Cosima studied the map she’d brought up on her phone. “Rouen is a ninety-minute train from Paris. It might be better to rent a car in case we need to travel around.”
“What do we do first? Get to London, I guess. Do we buy Eurostar tickets there? How does it work? I probably shouldn’t assume you know, but I assume you know.”
“We’re going to have to go back to Gregory Place to pack a bag, minimally. We should eat. If we sit down to eat first, we can plan,thengo to Gregory Place. At that point we’ll probably want to wait until morning to start out.”
Cosima sounded like a schoolteacher. It felt a little unreal to be talking about going to a medieval French city with no advance planning. All the travel Cosima had done in the past had been arranged down to the type of pastry that appeared on her breakfast tray.
“Boo.” Edie tipped her head at Cosima. “We have our passports. Morag suggested it, just in case.”
Cosima had wondered, at the time, what “just in case” was supposed to mean. Just in case they were abducted? Suddenly deported? “I do have my passport, but I never thought we’d go to France with only the clothes on our backs.”
“They have underwear in France, famously good underwear, and toothpaste, probably in flavors I’ve never tried. We’re not going for so long that we couldn’t justgo, right? I took a year of Spanish—actually, maybe it was a semester—and I got a C, not the point, but do you happen to speak French?”
“Bien sûr que je parle français.” Cosima made her accent very extra.
“Then let’sgo, princess.” Edie grabbed her hand, and Cosima reminded her lungs to breathe. The nickname had officially gone from annoying to goose bump–inducing.
Though, had it ever beenentirelyannoying?
They went. An old-fashioned cab returned them to the station in Ruskington, and from there the journey went by in a rush of Edie talking, gesturing, and asking questions as she handed Cosima snacks. Changing trains at Sleaford, they had prawn crisps for Cosima and ready salted crisps for Edie. When they changed again in Peterborough, Edie found a vending machine and secured them boiling-hot paper cups of weak tea.
At a newsstand at King’s Cross, there were vegan Cadbury bars, and Edie gazed up at the vaulted, latticed ceiling of the famous depot. Cosima waited while Edie traded a handful of hoarded pound coins for a magnet in the shape of a red double-decker tourist bus to give her mother, as well as a copy of theLondon A to Zwith maps she wanted to “practice reading” for another visit to London someday.
It was difficult for Cosima not to thinknext time, next time, as they rushed through all of these ordinary travelers’ milestones. Next time she and Edie were in London, they’d take one of the red double-decker tourist buses. Next time, they’d stay in a boutique hotel in Grosvenor Square that Edie would love.
She firmed her jaw againstnever again.
They had walked forever, winding around people, queues,strollers, shop stands, and signs, finally arriving at the Eurostar ticket office at St. Pancras International, when they ran into their first problem.
“We have a rule,” Edie insisted. “And I would never pay for a first-class ticket. There’s a dining car. We don’t need to have dinner delivered to our seats like we’re the Princess of Wales.”
Cosima pulled Edie by the elbow to the back of the ticketing queue,again, so they could continue their argument. “We haven’t stopped all day. We’re exhausted. Premier tickets will give us more space to stretch out and more comfortable seats. We could sleep. We’re going to need it. As it is, I think we’ll have to spend the night in Paris.”
Edie looked at the ceiling of the station in frustration. “It won’t be so late that we have to stay in Paris. There’s a hostel in Rouen.”
“I will not stay in a hostel.”
“That’s a shame, princess, because I’ve already made a reservation.”
“A reservation for the hostel that only has six bedrooms, and padlocks for the lockers are extra.” Cosima tried to block out the overwhelming noise of the station, the smell of ozone and urine and frying food. Her silk blouse, which she would never have traveled in given the option, felt damp under her arms and at the small of her back. “I cannot do that.”
“You can’t exist under the roof of a hostel?” Edie somehow looked entirely fresh, her navy and red mice shirt impossibly adorable, her tight jeans unmarred, her hair still shiny and long and so attention-getting that Cosima had begun glaring at people who gave her appreciative double takes.
“I cannot. I will absolutely dissolve into the ether. And, what’s more, we agreed that we would travel equitably, not thatwe would travel like nineteen-year-old boys who hook water bottles onto their backpacks.”
They both glanced over at one such boy standing in the queue beside theirs, who chose that moment to graphically adjust his crotch.
Edie wrinkled her nose. “I will agree to Standard Premier, which has bigger seats and dinner. I think we canbothcontinue to draw breath without access to champagne and a chef-designed meal.”
“Thank you.”
“And I’d like to assess how we’re feeling once we arrive in Paris before we stay the night.”
“Only if you cancel the hostel in Rouen.”
“I made the reservation on your phone, so you can do it yourself.”
Their argument ended in sync with their arrival at the head of the queue, and then, following a long series of walking, passing through gates, waiting, scanning various codes, and dodging people, they were finally collapsed side by side in their leather seats, where Cosima planned to sleep for a thousand years.
