the possibility.
‘Of course he’s not! Why on earth would a stranger follow us all this way? When we don’t even know him.’
‘He could be a private detective; someone Fred has put on to follow you?’ Harriet said.
‘But why? We have been divorced for years, why would he care what I’m doing now?’
