‘Men can get funny like that,’ Anna said. ‘When I was at university I had a boyfriend once who trailed after me in his car all the way from Oxford to Witney. I was on a bike ride with some friends and he thought I was messing around with one of them. Which I wasn’t I might add. Not that time anyway.’
‘That’s no distance,’ I said. ‘It’s hardly the same as following me all the way from London to Nice, and now being on the same train to Milan, is it?’
Harriet leaned across the table and patted my hand reassuringly.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll call a gendarme the minute we get to the station, or perhaps there is one on this train in plain clothes? You know, like an air marshal on flights.’
We thought about this for a few minutes, and Anna raised herself up in her seat a bit so she could stare at the back of his head.
‘He’s got nice hair,’ she said at last.
‘Anna! For heaven’s sake. Who cares about his hair? He might be a dangerous criminal or – ooh, a hit man,’ Harriet gasped. ‘Perhaps I should ring the police now or something? Anyone know what the number is for Interpol?’
I was exasperated by this. ‘A hit man? That’s daft. Why would anyone do that?’
‘I was watching a series on Netflix only the other day where a woman didn’t know she was the heir to a fortune, and someone else – I think it was an estranged daughter or it might have been a niece – had found out and paid an assassin to knock her off,’ Anna said earnestly, ‘and she very nearly got away with it. Fortunately, there was a detective living in the house next door although it actually looked like a mansion, because all these people live in mansions, don’t they? Heaven knows how they afford it. And his wife never wore the same clothes twice. And he knew someone who knew the niece. And there was a dog too, I think it was a corgi. It barked at exactly the right moment.’
‘Right, I’m going to find out,’ I said.
I stood up and adjusted the neckline of my new green and white dress, which, annoyingly that morning, didn’t seem to fit properly over my new holiday bra. And then I took a deep breath and walked towards him.
‘Hello,’ I said, ‘what are you doing here?’
‘I might ask you the same thing,’ he said pleasantly enough. He held out a hand. ‘Jack Fisher. It feels like you have been following me all the way from St Pancras.’
I shook his hand automatically although I still had reservations about his motivation.
‘Lizzie Stevens. No, I haven’t, you’ve been following me.’
He had the nerve to laugh up at me, and to be fair he had a nice laugh, and a megawatt smile that made me wonder if he was wearing dentures. They looked very real from where I was standing. Or perhaps he was American; a lot of them seem to have good teeth.
‘I am travelling to Milan, obviously,’ he said, ‘where I will catch a train to Venice.’
‘So am I,’ I gasped, ‘how did you know?’
‘Know what? That you were going to Venice? I didn’t.’
‘That seems unlikely,’ I said, ‘all things considered.’
‘So perhaps you think I am a private detective, or a hit man chasing after you across Europe for some reason?’ Jack said with a chuckle.
‘Of course not, don’t be silly,’ I said, although of course that was exactly what we had just been talking about a few seconds ago.
A thought struck me. Did he have a listening device? Had he somehow bugged my backpack?
‘And obviously you are neither one of those things,’ he said.
I was mildly annoyed at this. Just because I didn’t look exotic and mysterious. I pulled myself upright, took a deep breath and one of the buttons on my new dress popped open. For heaven’s sake, I bet real spies didn’t have to put up with this sort of irritation.
I discreetly buttoned it back up again.
‘Why not? I might be. Why couldn’t I be a hit person? I might be wanted by Interpol in five countries.’
He laughed again. ‘You don’t look like a determined assassin, Lizzie.’
‘That might be a part of my cunning disguise,’ I said, wishing that I didn’t like the way he said my name.
Fred had always called me Liz, or Elizabeth if he was annoyed with me, which was quite often. He on the other hand had insisted on always being called Frederick, never Fred, although in a weak moment during our divorce he confessed his irritation that his thirty-six-year-old lover called him Freddo. I had laughed until I cried on hearing that, and then he had been even more annoyed.
