I stare up at the departure board in disbelief. Up until twenty minutes ago my train had been listed as ON TIME and I’d allowed myself a glass of champagne at St Pancras’ Eurostar bar, a little treat to steady my nerves before the biggest adventure of my life begins.

‘Looks like we aren’t going anywhere soon,’ the woman next to me says, gold chains tinkling on her wrist as she raises her hand for another glass. She doesn’t look in a hurry to go anywhere.

But I am.

I arrived at St Pancras two hours early this morning. The guys driving the cleaning trucks were pretty much the only people here when I walked in. They performed a slow, elegant dance around me as I dragged my heavy bag across the shiny station floor. I probably should have had a last lie-in, but my stomach has been a knot of nerves since last night, robbing me of sleep.

I’m not always early, but I was determined to be today to make sure I actually get on the train. I want this adventure more than anything else in my life, but doubts have crept in over the last two weeks, ever since all the tickets were booked and my credit card had taken the strain. Even last night – frustratingly wide awake and watching a film I didn’t really care about, after the farewell drinks in our favourite pub in Notting Hill when I was so certain I was doing the right thing – I found myself considering shelving the trip. Who jacks in everything and takes off for a year, anyway? Certainly not me: Phoebe Jones, 32 years old and most definitely not gap-year material.

It wasn’t just that thing Gabe said, either. Although it threw me when it happened. After all his bravado inside the pub – the You won’t go through with it, Phoebs, I know you speech that in his actor’s voice rose above the noise and look-at-me-I’m-so-important laughter from the tables around us – the change in him when he found me on the street outside was a shock.

‘I’ll miss you.’

‘You won’t, but thanks.’

And then that look – the one that got us into trouble once before, the one that has kept me wondering if it might again. ‘Then you don’t know me, Phoebs. London won’t be the same without you.’

Why did he have to launch that at me, the night before I leave for a whole year?

But the money is spent. The tickets are in my wallet. My bag is packed. And Gabe is wrong if he thinks I won’t go through with it. I know my friends privately think I’ll cave in and come home early. So I got up hours before I needed to this morning, took my bag, closed the door on my old life and posted my keys through the letterbox for my friends and former flatmates to find. And I’m here, where Gabe was so certain I wouldn’t be.

But now there’s a delay and that’s dangerous for me. Too much time to think better of my plan. Why is the universe conspiring against me today?

‘Having another?’ the woman next to me asks. Her new glass of champagne is already half empty. Perhaps she has the right idea. Maybe drinking your way through a delay is the best option.

‘I don’t think so, thanks,’ I reply. I can’t stay here, not until I know exactly what kind of delay I’m facing. ‘I’m going to find out what’s happening.’

The woman shrugs as I leave.

The whole of St Pancras station seems to have darkened, as though a storm cloud has blown in from the entrance and settled in the arcing blue-girdered roof. Beyond the glass the sun shines as brightly as before, the sky a brave blue. But I feel the crackle of tension like approaching thunder.

At the end of the upper concourse near the huge statue of a man and woman embracing, a crowd has gathered. Somewhere in the middle, a harassed station employee in an orange hi-vis gilet is doing his best to fend off the angry mob’s questions. And then, without warning, the crowd begins to move. I’m almost knocked over and stagger back to stop myself falling. Being trampled to death is definitely not in the plan today.

The mob swarms around the station employee as he makes for the stairs to the lower concourse. The forward motion of their bodies pushes me backwards until my spine meets something immovable. I gasp. Around me the angry commuters part, a splitting tide of bodies flooding either side of me, their feet stomping inches from mine. Once they pass me they continue their pursuit of their prey as the poor station official flees down the stairs.

I’m shaken, but then I remember: I hit something. Someone.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I rush, turning СКАЧАТЬ

The Day We Meet Again. Miranda Dickinson Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу The Day We Meet Again - Miranda Dickinson страница 3

The Day We Met

Chapter One, Phoebe

The Day We Meet Again. Miranda Dickinson
Чтение книги онлайн.