Page 49 of The Christmas Express
It’s still there.
Inside his compartment, I take a seat on his bed, already folded out, setting the tinsel between us, along with a collection of hairclips, bobby pins and sticky tape.
Imagine if he just swept it all off onto the floor and kissed me and laid me down and we had a lovely Christmas Eve night that went into Christmas Day and merry Christmas to me.
I shake my head a fraction, barely noticeable. I don’t want that, anyway. I can’t just forget that we aren’t each other’s person any more.
Luke sits opposite me, one leg folded underneath him, the same as me, and picks up the strand of tinsel, playing with it between his fingers. My mouth is dry, and this guy I used to talk to for hours is like an outsider to me right now, and I can’t think of what to say, even as small talk. Then he speaks first, in that quiet voice that used to feel like it was just for me to hear.
‘This is a really weird Christmas.’
‘Weird because we’re on a train?’
‘Weird for so many reasons.’ He glances from his tinsel to me, but looks away again quickly.
‘Yeah,’ I agree, and it comes out like a sigh. In that word, I think my body and mind finally acknowledged this fact.
‘I’m . . .’ Luke starts to say something, but trails off.
I can’t take the silence, my breath is short and high in my throat, and I busy my hands snipping the tinsel into sections using nail scissors, and trying to thread some of it through the claws of a hair clip, just so I don’t get tempted to pick at the spot on my face. A nervous laugh escapes, and I have to fill the quiet with something. I don’t think I can handle the heavy conversation that maybe we need to have.
‘Where are you living these days?’ My voice comes out not so much light as high and a little shaky.
‘I’m still in London.’
My tinsel drops to the bed, and I look at him, my mouth hanging open. ‘You still live in London?’
‘Yep.’
Luke’s eyes are trained on his tinsel now, which he’s trimming slowly with the nail scissors, causing tiny bits of red confetti to pepper his bedsheet like shiny little blood spatter.
I stare at the top of his eyelashes, soft, dark, splayed out in a way I’ve always been envious of, to be honest. He still lives in London? A million thoughts are shimmering for my attention, and I want to ask him all the questions I have. Instead, what comes out is a statement. ‘I thought you moved away.’
He nods, without looking up. ‘I’m the other side of the city, but that’s as far as I went.’
A sadness, a longing for lost time to magically come back, seeps down me like thick tar. He’s always been in my city, he never left, but he never told me, and I never asked. He’s always been there, but lost in the crowd.
I swallow down the tar, and attempt my lightest voice. ‘Well, I guess in a city of nine million people, it’s easy to miss someone.’ I’ve missed you.
Now he puts down the tinsel and looks at me, properly, his head tilted to the side, and he scans my face, my lips, like he’s reminding himself, remembering. ‘Actually, I was just thinking the opposite. Despite all those people, I saw you once.’
His words hit like a boulder on the railway line. ‘What? Why didn’t you say hi?’
‘I lost all my words. And then you were gone.’
‘Where was this?’
‘A crossing on the Strand. It was autumn, and the ground had all these red leaves from some tree you were standing under, and you were looking down at them, waiting for the lights to change. It was sunny, and only a little cold, and it was that absolutely giant bright pink scarf of yours that first caught my eye. It was a couple of years ago.’
‘I still wear that scarf all the time,’ I croak out, adding precisely nothing to the conversation. He was right there, and I missed him. And it sounds like I was looking pretty cute that day, which isn’t important, but, you know, nice.
I long to be brave enough to have the talk, to ask him why, all those years ago, he chose to leave rather than fight for us, at the very least for our friendship. But if he asked me in return, would I have an answer?
Outside the train window, in the dark, the shapes of the mountains are beginning to rise from the flats of the Plains we’ve been trundling past for the last twenty-four hours. Barely visible against the night sky, if it wasn’t for the moon highlighting their white peaks.
‘Are you going to take a look around Jasper in the morning?’ Luke asks, forcing the conversation to more neutral ground. Probably a good thing. I don’t want to mess this up before the snowflakes have even had a chance to settle again.
I push a smile back across my lips. ‘Absolutely, are you?’
