The Little Teashop in Tokyo by Julie Caplin Page 0,56

to be a good shot. Want to see?’ She was dying to show him, although nervous at the same time. He’d been so complimentary about her shot of Haruka and Setsuko, hopefully he’d see something in this one too.

She slid into the seat next to him and handed her camera over, as her phone buzzed in her pocket again. As he examined the picture, she checked the message, let out a barely stifled groan of irritation and shoved the phone back in her pocket.

Gabe lifted one brow in silent question.

‘My mother.’ She nodded to the camera.

He went back to studying the view finder and then glanced at her, his face serious.

‘It’s good. Very good.’ He handed back the camera and Fiona tried not to feel too crestfallen at his delivery. She’d been so pleased with the picture.

‘Thanks,’ she said, matching his business-like tone. ‘I’m beginning to think I might actually have the makings of an exhibition.’

‘Of course you will. Don’t be so faint hearted. Besides, most of the punters that come to these things wouldn’t know a good photograph if it bit them.’

Fiona clasped her camera to her chest and shot him a glare. ‘I’d know.’

‘Fair enough.’ Gabe shrugged.

‘How come you’re so cynical these days?’ she asked, taking another quick peek at the American man’s expression as he beheld his beloved train.

‘I’m not.’

Now it was her turn to raise an eyebrow. ‘Well that sounded pretty cynical to me.’

‘I was being honest. There’s a difference. I don’t believe in sugar coating things. Or saying things to make people feel better.’

‘I had noticed that,’ she said with feeling. She’d been so pleased with her shot of the trainspotter.

‘What’s the point? Prolonging the agony. Making difficulties.’

‘Or perhaps it’s smoothing the path sometimes. Making life a bit easier. Brutal honesty can be quite hurtful.’

Gabe shrugged again as, with very little ceremony, the train pulled away from the station, the motion so smooth that Fiona thought if she closed her eyes she wouldn’t know she was moving. He leaned back into his chair and closed his eyes, a resigned twist to his mouth.

‘Have you done this journey a lot?’ asked Fiona

‘Just a few times. At the end of the day, it’s a train, albeit a very fast train.’

She thought of the picture and her American friend, who no doubt would be enjoying his journey with all the enthusiastic delight of a puppy. A joy clearly lost on some people. She still got a kick out of going into an airport terminal; she wondered if the American man’s pleasure would ever fade, and she was grateful that she’d been able to capture that moment of delightful anticipation.

What had Pepys famously said? ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.’ Gabe seemed to be tired of everything.

They quickly slid out of Tokyo and before long the train was hurtling through the open countryside. The Shinkansen wasn’t called a bullet train for nothing.

Now they were speeding through brilliant green countryside, paddy fields laid out in squares, the curved roof temples dotted here and there and in the distance, tree-covered hills and mountains.

As usual, there was near silence in the carriage and with an apologetic gesture, waving his earphones to indicate the silent carriage, Gabe plugged them in and began to listen to something on his phone. Fiona followed suit by listening to a downloaded BBC Radio 4 News Quiz podcast and doing her best to ignore the incoming bombardment of messages from her mother.

‘She still having a stroke?’ asked Gabe in a low whisper, nudging her with his elbow after she’d been exchanging messages for a good twenty minutes.

‘No … she thinks she’s got an upper respiratory infection,’ Fiona whispered back.

‘And is it serious?’

‘No, with mum that’s long hand for a common cold.’ Fiona had done her best to send sympathetic but firm no-nonsense messages with advice that her mother clearly had no intention of following. ‘I told her to stay in bed for the day, take a Lemsip and go back to sleep.’

‘Sage advice.’ He frowned. ‘Isn’t it one o’clock in the morning there?’

‘It is but she can’t sleep.’ Fiona sighed because apparently that was her fault too. ‘She doesn’t like being alone in the house.’ Fiona let out a despairing sigh as another message popped up on the screen.

There was no doubt that Gabe could easily see the pathetic first line of the message.

I feel so poorly, I really wish you were …

It didn’t take any prizes to guess the rest. Fiona