The Last Train Home

Chapter Twenty

"I think I know why he lied to you," Eva said. She threw a grape into her mouth and broke it in half with her teeth, showing me in grape juice.

"Go on, impart your wisdom with me. I can't wait to hear it." I rolled my eyes and wiped my nose on a handkerchief. Mum was right; a person could never have too many handkerchiefs.

"Alec likes you."

I picked up one of the grapes and threw it at her. "No way. I don't even know him!"

"Yes, he does!" She kicked me with her foot.

"You are so annoying!" I exclaimed, the words sticking in my throat.

I turned my head and coughed into the crook of my elbow, my chest and throat burning as I tried to clear whatever had settled there. Once I stopped coughing, I took a swig from the glass of water on my nightstand and then settled back against my pillow. Tears streamed down my face from the excessive coughing and my chest heaved.

Despite the ride back to the farm I had received from Mr Thompson and Alec, I ended up coming down with something just a few days later. It had started as a blocked nose and a slight headache and devolved into a sore throat and bad cough along with the other two symptoms. Barabara confined me to my room and delivered a selection of soups and fresh glasses of water to my door. After several days, it had slowly started to pass and she had allowed Eva to visit.

Eva, in all her infinite wisdom, had decided to visit with some grapes rather than the sweets I desperately craved. There were only so many days a person could go without chocolate before they started to lose their mind. I filled her in with what had happened the day I went into the village and explained the fact that Alec appeared to have lied to me. Her answer hadn't been the one I expected.

"It's not true," I said.

"Why can't it be true?"

"Because it's not!"

"That's not an answer." She pointed at me. "I've seen the two of you together. I mean, the way you were when we were all the village? You can't tell me that there wasn't something there. Not only that, but he's giving you horse riding lessons which he didn't have to do, and he took you on a ride through the area for no reason! It's all there, Syb. You're just blind to it."

"I am not. I'm not seeing it, because it's not there. We're friends. Besides, I've only known him for a little while and the first time we met, he insulted me. There's no way. No way at all."

"You're just in denial because I'm not the only one who can see it."

I plucked another grape out of the bowl and threw it at her, but she just caught it in her mouth and laughed at me. Even though she had been my best friend since before we could walk, she could be a real pain when she wanted to be. She couldn't be right about any of this and I refused to believe that Alec and I were anything other than friends, especially as I had only known him for two months.

Not only that, but everything Alec had done, everything Eva had listed, he had been asked to do by Jonathan and none of it had happened by choice. Jonathan had asked him to take me out that day and he had been the one to suggest the horse riding lessons. Our meeting in the village had been completely by chance and he had been a pain the entire time. Eva had just become wrapped up in her imagination that she invented some fabricated idea.

It wasn't true.

Eva readjusted her position on the end of my bed, taking another grape out of the bowl. She had bought them for me but had eaten most of them, not that I minded all that much. I took a grape for myself and watched as Eva started to look around my room. Her eyes were drawn to the collection of framed photographs that I had placed along the top of the chest of drawers. Mum had sent them to me several weeks before, she did so with a note about making my room with the Goodwins as homely as possible.