We made it onto the train without any issues. Smartly suited but unsmiling hostesses showed us to our cabin, and we immediately went off to find the dining car, to have a drink and to see who else was around, and now that the buzz has worn off a little, and the hangovers are kicking in, we’re back in the cabin, sitting on the edges of our beds. I’ve dealt us both our cards and placed them on the small table under the window between us, but they remain untouched next to two plastic cups filled with warm Coke. It was Carrie’s idea to play poker, but apart from her telling me the rules, we haven’t got very far. Carrie gazes out of the window and I watch her, watching the landscape.
Flat fields of cracked ochre mud. Pylons and rundown shacks. I have no idea where we are. Other than that we are still in China, because we haven’t stopped yet to let the border guards come on. I heard someone earlier – one of the old ones from the organised tour group – say that we would hit the border late at night. Or early in the morning. They’d slow down the journey on purpose, so that the guards could join the train when most people were sleeping. Then we’d sit for a while as they changed over the wheels on each carriage, because of the wider tracks outside of China.
We saw the sellers clambering on at the last stop, laden with chequered laundry bags filled with cheap jeans, fake branded T-shirts, bags and caps. The guards might let some of them through without paying import tax, or they might not. It was a risky business, but it was better than drugs, and people had to make a living somehow. Those sellers won’t be sleeping tonight. They’ll be waiting in their cabins, drinking black coffee to stay alert. Their gifts for the border guards stashed under the bunks, hoping for a sympathetic ear.
I wanted to take a sleeping pill and avoid the whole thing. I’d experienced it all before at other border crossings, and I knew the guards would be loud and rude and unreasonable. They could search the whole of our cabin, toss everything on the floor if they wanted. I didn’t know if Carrie knew any of this.
‘Have you crossed a border on a train before?’ I ask her.
She snorts. ‘Of course. In Europe, though, not in Asia. I once smuggled a lump of hash from Amsterdam to Paris in a sock. I was terrified the whole time. When the guards came on. I nearly peed my pants. But they didn’t even look at me. I guess I don’t look like an international drugs mule.’ She laughs, takes a sip of Coke. ‘In fact, that means I might make a good one … Maybe I’ll look into it.’ She winks.
Perhaps I’ve made a big mistake. I don’t even know her. She found me at my most vulnerable, and she helped me. I appreciate it. We had fun. We can have more fun, if she lets me stick around.
‘I was just thinking about dinner last night,’ she says, as if she has just read my mind. ‘As predicted, it was totally cheesy and we could have been anywhere, but I kind of liked how excited that group of students were to see us. So random that they wanted to take so many photos of us.’
‘They think we’re exotic,’ I say. ‘With our pale skin and wide eyes. Our height too. We’re like goddesses to them. They’ve no idea that they’re the beautiful, exotic ones.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ she says. She licks her top lip with the tip of her tongue.
I feel something stir inside me. She is exotic, more so than me. Her skin is smooth and lightly tanned. Her blonde highlighted hair is naturally straight and shiny. She wears neatly fitting shorts and vest tops. She smells of lemons. I, on the other hand, seem to be clad in rags beside her. My long gypsy skirt and faded Nirvana T-shirt don’t really show me off like her clothes do, my henna’d hair is in need of some TLC; it’s been so long since I brushed it, it’s turning into dreadlocks. I’m always pale, avoiding the sun. I smell of rose and jasmine, a blend of oils that I’ve been wearing since I was thirteen years old when I first mixed them together in an atomiser that my grandmother left me when she died. We are very different, and yet here we are.
She offered me the second bed in her cabin. She let this happen.
She let me borrow whatever I needed until my bag turned up. Of course it didn’t turn up and probably never will. I will buy what I need when we get there. I’ll change my style again. I don’t know what people dress like in Ulaanbaatar, but it won’t be long before I find out. I glance at Carrie. She’s lying on her bed now, still and quiet. One hand resting on her chest. Her rib cage gently rises and falls. I can see the perfect mounds of her breasts above her thin vest. Her clavicle stands high and sharp, and I have to try very hard not to lean over and run my finger across it.
‘I’ll pay for the ticket. When we get to the next stop,’ I say quietly. I hope she’ll let me stay with her in Mongolia. I feel like we’re only just getting started.
‘Whatever,’ she says. In a way that says she’s chilled, not indifferent. She doesn’t open her eyes.
I stare out of the window. Those same bleak fields. The rhythmic badum badum of the train on the tracks. I lean back against the wall, letting the sounds hypnotise me.
Badum badum.
A screech, now and then. The train lurches from side to side. I close my eyes and wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t walked into the travel centre and found her there, and me so desperate to take this trip.
She’s my beautiful, perfect saviour.
I’ve barely thought about Sam since I met her. She’s going to be good for me, I think. I just hope I can control myself this time.