Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(3)

“What are you thinking about?” asked Amanda. She had finished her call and returned her phone to her pocket.

He smiled and shook his head. “Nothing much. Who was on the phone?”

“The office.” She was worried about how the business would cope without her, even though Marie-France, her assistant, was more than capable of taking care of things in her absence. “The Luhansk stuff.”

Despite their name, Luhansk were a middle-aged stadium rock band from Leicester in the English Midlands. Amanda was trying to branch the business out into high-end concert merchandising. Kenneth said, “I thought all that was wrapped up.”

She shrugged. “It’s nothing. A couple of last-minute details. I’ll conference with Marie-France and their merchandising manager when we’re on the train.”

“You’re not supposed to exert yourself,” he told her.

She waved it away. “Fifteen minutes in a conference space. I won’t even have to stand up. Half an hour at the most.”

The queue moved forward a few metres, then stalled again. They were just outside the open glass doors of the departure building.

“Do you think William will be all right?” Amanda said. “On his own?”

“Yes,” he replied. He had gone over things with William over and over again; he was as sure as he could be that everything would run smoothly. Homicidal driving tendencies apart, William was a solid, reliable fellow. He was a credit to the group.

“I shouldn’t worry about him, I suppose,” said Amanda. “But still.”

The line moved again and they passed into the departures building, and then there was a smartly-dressed young Moroccan, with a pad under his arm and a little badge on the breast pocket of his blazer identifying him as ‘Etienne,’ standing beside them, murmuring apologies in almost accentless English.

“Mrs Pennington, Mr Pennington,” he said, “I’m so dreadfully sorry. You were never meant to queue here. Please accept my most abject apologies on behalf of the Trans-Europe Rail Company.”

“We expected to queue,” Kenneth said equably. “Everyone else has to.”

“But Mrs Pennington’s condition...” Etienne shook his head. “Unforgivable. I promise you the staff members responsible will be disciplined.”

“We don’t want to get anybody in trouble,” Amanda said.

Etienne shook his head again. “Madame,” he said with a solemnity deeper than his years, “we do not treat our citizens like this.”

The exchange was carried out in quiet voices, but even so it was starting to attract the attention of other passengers around them. Kenneth said, “So what can we do?”

“Please,” Etienne said. “Please, come with me.”

“Oh, there’s no need for that,” Amanda said. “Look, we’re almost at the head of the queue now.”

“Mrs Pennington,” Etienne said, holding out his hands. “I insist. It’s the least I can do.”

Amanda and Kenneth exchanged glances, and he nodded fractionally. “Lead the way, then, Etienne,” she said, loudly enough for her voice to carry as she steered her wheelchair out of the queue and followed the Moroccan, the chair’s tyres hissing softly on the hardwearing carpet.

Etienne led them up to the line of Security desks and then turned off sharply and opened a door at the edge of the room. Beyond was a stark, utilitarian corridor ending in another door, and when they went through that they found that they had passed beyond the security and document checks. Etienne took them to a small side-room, where a young woman in a blue and silver uniform sat waiting beside a portable scanner.

“You understand,” Etienne said. “You must still undergo the usual procedures.”

“Of course,” Kenneth said, suddenly feeling trapped. The plan had been to go through Security with all the other passengers. It was late; the staff would be under pressure to process everyone quickly, they would be able to see the line stretching back to the doors of the departure building and know that they still had a lot to do. They would hurry, be sloppy. Here it was just them and Etienne and the young woman in her smart uniform, and all the time in the world. He looked down at Amanda and said, “Ladies first?”

If Amanda was at all nervous, she didn’t show it. She rolled the chair up to the scanner and waited patiently while the young woman – whose nametag identified her as ‘Claudine’ – set things up. Claudine was just as apologetically efficient as Etienne, but she and Amanda exchanged a few words – her English was almost as good as Etienne’s – and at one point Amanda reached out and rested her hand on the girl’s forearm, and Kenneth knew everything would be all right.

At one point during the procedure, Claudine looked up from the scanner’s readout and said, “Madame, there is a...” She touched her stomach.

“It’s a remote foetal heart monitor,” Amanda told her. “There were some problems early on. It lets my doctor keep an eye on things.”

“But no problems now?” asked the girl sincerely.

Amanda shook her head. “We decided to leave the monitor where it is, though, until after the baby’s born.”

Claudine nodded. “My sister, she was the same,” she said.

“Her baby, it’s okay, though?”