11

Le Gare du Nord

09.30 Eurostar Departure, Paris to London

Nina boarded the train, checked how long until it would leave and bolted to the toilet. There was more blood on the sanitary towel. Some brown and some bright red. Alone in the cubicle, her feelings engulfed her. No, no, no, she kept thinking. This is so unfair. She hadn’t known she had decided until that morning. Until it was too late.

She cried until she couldn’t breathe, her head in her hands.

‘Excusez-moi, avez-vous besoin d’aide?’ came a voice, and a gentle knock on the door.

‘Non merci,’ she replied through sobs.

The knocking continued. Eventually, Nina wiped again, pulled up her knickers and jeans, blew her nose and washed her hands. In the small square mirror, she looked pale and drawn. No wonder, she thought. Something is dying inside you. She closed her eyes, prolonging the moment until she had to leave the toilet. Even though it was impossible, she yearned for Jules and Alice to be waiting on the other side of the door, as they were at le Bal. Instead, there was a young woman with long red braids in yellow corduroy dungarees, asking if she was okay?

Nina nodded, her shoulders curving in on herself, her head tilted down.

‘J’étais enceinte…’ she said, her voice quivering. I was pregnant… She wanted the train to start moving and this journey to be over.

The woman returned with her to her seat, asking if there was anyone she could call. Nina shook her head. She couldn’t tell Jules and Alice what was happening; she was grateful for the radio silence in their WhatsApp group. They should both be waking up now, getting ready for brunch. She wondered idly what they’d make of her note. She had left a note, hadn’t she? Scribbled on the back of that receipt, but where had she left it? She couldn’t remember.

Finally, the train began to move, and she felt as though she was having an out-of-body experience, soaring above like a bird, watching herself, not only then, sitting with the woman in yellow, shaking her head at her various offers of help – tea? Something sweet to eat? Non, non merci. – but also herself fourteen years ago, leaving Paris alone to have an abortion in London.

She had spent the intervening years working on herself – countless therapy sessions, the patisserie and business courses, running and spinning and stretching herself into the woman she was now. A woman she was proud to be. And yet here she was again, alone.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, she reassured herself, but it didn’t help.

As if to prove it, she picked up her phone and replied to Flynn: ‘Something happened to the baby.’

*

14.00 Eurostar Departure, Paris to London

Alice fought to control her tears. She’d been feeling insecure all weekend, and she was right to be: her friends weren’t interested in her. Just like Ted. Just like the Mantels. She was easily forgotten, dismissed. Not worthy of being loved, or paid, or told she was being stood up. She had stayed at the apartment long enough to charge up her phone to one bar: she had hoped for a flurry of messages and calls: from her friends, from Mr Hough. One message came through, enough to know it wasn’t a problem with signal or her phone: a stilted update from Ted, saying everything was fine but asking for the party details, which she’d sent him last week.