‘Great,’ Alice muttered. She waved her phone listlessly at him. ‘I suppose I’d better update my travel journal – although it’s turning more into an epic saga. Do you think there’ll be dragons or a giant squid later on? Because I feel it’s becoming that kind of trip.’
Ben hid a smile. Despite the difficult conversation they’d had last night, it seemed as if things were edging back towards normal between them, although, whether that was ‘normal for him and Lili’ or ‘normal for him and Alice’, he wasn’t sure.
They eased their way through the collected bodies and out of the ticket office. ‘Video, I think,’ Alice said. ‘This one’s a bit too complicated for a string of pictures.’ She was about to hand her phone over to him but then glanced at the huddles of muttering people near the station entrance. ‘Do you think we could go somewhere a little more private?’
‘Sure. What about over there?’
Alice turned and looked to where he was pointing. Beyond the small car park, partly obscured by trees, a ruined building sat in what would have been a spacious lawn if it hadn’t been covered in ten centimetres of snow.
They trudged their way across the forecourt, onto the newly gritted road,then walked a short distance into the parkland. Once they were far enough away from nosey onlookers but close enough to keep the station building in shot, Alice blew out a breath and handed her phone to Ben. He framed the shot, then gave her a nod.
‘I’m … um … here in Penrith,’ Alice began, doing anything but making eye contact with the lens. ‘It started to snow and— Oh, maybe I ought to mention …’ She turned away from the camera, screwed her face up, then tried again. ‘Well, before the snow, there was the train and the …’ She mimed ‘cut it’ by pulling a finger across her throat, and then her shoulders sagged. ‘Clearly, my career isnotin television. Okay … give me a moment while I get it straight in my head.’
The second attempt wasn’t much better than the first. She got the events in the right order, but it was all a bit jumbled.
‘Just be yourself,’ Ben said.
‘Easy for you to say. I have no idea who that person is.’
‘You do,’ he replied softly. ‘Deep down inside.’
She sighed and reached to take the phone from him. ‘We haven’t got time for that amount of soul searching – even if I did think it was possible.’
He batted her hand away. ‘Don’t think about talking to a lens or a camera, some faceless person who might see this video one day. Talk tome. That should be easy enough – you and I have discussed nothing else all morning.’
‘All right then … Just hold the phone down a little bit so I can see your face. That’ll help if I’m supposed to be talking to you.’
Attempt number three still wasn’t professional broadcaste quality,but Alice got through it. ‘Right,’ she said when she finished, turning in the direction of the park exit.
Ben glanced around at the remains of walls and tall chimneys poking up from the crumbling brickwork, all capped with a thick layer of fresh snow. ‘Don’t you want to take a moment to look around?’
‘What about the update from the train company?’
‘We’ve still got another fifty minutes before we learn anything new.’
She took a moment to look around. ‘Itisreally pretty here …’
Ben handed her phone back to her and set an alarm for nine fifty-five on his own. They walked closer to the ruined building and found a sign that informed them this was what was left of Penrith Castle.
‘Don’t put it away just yet,’ he said as she went to tuck her phone back into her jeans pocket.
‘Why not?’
‘A journey is more than merely getting from A to B. It’s more than trains and buses, boats, and aeroplanes. Each journey, even on the same route but on a different day or in a different season, has its own unique flavour. You’ll never have a moment exactly like this again. Why not capture some of this for your travel journal too?’
She blinked. ‘You’re right. I suppose I’ve just been focusing so hard on the mechanics of the journey that I didn’t even think about that. And the castle does look stupendous in the snow.’
She was right about that. The sky was a clear, shocking blue against the icy whiteness, setting off the warm tones of the bricks and fallen stones.Alice walked a short distance away, held her phone up, and pressed the screen to take a photo.
As Ben watched her, he realised she was instinctively finding the right direction for the light, using things like drooping tree branches to frame her subject, getting down low or climbing up on something to give her a different perspective. All things he’d shown her the first day they’d met. Could it be that there was some small part of her that rememberedsomethingfrom their time together? The idea settled like a bright glowing seed inside him.
Ten minutes later, they compared their results. ‘Not bad,’ he said, swiping through her phone. ‘I’d better watch out.’
She gave him a cheeky look, took the phone from his hands, backed away and held it up in his direction. ‘Say cheese!’
‘Really?’ he said, realising even though it was her, he still didn’t like being this side of the lens. The camera saw everything, and he preferred to be tucked away out its eye-line if possible.
‘Really. Someone once told me that a journey is more than just getting from A to B.’ She glanced up, her expression playful.
