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Chapter 17
Cutting it dangerously fine, we’d arrived back at Gare du Nord at just after 1.30, with ten minutes to spare before the Amsterdam train left the station.
‘I can’t believe we were that close to missing it,’ I grumbled, striding along the platform and getting on a carriage towards the back of the train.
‘Relax, Hannah. We made it, didn’t we?’ he said, dragging his bag up the steps behind him.
‘Just,’ I said, although I knew I shouldn’t be taking my bad mood out on him. He hadn’t forced me to go to any of those places, to keep wandering from one pretty location to another. I had to be responsible for my own actions: I’d made a choice to go with him and now I was more confused than ever. I had nobody to blame but myself.
‘You can sit near the window,’ said Léo, stretching up to stuff his bag in the overhead rack.
‘Thanks,’ I said, squeezing past him, sitting down.
The air conditioning hadn’t kicked in yet and I fanned myself with a walking map I’d picked up in Venice; I’d wanted to keep it as a memento. Léo was rustling about, as though he couldn’t sit still. He took off his jacket, went back to his bag to get out a magazine and then zipped it back up noisily, finally throwing himself down next to me. I rested my head against the window watching men in fluorescent jackets scuttle up and down the platform.
‘What time did they say the train gets in?’ I asked.
I’d barely thought about Si for the last couple of hours, which was worrying, given that when I arrived in Amsterdam, there was a chance he could propose to me at any second. Reality was edging ever closer and this bubble I’d been in, here with Léo, the two of us meandering across Paris as though we were extras in a remake of Amélie, was about to pop.
‘4.57. The wedding is at 5.30, right?’ he said.
‘Yep,’ I said, feeling sick at the thought of it.
A whistle blew and somebody in a blue uniform waved a placard and the train began to move, juddering to life, slipping out from underneath the glass canopy of Gare du Nord, carving its way through the outskirts of the city. I dug my thumbnail into the fleshy part of my palm. Soon, Paris would be behind us, and the last few hours would feel like nothing more than a glitch in my otherwise very ordinary life. I wondered whether I would forget about Léo, eventually. Whether I’d struggle to remember the timbre of his voice, the exact features of his face. How happy he’d made me, how frequently he’d made me laugh.
‘Need to look at anything?’ said Léo, offering me his phone.
I shrugged, lost in thought, holding out my palm for the handset and then nearly dropping it. We went to save it at the same time, our heads clashing together.
‘Ow,’ I said, rubbing my forehead.
‘And you tell me you are not clumsy,’ he said.
He rubbed his thumb across the exact spot near my temple where it hurt. ‘I hope you do not have a bruise there tomorrow,’ he said, stroking my skin for what felt like ages. When he stopped, I wanted to take his hand and press it back there again.
‘Right,’ I said, trying to pull myself together and focus as I searched directions from Centraal Station to the Lux Hotel, which apparently would take approximately nineteen minutes by car. I’d be lucky if I made the ceremony, then; there would have to be absolutely no hold-ups. Then I logged into my email account to see whether either Mum or Ellie had responded to my messages. I was pretty sure that Mum wouldn’t have done, because whenever I sent her an email, I would first have to prompt her with a text saying check your emails, which usually caused great excitement, even though the content of the message was almost always very dull. I scrolled through my inbox, only half-concentrating. There was an article about how to lose an inch of belly fat in four weeks; a 40 per cent off Gap offer that was useless because I couldn’t afford the remaining 60 per cent. And then I noticed an email from Central Saint Martins. My finger hovered over the open button and I pressed it. It was a reminder about the pre-degree course. A prompt to upload my portfolio and get my application form in by the following Wednesday, which was less than a week away, now. I knew exactly why I’d left it this late: I’d been going back and forth with it, wondering whether I could commit to the time, whether I’d be good enough to be accepted, worrying about how I’d feel if I didn’t get a place.
‘What is that?’ asked Léo, looking over my shoulder.
I showed him.
‘This is your course, the one you will apply for?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘If I can get the application together in time, that is.’
‘Why would you not get it ready on time?’ he asked.
I ran my thumbnail backwards and forwards across my bottom lip.
‘I’d need to get all my film processed and digitised when I’m back in London. Think really carefully about which images to upload,’ I said, his hair tickling my cheek as we read the email again together.
‘You have taken lots of photographs, Hannah. I do not believe that it will be difficult to find the right ones to send.’
‘But now I’m doubting that they’re good enough.’
I could feel my heart starting to race. It felt like I had this narrow window of opportunity to change things. That this was it, the moment I’d been waiting for. I’d just taken two rolls of film in Paris: there was bound to be a story there, a theme to base my portfolio around. I gave him back his phone and rummaged under my seat for my bag, pulling out the wine and the plastic cups.
‘Let’s finish this,’ I said.
