‘No.’ He hugged me tighter. ‘You’re not dreaming. Or if you are, I am too.’
Beyond his shoulder, across the lake, the iron monsters cast their eyes on me, seemingly unmoved by the romantic scene before them.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Now.
A THIN STRIP of cold, silvery light carved its way through a gap in the blackout curtains. Alice’s eyelids fluttered, and the conversation from the night before came back to her in snatches as she swam up through the layers of consciousness. She rolled over to look at the sofa bed. There was a lump under the white duvet, a dark head on the pillow.
Had that really all happened? It hardly felt real.
Her fingers instinctively sought the bee pendant around her neck. If they’d only met for a short time, why had he bought it for her? And why was she still wearing it five years later? She believed his reasons for not telling her what he knew sooner, but she still had a niggling feeling that something wasn’t adding up, that there was more to the story.
The sleeping lump began to stir. Her stomach quivered. ‘Morning,’ she said softly enough not to startle him awake.
‘Morning,’ he replied, his voice rough with sleep, then he frowned and looked at the window.
Alice followed his gaze. It was almost seven, but it seemed awfully bright outside for February. Was the digital clock on the bedside wrong? Had they overslept?
Ben suddenly swore, then jumped up to kneel on his sofa bed and looked out of the window. He pulled the curtain back, then shuffled out of the way. Her eyes widened when she saw what was waiting outside.
Snow. And lots of it.
She turned and looked at Ben. ‘I thought you said it wasn’t going to settle.’
‘I did,’ he said grumpily, picking up his phone, as if checking the forecast again might change what was outside the window. ‘But when these apps get it wrong, they really get it wrong.’
‘Do you think it’s going to affect the journey?’
He sat back down on the bed, exposing quite a lot of his long, rather nicely toned thighs. ‘If we were in Alaska or Calgary, I’d say not, but we’re in England.’
Even though she’d lost all knowledge about her life up until that point, she still remembered that three flakes of snow were enough to bring the entire British rail network to a halt. ‘Crap,’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ he replied. ‘We’d better get going, see if the train company has anything to say about it.’ He began to rummage for his jeans, but then he paused. ‘But before we go any further, I just want to apologise.’
‘What for?’
‘For last night. I thought I was doing the right thing telling you what I knew, but … now I’m not so sure. It didn’t seem to help much in the “not upsetting” you stakes. I should have listened to Dr Manzar.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said, realising she wasn’t just smoothing his ruffled feathers. She really meant it. ‘It was just a shock.I’m starting to get my head around it now. And I suppose what you told me does help … If I come from the London area, then it would make sense I might know people having a wedding just outside it.’
‘I suppose so.’ He pulled his jeans on, and she eased herself off the sofa bed and headed for the chair where she’d left her daypack.
‘There’s another thing …’ he added.
‘Yes?’ She pulled some fresh clothes from the bag and headed for the bathroom.
‘I don’t know what to call you any more. Do you want me to use Lili? Or should I still call you Alice?’
She stopped, jeans and chunky-knit jumper clutched to her chest. She definitely was Lili, wasn’t she? Unless there was another woman who looked just like her and who also owned an identical bee necklace, which seemed too much of a coincidence. It would make sense to use her proper name.
But when she opened her mouth to tell Ben that, she found herself saying, ‘Let’s stick with Alice.’ At least she wasbeginningto know who that person was. Lili still felt like a stranger.
The uniformed man standing by the ticket office cleared his throat. ‘I’m afraid the first few trains this morning have been cancelled, and those running later will be subject to delays.’ A collective groan rippled through the crowd of stranded passengers. ‘However, we will endeavour to get all of you to your destinations later today, but please bear in mind that the first trains that run this morning may be quite crowded.’
Ben closed his eyes and gave himself a mental slap. They should have asked to stay overnight in Carlisle, after all. Any trains travelling from Glasgow to London would stop there first, meaning there’d be a lot fewer seats by the time they got to Penrith.
‘We’ll have another update for you in about an hour,’ the railway company employee said, then scurried away behind a door marked ‘Staff Only’ before anyone could moan at him further.
