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When I spotted a guard striding past, I seized my opportunity, waving my arms about to flag him down.
‘Excusez-moi, Monsieur!’ I shouted. ‘When is the next Amsterdam train, please?’
He pulled a timetable out of his jacket pocket and flicked through it for a few agonising seconds, shaking his head. This didn’t seem like a particularly good sign.
‘This afternoon, Madame,’ he said. ‘The 13.40, arriving in Amsterdam Centraal at 16.57.’
I put my head in my hands, trying to think. The wedding was at 5.30. Would that give me enough time? If there were no delays, would half an hour be long enough to get to the hotel? When I looked up, French Guy was strutting around gesticulating madly as the guard explained that there were engineering works on the line, that two trains had been cancelled and that there was nothing that could be done. I looked away because I was trying to keep calm and he wasn’t helping. It was possible, if everything went smoothly and the train left when it was supposed to, that I might just make it. I needed to hold on to the tiniest bit of hope.
‘Ok?’ asked the French guy after a while, standing in front of me with his arms crossed, completely blocking my view of the concourse.
‘Yes,’ I lied.
‘What is it you must do in Amsterdam?’ he asked.
‘I’m supposed to be at a wedding.’
He shrugged. ‘Not such a disaster, then.’
I squinted up at him. ‘You don’t think missing someone’s wedding, the day they’ve spent months planning, that you’re supposed to be helping set up, whose family are expecting you, is a disaster?’
‘I do not,’ he insisted, doing an annoying pouty thing with his mouth.
‘And what world-changing event are you required at this afternoon?’ I asked.
‘Work,’ he said, putting his hands on his hips and expelling air through pursed lips. ‘A meeting that can change everything for me.’
‘You’re right, that does sound much more important,’ I said, rolling my eyes.
‘And I do not care what that guard on the train said, the announcements were not loud enough. How are we supposed to listen when we are all asleep? It was the middle of the night,’ he grumbled.
‘I know,’ I said, reluctantly agreeing with him. ‘I didn’t hear a thing either.’
‘I wish, now, that I had stayed where I was,’ he said. ‘I moved because there were some guys laughing and shouting in my carriage and I could hear them all the time, even with my music on at maximum volume.’
‘That’s why you had your music on that loud, then, was it?’
He sighed and flicked his eyes to mine. ‘You still try to blame me?’
‘It’s as clear as day: if your terrible dance music hadn’t been booming out of your headphones, I wouldn’t have had to put my earplugs in.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Terrible music?’
‘In my opinion.’
‘And now we find ourselves here,’ he said, looking enigmatically around the concourse.
‘But you’re French, right?’
He nodded. ‘I live here, in Paris.’
I tutted. ‘Hardly a disaster for you, then, either, is it?’
He bent down to retrieve his bag.
‘You always think you have things much worse than everybody else?’ he asked.
‘Only when I actually do,’ I said, although his comment stung. It was something Mum used to say, that I was always feeling sorry for myself.
