A Night on the Orient Express (21 page)

A
s the train drew out of Paris, Imogen wondered how many more passengers had come on board. She found being on her own was less of an ordeal than she had first feared, as the dining car was as entertaining as any soap opera. She amused herself guessing why the other passengers were on board, and what their relationships were with each other. She was particularly intrigued by the young couple two tables up. The girl was stunning, dressed like Daisy Buchanan. It was clear they didn’t know each other well. They deferred to each other far too much, and there was a politeness between them which would have long since evaporated were they lovers. Yet Imogen could see they were enjoying each other’s company. It was charming to watch his deference, and her blossoming under his attention. Imogen smiled as a waiter placed a mouth-watering plate of smoked salmon in front of her, and a perfectly chilled glass of Chablis.

She had just picked up her fork when a figure strode into the carriage. She looked up with interest, eager to scope out the new arrival.

Then she dropped her fork.

It was Danny. Danny in a dinner jacket, thrown on over jeans and a white shirt he had barely buttoned up, his black hair falling over his eyes, his expression thunderous as he strode through the cabin, looking from left to right. Looking, presumably, for her. And as he caught sight of her, he didn’t miss a beat. He came up to her table and stood over her, glowering, and she shrank back slightly in fear.

‘Don’t ever do that to me again,’ he said.

She swallowed. ‘What . . . what are you doing here?’

‘I want a proper explanation,’ he said. ‘Not just a note shoved through the door.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘Talk to me?’ he said. ‘I thought I was worth more than that.’

‘You are. Of course you are.’

Imogen’s cheeks were scalding. The other passengers were looking over at them. The admiration in the eyes of the other women was blatant. Danny had never looked so devastating.

The maître d’ came over to them, concerned. ‘Are you dining with us this evening, sir?’

‘Yes,’ said Imogen. ‘Yes, he is. I wonder if you could set him a place?’

‘Of course, madam.’ The maître d’ nodded and moved away.

Imogen indicated the seat opposite. ‘Sit down,’ she said to Danny. ‘I’ll get you a drink.’ She gazed at him in disbelief and awe. ‘How on earth did you get here?’

‘I drove. On my bike.’ Danny slumped into the seat and sat back, pushing his hair away from his face and throwing one arm over the back of the chair. His dinner jacket fell open; she could see his chest under his unbuttoned shirt. How could she ever have imagined that life without him could work? She wanted to drag him back to her cabin now, this minute. My God, had he really driven all this way just to find her?

She smiled, unable to help herself.

‘You’re wearing a dinner jacket.’

‘I’m not a total savage.’

Imogen flushed. ‘I didn’t mean that . . .’

He was still glowering. He was still angry at what she had done. But he was here. A waiter arrived.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘we should order champagne?’

Danny just nodded.

‘You must have broken the speed limit,’ she ventured.

‘I’d imagine so,’ he replied.

He raked his eyes down her. She thanked God she had made the effort to dress up. She sat up a little taller. She wasn’t going to show she was ruffled. She wasn’t going to show that her heart was doing triple time, that her stomach was fizzing, that she had never felt so unbelievably turned on . . .

‘So,’ she said. ‘If I’d known you wanted to go to Venice that much—’

‘Happy belated birthday,’ he said, pulling a package out of his pocket and chucking it on the table.

She unwrapped the tissue. Inside was a glass heart, emerald-green shot through with flecks of gold, on a very fine gold chain.

‘You bought this for me?’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘When I thought we actually meant something.’

She held it in the palm of her hand. It was perfect. It matched her eyes. It matched her dress. ‘I made a mistake,’ she said.

He raised a dark eyebrow. ‘So what do we do now?’

Imogen didn’t reply for a moment. Then she smiled.

‘We have dinner,’ she said. ‘And then we go back to my cabin. Or your cabin – I guess you’ve got a cabin? – and have very, very hot make-up sex.’

He looked at her coolly. ‘Whatever you decide,’ he replied. There was more than a hint of sarcasm, but she didn’t flinch. She looked him straight in the eye. His gaze slid away. She stretched her legs out and entwined them with his under the table, feeling the rough denim against her bare legs as she put the necklace on. He didn’t move, just stared out of the window, but at the corner of his mouth she saw the faintest glimmer of a smile. She looked down at the table and tried not to laugh.

Danny McVeigh wasn’t half as cool as he made out he was.

R
iley played down the full details of his accident to Sylvie over dinner. He didn’t intimate to her how close he felt he had come to death, or how it had affected his attitude to life. He didn’t want to give her any clue that he had changed, or make her suspicious.

Instead, he listened avidly to her news from the movie she’d just finished, laughing at the scandal the papers would give their right arms to be party to. On set, everyone told Sylvie their secrets, and she kept every last one to herself. Telling Riley didn’t count. He was even more discreet than she was. In their world, you learned that spreading gossip only ever backfired in the end.

Sylvie had never had a big appetite. She toyed with her food, pronouncing it delicious, but she never ate a great deal, which was why she could still fit into the clothes she’d had when they first met. She did, however, have a sweet tooth, and saved any appetite she had for dessert.

The dessert arrived. A beautiful little box made of chocolate. On the top was piped Happy Birthday, with a garland of flowers that matched the marquetry in their cabin.

‘That’s so pretty,’ she said with a sigh. ‘It seems a shame to spoil it.’

‘You can’t keep it. It’ll only melt,’ said Riley. ‘Go on. See what’s inside. A wild cherry ice-cream, I think . . .’

She picked up her spoon and began to lever off the lid. Inside, instead of ice-cream, was a ring, nestling on a bed of white satin. She looked at it in bewilderment.

‘What?’ she said. ‘I don’t understand.’ She looked at Riley, puzzled. ‘You always give me a scarf for my birthday. Always . . .’

‘This year’s different, Sylvie.’ He still had the scarf, the one he had bought just before the accident. He would give it to her later. Riley was superstitious – he didn’t want to break the ritual. But he had a more important matter to attend to first. He leaned forward. ‘This is my way of saying . . . of asking . . . will you marry me?’

‘Oh Riley,’ she sighed, and his heart sank as he saw tears glistening in her eyes.

She was going to turn him down. He supposed he was prepared for it. It had been a gamble. She was a fairy, a firefly; like Tinker Bell – the sort of woman who didn’t want to be someone else’s, who didn’t want to be tied down. He braced himself for her rejection. It was going to break his heart. But he supposed he’d still have her in his life, even if he couldn’t make her his wife.

She put her hands on his. He didn’t really want to hear the words. He wished she would get it over with. She could keep the ring, regardless. He wasn’t going to humiliate himself by taking it back to the jeweller. He willed her to hurry up.

‘What took you so long?’ she asked finally.

He blinked. ‘What?’

‘I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that since the day we met.’

Riley tried to make sense of what she was saying. ‘What do you mean?’

She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Of course I’ll marry you, Riley. Come on.’ She held out her left hand. ‘You must do the job properly.’

Riley picked the ring out of the chocolate box and slid it onto her finger. It was a perfect fit. Around them, the passengers were smiling with delight. Someone began to clap, and soon the whole carriage was joining in.

Sylvie, a performer to the end, leapt up and paraded down the train, holding out her hand for all to see. As the women admired and cooed, the men nodded their congratulations, wryly accepting that the bar had been set for romantic gestures for the rest of their lives. Nothing else but diamond rings hidden in handmade chocolate boxes would do from now on.

And when she got back to her seat, she threw her arms around Riley and kissed him, to another round of applause.

‘This will be all over the papers tomorrow,’ he said, but he couldn’t stop smiling.

‘Good,’ said Sylvie. ‘I want the whole world to know. I love you, Riley. But you took your goddamn time.’

O
nce they returned to their cabin, Stephanie wasn’t sure how to talk to Simon about what had happened at dinner. It had disturbed her. She busied herself taking off her make-up and brushing her hair while she decided how to broach it.

Simon took off his jacket and hung it up, then came and stood behind her. He looked at her in the mirror. She stared back at him, not sure what to say.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said eventually. ‘This is a long way away from how I wanted this trip to be.’

She put down her brush. She had to say what she thought. Stephanie was never one to pretend.

‘I thought you were a bit hard on Jamie.’

He frowned.

‘Hard?’

‘Isn’t it every kid’s dream to be a rock star?’

‘
Kid’s
being the operative word.’

‘But this could be his big chance,’ Stephanie persisted. ‘Not everyone gets offered a tour, whatever you might say.’

Simon ran a hand over his head. He was obviously thinking carefully about what to say next.

‘Jamie is a very clever boy with a brilliant future ahead of him,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s much harder to be offered a place at Oxford than to get the chance to tag along with some second-rate band.’

Stephanie crossed her arms. ‘Maybe you’re projecting your own ambitions onto him?’

‘What?’

Stephanie wasn’t going to let herself be intimidated.

‘I think you’re being unfair. I think you’re being narrow-minded. The whole world could open up for him and you’re not giving him the chance to find out for himself.’

Simon looked up to heaven with a heavy sigh. He turned away from her. He walked over to the window and pulled up the blind, staring out into the black night. He looked angry.

‘It’s just another point of view, Simon.’ Stephanie kept her voice as even as she could, but she wasn’t going to head any further into this relationship thinking she couldn’t have an opinion. Even if they weren’t her children.

He didn’t answer. She could see his tension by the way his shoulders were hunched. Part of her wanted to massage the stress out of him, but the air between them needed to be cleared first.

‘I can’t believe she’s still doing this to me.’ Simon’s voice was tight. ‘Even though I’ve been officially divorced for two years and I’ve paid her off, she’s still controlling my life.’

‘What do you mean?’

Simon turned round. He looked tired.

‘I know it’s Tanya behind this. I guarantee it. It’s absolutely her style. Her way of making sure she spoils our trip.’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘
She’s
crazy.’ He came towards her. ‘This is how it works, Steph. Jamie will have run the whole thing past Tanya first. He’ll have asked her what she thinks I’d think of the deal. And she will have egged him on, given him all the ammunition to present me with a virtual fait accompli that I can’t argue with, including getting Keith involved. And she’ll have made sure Jamie dropped the bombshell at the worst possible moment. Right in the middle of our trip.
Wait till your dad’s on the train. Wait till he’s all relaxed and he’s had a few drinks. He won’t be able to say no
.’ His imitation sounded just like the voice Stephanie had heard on the phone. ‘Tanya plays these games all the time. She manipulates those kids and they have no idea. It was why our marriage ended. And she still can’t resist it. Honestly, I have been here before so many times.’

Stephanie frowned. ‘How could anyone behave like that? Why would they want to?’

Simon put his arms round her and pulled her to him. ‘Stephanie – that’s one of the reasons I love you. Because you don’t get it and you never will. Long may you stay like that.’

She looked up at him.

‘Am I being patronised?’

‘No. You’re being adored.’ He dropped a kiss on her shoulder. ‘Jamie knows I’m right. He’s just putting up a fight for the sake of it. Deep down, he wants me to put my foot down. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. This is our trip, remember?’

Stephanie opened her mouth, and shut it again. She wasn’t sure what to think. Now she saw it from Simon’s perspective, she could see he had a point. But then, she reminded herself, he was very persuasive. It was, after all, what he did for a living.

He was stroking her face, her hair. He was murmuring in her ear. ‘I love you. I want us to be as close to a family as we can be. And I really value your opinion. On everything. But I’m not going to let Tanya come between us. Or let her screw up Jamie’s future. You can see that, can’t you?’

Stephanie put her arms around his waist. He was so warm, so solid. She wasn’t going to pick up the baton from his ex-wife and make his life difficult. She wasn’t just rolling over, but sometimes, she knew, it was time for a tactical withdrawal.

‘She’s not going to come between us,’ she whispered. ‘Nothing’s going to come between us.’ She began to unbutton her black lace shirt-dress, gradually revealing her ivory skin. ‘Nothing.’

Next door, Jamie lay on his bunk. His head felt a bit swimmy from all the heavy red wine he’d drunk at dinner – he usually drank vodka shots or St Miguel. He twirled round on his iPod until he found the latest demo he and the band had recorded in the garage. It was good, he thought. In fact, better than good. They were definitely going to go places. He thought about the tour they’d been offered. Dad’s reaction had been about as predictable as it got, he thought. How had he ever imagined for a minute that he’d get his dad’s blessing?