Free Learning to Dance Again by Frankie Valente Page B

station.
    The marble hall of the station was refreshingly cool and there was a train sitting expectantly on the platform. Julia hurried towards the ticket office, mentally rehearsing how she would ask for a ticket to Cefalu in Italian. The word for ticket seemed straightforward enough, if she remembered not to pronounce the g – un biglietto per Cefalu, per favore.
    The young man behind the counter frowned at her as she stood, plucking up the courage to speak.
    ‘Prego, ’ he snapped.
    ‘Um, sorry? Oh I mean, un biglietto per Cefalu, si’vous plait, I mean, per favore.’
    ‘Cefalu?’
    ‘Si?’
    He printed the ticke t and tapped on the till so she could see the price. She handed over a fifty euro note and the man muttered under his breath in response, she could only guess it was because he was running out of change.
    J ulia took the ticket and turned towards the platform. The departures board indicated the train would leave in five minutes. Julia dragged her suitcase along the platform and got onto the train and sat down gratefully.
    She sigh ed with relief at having successfully negotiated her first Italian transaction. She put the ticket in her handbag and sat with her hands protectively over it, and looked around at the other passengers, listening to the sound of their voices; snippets of Italian gossip she had no hope of understanding, but it sounded so exciting.
    The t rain doors slammed shut after a garbled announcement of the destinations.  Julia realised she had not pronounced the name Cefalu properly when she had bought the ticket; it was Chefaloo, not Kefaloo. No wonder the poor man in the ticket office had been so impatient with her.
    The train pulled out of the dark station and back into the bright sunshine that blinded Julia to the view. Her sunglasses were packed inside her suitcase, and she didn’t want to open it up on the train. She picked up her suitcase and shuffled across the aisle to the seats on the other side.
    Julia took out her guide book to Sicily and opened up the well-thumbed pag e containing the map. The train-line hugged the North coast and would cut through Palermo and other seaside towns until it reached Cefalu and would then continue on to Messina, where it was possible to cross the narrow stretch of sea to the Italian mainland. She looked up from the book and concentrated on the view. The landscape was browner than she had imagined it would be. For some reason she had envisaged green fields, full of lush lemon trees and olive plantations. There were a few trees dotted about in the gardens of the apartments and villas she passed, but there were vast patches of bare terracotta soil, bleached by the sun; rocky and barren in places. It was still exotically attractive, particularly with the deep blue sea in the background.
    Despite the fact Julia had a sea vie w all year round from her house her attention was still drawn to the water. This was the kind of blue only available to Shetlanders on special days, when the skies were clear of clouds. Those were the days she loved best of all, and she smiled when she realised this would be her view of the sea for whole of October; or at least she hoped it would.
    Julia turned her gaze to the young woman opposite her. She wore a cream linen skirt suit, with short sleeves that exposed lean bronzed arms and a jangle of bracelets on each wrist. She had a corporate looking briefcase beside her, which looked incongruous with her vertiginous strappy sandals, coiffed hair and oversized sunglasses. She flicked through her Italian Vogue magazine impatiently, and then flung it on the seat beside her and reached into her pocket for her phone. She appeared equally annoyed with the phone and after tapping at it with her perfectly manicured fingers, she set it down on top of her magazine, but did not let go of it. She looked up and met Julia’s eyes and turned away to look out of the window, clearly disgruntled with something.
    Julia wondered what it was like