Free The Happiness Show by Catherine Deveny

travel Scrabble?’
    There were eight cabins in the carriage and four narrow bunks in each. After Will left, Tom and Lizzie found themselves sharing with a smelly Dutch guy and an American frat boy who spent the whole trip telling mind-numbingly boring drug stories. ‘And like it was, like, so, like, amazing, and we were all like totally ripped. It was awesome, dude.’
    But the lack of privacy just exacerbated the frisson between Tom and Lizzie. Everything was more exciting. He remembered running up and down the train one night with her, playing chasey, and ending up in an upstairs compartment full of bench seats and entire Russian families surrounded by large blue, white and red storage bags. It hadn’t dawned on Lizzie that there was any class other than the one they were in. Of course, Tom assumed there were classes. He was English.
    There was a man sitting in one corner with a salami and a bottle of vodka. He cut them both a piece of sausage and Lizzie ran back to the cabin for her can of Kraft cheese, determined to give him something in return.
    Tom thought Lizzie had the sexiest voice he’d ever heard. He’d never given the Australian accent much thought before, but her laconic lilt with its drawn-out vowels really did it for him. ‘So, whaddya reckon, mate? Is it vodka o’clock or what?’ Sometimes she’d take the piss out of herself and pretend she was Kylie Minogue’s character from Neighbours . ‘Rack off, Shane, you’ve pranged me car, chucked a spaz and I’ve had a gutful. Why don’t you bugger off an’ try an’ crack on to Cheryl?’ When Tom attempted an Australian accent, Lizzie would laugh hysterically and tell him he sounded like a New Zealander. Or, if it was really bad, a South African.
    One day the train went through five different time zones. It felt as if they were in a dream. They would stop at a station for fifteen minutes and the locals would bring out fresh food for them to buy. Everyone in the carriage would buy as much as possible: cheese pirozhki, warm potato salad with gherkins and sour cream, freshly baked bread and late-season Roma tomatoes just picked. That night they enjoyed a communal feast.
    It was unseasonably warm for autumn and Lizzie and Tom stood in the open doorway, somewhere between Jining and Ulaanbaatar. They passed the vodka bottle back and forth between them as they stared out into the inky darkness. Every now and then they would pass a little house and through a window they would see a kitchen lit up and someone inside: a man in a singlet reading the paper, a woman doing the ironing, a mother holding a baby up to the window to see the train. They didn’t know what time it was or where they were. And they couldn’t care less.
    They had invented a drinking game when they discovered that they were both massive fans of Billy Bragg. One would start a song and they would take it in turns to sing the next lyric. If you choked, you had to skol.
    â€˜ My friend said she could see no way ahead— ’
    â€˜ And I was probably better off without you.’
    â€˜ She said to face up to the fact— ’
    â€˜ That you weren’t coming back— ’
    â€˜ And she could make me happy like you used to. ’
    â€˜ But I’m sorry to say … Ahhhh, fuck it.’
    Lizzie handed him the bottle and Tom drank.
    â€˜Okay . It’s bad timing and me— ’
    â€˜ We find a lot of things out this way. ’
    â€˜ And there’s you. A little black cloud in a dress.’
    â€˜ The temptation to take the precious things we have apart— ’
    â€˜ To see how they work—’
    â€˜ Must be resisted for they never fit together again. ’
    â€˜Ah, oh, hang on. I’ve got it, something about virtue never tested is no virtue at all ?’
    â€˜Nup. If this is rain, let it fall on me and drown me .’
    â€˜That’s right … If these are tears,