When Julia next wakes it is fully morning. Her head is hanging forward and she has a stiff pain in her neck. The endless mechanical rhythm of the train continues. It is like they have always been on this train. She opens her eyes and rubs crusty sleep from them. There is bustle in the car as people eat and go to the toilet and begin another day. Suzanne, sitting opposite, smiles at her.
‘You were out,’ she says.
‘This brain work is very tiring.’
They divide the bread they have in two and eat one half. While they are eating, Julia asks about Suzanne’s hero.
‘I was thinking of making him a conman,’ says Suzanne. ‘He comes to the hotel because that’s what he does. He goes from one posh hotel to the next, tries to find some wealthy woman to link up with and gets as much as he can from her before moving on. That’s as much as he has of a goal in life.’
Julia thinks that Suzanne really is making this up and that her hero is far removed from what Suzanne is like. Unlike her Fleur.
‘What will happen is that when he meets your heroine –’
‘Her name is Fleur,’ says Julia.
‘Fleur,’ Suzanne continues. ‘Fleur – flower. I like that. What will happen is that when he meets Fleur, her goal is going to – eventually – become his goal. So she’d better have something significant that she’s chasing.’
‘She does,’ Julia says softly.
‘And – obviously – they will fall in love.’
‘So tell me more about him.’
‘I’m going to call him Dirk. He has brown hair, green eyes, just under six foot, lean.’
Julia wonders if this was somebody Suzanne knew. A boyfriend, maybe? Did she ever have a boyfriend? Maybe Suzanne isn’t a virgin. Somewhere, on one of those trips, while her parents were working, did she meet somebody? And did they...?
‘He is charming, outgoing, extroverted, a ladies’ man,’ Suzanne continues. ‘Has probably never read a book in his life. He’s that boy in your class in school who always seemed to have a girlfriend and usually more than one. Why is he the way he is?’
When Suzanne asks this rhetorical question, Julia hopes that she won’t ask her why Fleur is the way she is. As Suzanne talks, it is as though she is describing a real person.
‘Maybe his family were very poor and he vowed that he would never be like that. He’s European – in the sense that he’s a citizen of the world and his nationality is of little importance. In fact it will never be made clear what his nationality is. Perhaps the most important thing is that he’s not what he seems. So, does that give you a sense of him?’
‘It does.’
‘And now can I read what you’ve written?’
‘I haven’t had a chance to read back over it –’
‘Never mind. I’m dying to read it.’
‘I’m very nervous about showing it to you.’
‘You shouldn’t be. If you love books – and you do – then you know what’s good.’
Julia hands over the book and Suzanne starts to read. Julia studies Suzanne’s downturned face but can see nothing there. She looks around the car at the other people. She wonders what country the train is now in. She tries not to think about what their destination might be although at this stage, she would give anything just to get off this train. She fidgets. She keeps looking at Suzanne’s face trying to gauge her reaction but Suzanne is deep in concentration.
Finally, she looks up. She is smiling. Julia has a momentary picture of a sunrise.
‘It’s good,’ says Suzanne. ‘It’s really, really good.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I do. There are people in my class in university who couldn’t have written something this good.’
‘You’re not just saying it?’
‘I’m not just saying it. You turn the key, you get the engine started.’
‘What?’
‘There’s a point in every story where the story gets going – like starting the engine of a car. A lot of writers don’t start the engine for ages – giving lots of background or setting or description. I think you start the engine in the first paragraph. By the end of it I’m hooked. Do you see?’
Suzanne hands the book back to Julia who reads the opening. Yes, she does see.
‘Anything you didn’t like?’ asks Julia.
‘Saying the train was like a “strange metal monster” – I thought that was a bit clichéd. You know – overused, ordinary. The kind of thing that a writer would say because it was the first thing that came into her head and she’s too lazy or not good enough to think of anything better.’
Julia feels a bit stung by this, but then Suzanne adds, ‘You’re not that kind of writer. I can see already that you’re not. You’ll find something better than that. Believe me, Julia – if this is the way you write, then you have a talent. I just hope I can be as good.’
Julia surges with pride.
‘What a good team we’re going to be,’ says Suzanne. ‘But I have to tell you – I was thinking a lot during the night and maybe that’s going to change what we’re going to do.’
Julia is suddenly deflated again. Deflated and annoyed. Who does Suzanne think she is anyway, making all these decisions?
‘I was thinking about the atmosphere – this plot is actually going to make for a very serious book. I don’t see how we could add much humour, and it could be very dark. I don’t know about you, Julia, but I’ve had enough of serious. There’s been more than enough darkness in my life over the last few years. So I was thinking – what if we wrote a funny book? What would you think of that? That would be even harder to do than the one we were planning but if we managed to do it, it would be amazing.’
‘But supposing the story is about something that isn’t funny?’ Julia asks. ‘That couldn’t be regarded as funny under any circumstances?’
‘Heartbreak and humour,’ says Suzanne. ‘In some ways that’s even more powerful. It could have an even bigger impact on the reader than just heartbreak on its own.’
Julia thinks about this. Could that first chapter be rewritten as the start of the kind of book Suzanne is describing? Yes, Julia thinks it probably could. Certainly the same beginning would pretty much work. She’d just have to add a couple of funny observations to it. And she thinks it would still be possible to tell the story she wants to tell. It actually might be good – humour and heartbreak, like Suzanne said – that’s a good combination.
‘It wouldn’t have to start out hilariously funny from the beginning, would it?’ Julia asks.
‘No, I don’t think so. We could build it as we go. And then bring out the darkness at the end. That would really hit the reader between the eyes.’
‘All right then,’ says Julia. ‘We’ll give it a try. I’ll have to rewrite my first chapter a bit. And it means I’ll have wasted some paper.’
‘Don’t worry about that. What’s most important is that we get a good story. And the fact that we keep changing our mind –’
You keep changing your mind.
‘– means we’re on the right track. We’re getting closer to what we’re really meant to write.
‘And let’s not worry too much about the paper either. Maybe when we’re about halfway through it we can see how we’re doing in terms of the paper we’ve used. If it looks like we won’t have enough, we’ll see if we can get our hands on another notebook.’
Julia’s irritation is brief, fading almost as quickly as it began. She’s happy with the new direction. She starts to wonder about rewriting her chapter but she quickly finds herself stuck. She shakes her head.
‘I need to know a bit more about what’s going to happen,’ she says. ‘Even just the title. Is it still called The Murder at the Grand Hotel?’
‘I was thinking about that,’ said Suzanne. ‘What about we do it as a farce? We don’t just have one murder. We have lots of them. The Murders at the Grand Hotel. So something like this. Fleur arrives at the hotel. She is running away from something and somebody is pursuing her.’
Julia feels a funny sensation in her heart as Suzanne says this. Suzanne continues, speaking quickly.
‘Somebody gets murdered in the hotel. A young woman. But not Fleur. Maybe it’s a case of mistaken identity. They call the police. On a train to the hotel, Dirk is in the same compartment as the detective who has been called to investigate the murder. The detective is a fat man with a soft spot for cream cakes. But he has eaten one cream cake too many.’
As Suzanne talks, Julia can see it all. It’s starting to sound funny.
‘The detective has a heart attack and dies. Dirk takes his papers – takes over his identity. Dirk has read Sherlock Holmes.’
Suzanne continues almost breathlessly.
‘This is the manner of Dirk’s arrival at the Grand Hotel. So his chapter – chapter two – will be entitled “Mr Dirk ... er ... er ... Hoedemaker”. Like the first chapter of A Study in Scarlet. It’s called “Mr Sherlock Holmes”.’
‘Hoedemaker. The hat maker,’ says Julia.
‘I know,’ says Suzanne. ‘I wanted his name to be a bit silly. So the first murder is a mistake. It’s a girl who looks like Fleur but isn’t her. Then the people who are pursuing Fleur arrive. You’ll have to work out why they’re after her. Fleur goes to Dirk to look for protection and this is when their romance begins. Dirk begins his investigation though, in reality, he has no idea what he’s doing.’
Suzanne is becoming really animated, so much so that several people in the carriage look around at her. She ignores them and carries on.
‘However, Fleur’s pursuers think that Dirk is getting close so they commit suicide. Or, no, they have an argument and one kills the other. Or there’s an accident with a gun. I don’t know. I’m not sure yet. But that makes it two unsolved deaths at the Grand Hotel.’
‘All right,’ says Julia. ‘You start writing and I’ll see if I can figure out the things I have to figure out.’
This is how they spend the second day on the train. Julia finds it hard to work all this out in her head. Again and again she tries to work out the sequence of events but again and again, the pieces which she thought she had tied down, seem to float up and fly away from her like runaway balloons. Night comes on and she doesn’t seem to have made much progress. Suzanne, who has been writing all day, has to stop as she can’t see any more.
They eat silently in the semi-darkness. Suzanne looks exhausted. She pushes up her glasses onto her head and rubs her eyes. Julia is frustrated and anxious. What if they can’t work out where to go next? She is loving this but hating it at the same time. She just wants to go to sleep and wake up with it all solved. As if echoing her thoughts, Suzanne says, ‘It’s really hard, isn’t it?’
‘It’s really hard and it’s brilliant at the same time.’
Suzanne nods wearily.
‘That’s what makes it so wonderful, I think.’
They fall asleep, Suzanne with her head thrown back, Julia with hers on the table. What wakes them is a sense that the train has begun to slow. Blearily, they open their eyes. There is darkness still outside. Yes, the train is definitely slowing. Julia looks across at Suzanne who has fear written all over her face. For some time the train travels at little more than walking speed and eventually squeals to a shuddering, shaking halt like a passionless orgasm.
And now Julia is very afraid