Free Orkney Twilight by Clare Carson

weight.
    ‘Okay?’ he said. He sidestepped up to her uncertainly, towering over her.
    She shuffled back, feeling small. ‘Fine. You?’
    ‘I’ve lost some weight.’
    ‘I didn’t notice.’
    ‘No chocolate or sweets during the week and no biscuits on long journeys.’
    ‘What’s that then?’ She pointed to the packet of Hobnobs sticking out of his duffle bag.
    ‘Emergency rations.’
    She nodded. ‘Always good to be prepared. Especially if you’re going somewhere with Jim.’
    ‘Where is your dad anyway?’ he asked. Nervously perhaps.
    ‘Behind you,’ said Jim. Tom turned. Startled. Caught unawares by Jim’s sudden appearance from nowhere. He was standing there looking pleased with himself. Victorious. Oh God, he was at it already. Establishing the pecking order. They shook hands, exchanged pleasantries while Jim gave Tom the gimlet eye.
    ‘Shouldn’t we be getting on the train?’ she asked with pointed exasperation.
    Jim shoved a couple of tickets in her hand. ‘You’re in there. The caboose.’ He performed his usual dismissive wave in the direction of the furthest carriage.
    ‘Where are you sleeping?’ she asked.
    He nodded vaguely at the front of the train. ‘I blagged one of the compartments with seats.’
    He set off up the platform at a pace with his haversack on his back. She squinted at the flat front pocket as he walked away, wondering what he had done with the pistol.
    ‘See you in Inverness tomorrow morning,’ he said over his shoulder before he vanished in the crowd.
    ‘We haven’t even left London and he’s given us the slip,’ said Tom.
    Sam’s stomach twinged; he was obviously taking the surveillance of Jim seriously then. That really wasn’t going to help.
    They struggled to negotiate the narrow door into the tiny cabin with its neatly made-up bunks. She felt a sudden flush of awkwardness: too close for comfort. Tom seemed unperturbed by their forced physical intimacy. He dumped his bag carelessly on the bottom bunk. She grappled with the truculent ladder, heaved and pushed herself inelegantly on to the top bunk, tried to sit up, banged her head on the ceiling. Ten minutes ago she had felt too small and now she was too large. She propped herself awkwardly on one elbow and interrogated the reflection of Tom in the mirror as he shuffled around in the cramped space.
    The train shuddered to life, jolted, lurched out of the cover of the station into the nicotine-stained evening haze.
    ‘We’re off,’ said Tom. ‘On our journey into the unknown.’
    ‘Your starter for ten,’ she said. ‘Name the song that begins with a summertime train journey into the unknown and ends with a death.’
    He rubbed his chin stubble with a grubby finger, ‘Oh, that sounds familiar. Let me think.’
    ‘I can give you a clue.’
    ‘No, no. I’ve got it. Kenny Rogers. “The Gambler”,’ he shouted. He started singing the first verse. She joined in the refrain. Loudly. Wildly out of tune. Laughing. There was a thump on the compartment wall.
    ‘The walls must be a bit thin,’ said Tom.
    ‘That’s us,’ she said, still snorting. ‘On a train journey to nowhere. Well, not exactly nowhere. Although it is a long way north. Fifty-nine degrees, to be precise.’
    ‘Is it really fifty-nine degrees? That’s almost as far north as Leningrad.’
    ‘Yes, and it’s too late to turn back now. We’re on the run to Orkney.’
    Her own words sobered her. She crawled down to the bottom of her bunk, lay on her stomach and peered out of the window, calculating their coordinates. The train was passing Camden. It had swung round from the west and joined the mainline north. She pinpointed Helen’s bedsit in relation to the tracks, imagined her sister getting ready for a night out at the Camden Palace. A jagged blue flash illuminated the skinny backsides of the grey terraces. The first fat drops of summer rain blitzed the window, hitting her with an inexplicable anxiety, a need to be with her