Love Falls Read Free Page B

They smiled at each other, relieved, and Lara opened up the Perrier and took a swig. She leant across to offer it to him.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said, as if it were champagne, and he held it as he had done before by its neck.
    They nodded to each other, consolidating their ritual, and it pleased Lara just as much as if they had clinked glasses and said cheers.
    Whistles blew and doors, heavy as walls, slammed shut. They were moving slipping out of the station, into France, away from the sea, towards Switzerland, the Alps, towards Italy, and Pisa.
    ‘Do you know any Italian?’ Lambert asked later, when half the people in their carriage were asleep.
    ‘No.’ Lara thought for a moment, and then with some alarm. ‘Will that matter?’
    Lambert leant towards her. ‘The rudest thing you can say to an Italian, worse than’ – he flailed around – ‘your mother is the mistress of a two-headed chimpanzee . . . ’ He lowered his voice to a whisper and Lara looked round to check they were not about to be overheard. ‘Is Porca Madonna .’
    ‘ Porca Madonna ,’ she whispered back, and the lady with the luggage snapped open her eyes.
     
     
    It was three o’clock when they boarded the train and by seven they were starting to feel hungry.
    ‘Shall we find the restaurant car?’ Lambert suggested.
    Lara imagined the evening spent sipping wine, eating delicate courses, broken up maybe by a sorbet or a bowl of soup. They would sit at a narrow table, set for two, with a ruched curtain and a lamp, the tassels hanging down in a fringe of burgundy while a waiter hovered over them in white gloves. It was a scene from a film, she knew this, or from a novel she’d once read, but she still looked forward to entering into it for a night.
    Before leaving their carriage they stowed their bags carefully, nodding to the woman who had just eaten the entire contents of one basket, hoping she understood this meant she was to guard their seats with her life.
    Out in the corridor, all along the train, there were people standing, leaning up against the windows, smoking, eating, talking, stretching their legs. ‘Excuse me, excusez-moi .’ They sidled past, enjoying this journey, the warmth of the evening light slanting in, the shudder of the wheels below. There was something strangely pleasant about the way the train threw you from wall to wall, gently enough to rattle you, but not enough to hurt. But after four or five carriages it occurred to Lara there was no smell of food.
    ‘Excuse me,’ Lambert asked a man coming the other way. ‘ Il y a un restaurant ?’
    The man put his head to one side and paused to think. ‘ Non ,’ he said, making the word hop, ‘ non ,’ and smiling he went on his way.
    At first it seemed easier to disbelieve him, so they pushed on, the thud of the rails less pleasant now, jolting up through their feet, throwing them off balance, until it became clear the man was right. There was no restaurant car. No buffet. Not even a trolley serving tea. They turned around and wove their way back towards their carriage, learning to leap when the train swerved and to use their fingers to press themselves out from the windows and the walls.
    Eventually they reached their carriage and, relieved to see their seats, already as familiar as home, they sank down. Lara picked up the Perrier and took a swig. It was warm and flat. She held it out to Lambert. ‘No thanks.’ He shook his head. She peered into her bag. There was one apple left. She took it out and offered it. But again he shook his head. Preserving rations! she thought. Lambert had taken up his newspaper and folding it over so that she was faced by a full-page photograph of Lady Diana Spencer, with only one week left before she became wife to Prince Charles, he began to read.
    Lara drew her legs up and examined the photo. It was Diana’s hair, she decided, that made it so difficult to like her. Her hair, all feathery and hanging down over one eye. She was twenty.