Page 34 of The Christmas Express

Cali

All of us are energised, I can feel it as we re-board the train. We have pink cheeks, snowflakes in our hair, runny noses, cold toes and smiles on our faces. I don’t want to ruin the mood by pointing this out, but, uh-oh, it’s coming out anyway.

‘Look at us all getting along so well!’ I cry out, giddy and high from the sensation of getting back everything I’d lost, even if only for a morning, and flicking my long frost-damp curls into Luke’s face as I spin around in the small space of the carriage.

‘It’s like that Christmas at Bryn’s again, isn’t it?

The one you mentioned, when she hired the snow machine? ’

Flickers of remembrance pass their faces, and I can’t help but sneak a look back at Luke, who meets my eye, and I think we might be both thinking about the same thing.

Bryn had had a huge, plush bunch of mistletoe hanging over the door of her parents’ country home, and the excitement took over me when we first arrived – I’m not sure if it was the Hollywood-movie level of White Christmas , or the mulled wine we’d shared from a flask on the way there – but I’d slung my arms around Luke’s neck and planted a big, albeit quick, kiss on his lips.

He’d reciprocated, we both laughed, then I’d got self-conscious and ended up kissing all of them on the lips, but I’d played that one with him over in my mind for the rest of the holidays.

‘That was a fun time,’ Ember agrees, and I notice Alex looking a touch uncomfortable beside her.

Like dandelion prongs we all start to drift our separate ways, heading towards our own seats, our own compartments. ‘Wait, let’s... let’s do something this afternoon.’

‘What like?’ asks Joe.

‘Um...’ I glance around, unsure what to suggest. But this is our last day on the train, tomorrow morning we arrive in Vancouver at dawn.

At the start of this journey, four days seemed like a long time, now it doesn’t feel enough.

There’s too much that hasn’t been said, and I want Bryn’s plan to work, for the sake of all of us.

I just want my friends back. ‘I don’t know, but, it’s Christmas, and we’re together, so we should.

..’ make the most of it . I know it might not happen again.

‘There’s a wine tasting in the celestial carriage in a little while?’ Alex suggests, and it’s as if she’s cracked the ice.

Nothing like a bit of alcohol to loosen the ol’ tongue.

The whole gang is in agreement, especially Ember who looks glowing at the thought, and soon enough I’m showered and warmed and climbing the stairs to the celestial carriage, bedecked in my Christmas jumper and Christmas earrings and I’m ten minutes early but that’s okay because it’s warm and cosy up there and so am I.

I think I have hope, for the first time.

Hope that maybe we can all come back together, beyond this trip.

‘Hi.’ Ember waves from one of the seats.

‘Hey!’ My voice is still laced with excitement. ‘Is Alex coming?’

‘Yeah, definitely.’

‘That’s amazing, she seems really lovely.’

Ember laughs and tilts her head to the side in agreement. ‘She is lovely.’

‘Are you two... ?’

‘Are you asking if I’ve given up on the idea of going to see Bryn?’

‘Bryn? No, I hadn’t even thought of her...’

She sighs and gazes back out of the window, where we’re passing a lake of ice-blue water, surrounded by mountains blanketed in snow-topped pine trees. We only just stepped back in from that winter wonderland out there but I still can’t stop staring out at it. I’m so toasty warm right now.

‘I don’t know,’ Ember says. ‘I’ve come all this way, Cali. But I was thinking—’

‘Let’s get the wine out,’ says a chirpy Joss, climbing the stairs with Luke and Joe in tow.

‘Sara’s still on the phone to her dad, she’ll be up shortly,’ Luke says to me, crossing the carriage to take a seat beside me at the same time I scoot over. We’re like automated moving parts, working in sync, and I don’t think either of us quite registered that we were doing it until it was done.

Alex is next up the stairs, changed into a look that screams ‘natural snow-bunny’. She’s in thermal leggings, fleece-lined boots and a thermal waffle top bearing a Canadian ice hockey team. I catch Ember taking her in.

Luke spots it too, and beside me he holds his hand out in a ‘low five’ gesture, and I silently sweep my fingertips over his, a shared connection.

‘Good afternoon, everyone, and happy holidays,’ says a man in a Santa hat ascending the stairs, carrying four bottles of wine in his arms. Behind him is another man balancing a folder and a tray of wine glasses.

‘Hey, Logan, Ned,’ Alex greets them.

‘Alex, good to see a familiar face at one of our wine tastings. Be nice,’ he warns, a jokey tone to his voice. ‘We’ve got four of these today in various carriages.’

‘This is a good crowd.’ She smiles, then glances at Ember. ‘I think.’

‘We like wine,’ I say with enthusiasm.

Here’s my plan. I’d like us to have a couple of drinks, get confident enough to clear the air once and for all, become best friends again, then enjoy the rest of Christmas night together with no drama and maybe some festive snogging if anyone wants to?

Then tomorrow we can arrive in Vancouver bright and early and Bryn will be so pleased we’ve all made up (the best wedding present we could have given her, she might say?) and she’ll apologise as well and we’ll all cry and hug and be inseparable again forever without any more arguing. Ever. Ever. Ever.

I don’t know how Ember fits into this plan yet.

The wine tasting gentlemen set about pouring measures of a juicy-looking bottle of red into the glasses. They sway in movement with the train, which is most impressive. We all watch and listen, very well behaved, like proper grown-ups at a proper posh wine tasting.

‘Our first red,’ says Logan, ‘is a Pinot Noir from the Niagara Peninsula. Have a smell and a taste and tell me what you all think the flavours are.’

Just as the first glass is being handed out, Christmas music fades in from a speaker somewhere. Gentle festive tunes that complement the white and blue landscape beyond the domed glass of the carriage.

When we clink glasses, Joe makes a comment that causes Ember to look confused. ‘Our first cheers in years,’ he quips.

‘ Years ? I gathered you hadn’t spoken for a while, but... what?’

‘Try five whole years,’ Joss smirks, filling up her glass.

‘ Five years ?’ Ember and Alex cry in unison.

‘What happened?’ asks Alex.

I look anywhere but at Luke, my heart thumping, my cheeks blushing. ‘Just something that... pissed off everyone.’

Ember holds her hands up in the air. I reach over and put a glass of wine in one of them for her. ‘Oh. Thank you. So, you all fell out not long after Bryn and I broke up?’

We all look to each other and I think back. ‘Um, yeah, I guess so. Bryn was still moping and we were hoping the holiday would help, I think.’

Ember sits back in her seat. ‘Huh.’ She puts her wine to her lips, and turns her gaze to the window. Alex’s arm, resting on the seat behind her, shifts a little to place fingertips on her shoulder.

Logan and Ned exchange a look, waiting, until Ned prompts, ‘Shall we have a smell?’

We follow his lead as he swirls the glass in his hand, the wine forming dropletty legs inside the bowl. I stick my nose in. Mmm, winey. I’m about to take a gulp when Logan asks, ‘What can you smell?’

‘Grapes?’ I offer.

‘And wine,’ adds Luke. I smother a laugh.

Joss takes a sniff so big I’m surprised she hasn’t snorted the liquid up her nose. ‘I think I can smell vanilla.’

‘Interesting,’ says Ned, which I think might be code for ‘wrong’. He can see we’re getting twitchy so he lets us take our first sip. ‘Any thoughts on the taste?’

Sara sloshes it in her mouth. ‘Tastes quite fruity.’

‘ Trés noir ,’ I add, which sounded better in my head.

Ned, unimpressed with our lack of being able to distinguish an aged oak overtone from a mellow ambience of cacao beans, decides to cut to the chase and tell us all about its origins and what we are, in fact, tasting and smelling, before moving onto wine number two.

‘Next then, we have a Merlot which was produced in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia—’

‘Ooo, you had me at Merlot!’ I quip. Am I drunk already? Beside me, Luke laughs, side-eyeing me and raising his glass in honour of my pun.

We sniff and we sip and we think and we drink.

‘I love this one,’ states Joss after she’s finished knocking it back. ‘Lovely and dry.’

‘Like you,’ snorts Joe, earning himself a death stare.

‘Why do you have to ruin it?’ his sister demands, and so begins a fierce little mini squabble, while Logan and Ned try and distract us by pulling out a hefty bottle of ice wine in a long, thin glass bottle.

‘Now, Canada is the biggest maker of ice wine, and most of Canada’s ice wine is made in the chilly hills of Ontario,’ says Logan over the raised voices.

I hold out my glass, keen to try the amber-hued ice wine, but don’t take my eyes off the siblings, who are getting more heated by the second.

‘You guys, let’s not—’ They ignore me. I’d bet there’s a red wine flush on my cheeks already, and my fingers move to pick at a cheeky chin spot I can feel pulsating. ‘Come on, we’re having a good day.’

‘Give it a rest, Cali, this isn’t about you,’ Joss snaps, shutting me down.

I shrink back, stuttering. ‘I-I was just saying, let’s just enjoy the wine tasting...’

‘Ice wine?’ Ned asks us each in turn, as if nothing is happening. ‘Ice wine?’

‘You can’t force it, you know what they’re like.’ Sara sighs, slumping back in her seat and getting her phone out, gulping down the ice wine and holding her glass out for a refill, without even waiting for Logan to give his spiel.