When she was awake she was moving all the time, planning, fizzing with energy. Now she was still and she looked like a waxwork of herself. It was a rare thing for me to look at Natasha without her distracting me.
We didn’t actually look alike at all. Our faces were different. Natasha’s was narrow and her bone structure was amazing. My face was wider and my bones were probably in there somewhere, because something was holding my face up, but you’d never have known it.
The twenty-eighth was only four days away. I didn’t care what she was planning because I wouldn’t be here. I took my phone, joined the hotel Wi-Fi and tried to log on to the Eurostar site. I stared and willed it to open, but it just crashed and crashed and crashed. When eventually it did work there was a message that said, in five languages: Tickets are no longer available online. Please visit a ticket office at a Eurostar station.
I could hear the city outside the window: people were shouting, cars were going by, and it felt on the very edge of eruption. It probably wasn’t. I was projecting; it was me that was on the edge of something. It was unsettling being in a new place and not having seen it. I couldn’t imagine what was out there. I could only picture the Eiffel Tower or a glass pyramid.
It was more unsettling knowing that Natasha wasn’t the way she seemed. She sighed in her sleep. I wondered where she’d gone last night. What she’d done. Who with.
Her phone was on the table between our beds. I reached for it; she didn’t stir. I eased the charging cable out of it, wrapped the phone in the threadbare towel that had come with the room, and took it to the bathroom across the hallway. I made sure I opened the bedroom door very, very quietly, and left it on the latch so I could get back in.
I couldn’t, however, get into the bathroom. There was a woman standing on the landing outside the door, which was locked. She looked at me, at the towel in my hands and smiled.
‘Sorry,’ she said. She had long black hair tied on top of her head in a topknot. ‘We seem to be a queue. To be honest it’s been like this each morning. You’d think a bathroom shared between three bedrooms would be OK, but the person from room eight does like to take her time.’
‘I don’t mind waiting,’ I said quietly. I took out Natasha’s phone and looked at it idly, like people always did. It was an iPhone. Obviously my fingerprint didn’t work, and I knew I was unlikely to be able to guess the code. I realized I didn’t know her birthday. I put in 1709 for the end of the world, but it didn’t work. I had no chance of going through her phone, unless …
‘Maybe I’ll go back and wait in the room,’ I said, looking up.
‘Sure. If you like, I’ll knock when she finally comes out. I’m Meera,’ the woman said. She extended a hand, so I shook it. Her hand was small and her grip was strong. It felt strangely formal. I didn’t feel like someone standing on a Parisian landing wearing just a big T-shirt and knickers. I felt like a grown-up at a business meeting. This woman was perhaps ten years older than me, but she was treating me as if we were the same.
‘I’m Libby,’ I said. ‘How long are you here for?’
‘Three days so far. We’re doing one of those rail tours of Europe. We can’t afford it but we’re doing it anyway. Staying another couple of nights, I think. We like it here. Paris. We might stay longer. I don’t know. Once you start to look at the art you just, you know, you find there’s a lot of art to look at. I always wanted to see it and now I want to see all of it. And, of course, this week is party week. It’s wild. How about you?’
‘I’m here with my …’ I wasn’t sure what to say, but then realized I didn’t have to tell Natasha’s lies. ‘Cousin. My cousin Natasha. We came by train from Spain.’
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You’re not with your parents? You look so young.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Our family is complicated, but mine are in Spain and England and hers are in the US. I’m going to see Paris today, and then catch a train back to England tomorrow, if I can get a ticket.’
‘OK, cool,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to treat you like a child. So you’re British? You have a cute accent.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘So do you. Where are you from?’
‘Oh, we’re from India,’ she said. ‘From Goa. I’m here with my husband, Arjun. We flew over just before they stopped the flights.’
‘I’d love to go to Goa! I bet lots of people have gone over there for the end times.’
‘Oh my God, they have! Everyone who could make it by land. Unfortunately it’s a very expensive place to live in now and very, very full of tourists.’
‘Maybe one day,’ I said, and we smiled at each other.
I walked back into the room, still smiling. I had just had a friendly conversation with a stranger because I wanted to and not because Natasha had told me to.
I shut the door gently. Natasha was stirring, so my idea (holding her thumb on the phone while she was asleep) wasn’t going to work today. I put the phone very quietly on the table instead, and then I put my towel on top of it so she wouldn’t see it was unplugged.
‘Too early,’ she muttered.
‘Depends what time you came in.’
‘I had a great night,’ she said with a yawn. ‘I sat outside a brasserie and hung out with some guys. I ate cheese, I think. Drank some wine.’
I opened the window. A breeze came in. It smelled of the city, of bakeries and traffic and people and trees.
‘What can you see?’
‘We don’t exactly have a view,’ I said, ‘but I can see a tree. Mostly it’s the back of a building, but there is definitely a tree too.’
I sat back down on my bed and breathed the lovely oxygen that the tree was pumping out. When Meera knocked I had almost forgotten that I was waiting for the shower, but I opened the door and introduced her to Natasha, who leaped into action, putting on her most charming of faces.
‘This is my cousin Natasha,’ I said firmly.
‘I’m so delighted to meet you, Meera,’ Natasha said. ‘Libby says we’re cousins because our real story is so outlandish; we’re actually twins.’
I rolled my eyes. Meera was confused.
‘You look alike,’ she said. ‘But you have different accents.’
‘Fraternal twins,’ Natasha said. ‘Separated at birth.’
‘Seriously?’ Meera looked to me to confirm it. I shrugged. I didn’t want any part of this. She looked back to Natasha. ‘Sounds like that movie. The Parent Trap?’
‘Yep,’ said Natasha.
‘For real? And now you’re together in Paris?’
‘I know, right?’
‘Anyway, twins, cousins, whatever – maybe we’ll see you later. I just wanted to say the bathroom is free.’
‘Thanks!’ I said, and I picked up my stuff and left the room before Natasha could tell me off. I heard a voice from room eight swearing at a stupid bastard hairdryer in English as I passed.
When I came back, wrapped in a towel and with dripping wet hair, Natasha was looking pleased with herself.
‘So,’ she said, as witchy and Natasha-like as ever. ‘This is it. Paris, my sister. We are here for a reason.’
‘Do we actually have to pretend to be twins separated at birth?’
‘Why not? I like it. I didn’t mean to say it. It kind of just came out. Better than cousins, though! The truth is so boring. Don’t say cousins again. You saw her reaction! Twins is a narrative everyone loves. Our parents divorced, our dad took me to the States, you stayed behind in England with Mom. We didn’t know about each other until recently and now we’re making up for lost time. How perfect is that?’
‘Like Meera said, it’s literally the plot of a movie. And everyone knows that.’
I really did not want to pretend to be Natasha’s twin. I didn’t have the energy for it any more, and I didn’t want to trick people into giving us money. I didn’t want any part of this at all.
I got dressed, while Natasha took her stuff and went to the bathroom. Without really knowing what I was doing, I left my hair wet, dressed in the old shorts and T-shirt that were actually mine, rather than a dress that was half of a pair, and slipped away while she was in the shower.
‘Bonjour, mademoiselle!’ called the man at the front desk as I passed, and I waved but didn’t stop, even though he looked as if he wanted me to. I walked out on to the street with no idea of where in the city I was, or where I should be going.
I did have some data on my phone, though, and the 4G network was still working. I knew that I needed the Gare du Nord. It turned out to be a twenty-minute walk away, and so I went there. I just walked through Paris, enjoying the fact that it was about forty degrees compared to Madrid’s fifty. The air had a different smell to it, a smell that I hoped was Paris rather than the Creep. The buildings were grand, the roads wide and busy. I watched a bird hopping in a tree and had a sudden memory of the day I went for a walk in the park and was stopped in my tracks by the newsflash. Actually yes: we’ll all die. Don’t panic. Have a good weekend.
Now it was nearly here, and that was almost a relief.
The area around the station felt tense. There was a demonstration going on, and a crowd of people doing t’ai chi, and some sort of food festival, and a group of men in drag drinking cocktails. I picked my way past it all. A couple of men tried to talk to me but I ignored them and that was fine. I found the Eurostar ticket office and stood in a queue behind an older woman who kept sobbing, and waited. I felt my phone buzz, but I ignored it.
When I got to the front, the young man, who didn’t look as if he wanted to be there at all, said, ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle,’ in the world’s most bored voice.
‘I’d like to buy a ticket for the next train to London, please,’ I said in English.
He sighed and stabbed his keyboard.
‘Nothing today,’ he said. ‘Nor tomorrow neither. You can go Wednesday morning. Half past seven. This is all for the week. Only two trains are running every day, because very few people want to go to work, and soon they will stop altogether.’
I agreed and showed him my passport and visa. In a few minutes I had a ticket, paid for with my savings card. The payment went through and I was relieved; it was the first time I had used that account and I thanked my grandparents fervently for bailing me out.
I texted Mum on the way back to the hotel.
Mum, change of plan. I’ve got a ticket to London for Wednesday. I’m going home, without Natasha. See you there. Please.
I was not going to tell Natasha what I had done. On Wednesday morning I would just get up and go home before she had even woken up.