From Russia With Love - 1. Chapter 1

School had finally broken up for the summer holidays and Kodi and I are looking forward to our family holiday; in fact we have both been acting like a pair of six year olds who are going to Disneyworld. Our parents finally told us what our holiday was three months ago, as we had to arrange our visas, and in the case of Jessica getting her own passport.

We leave this morning and are going to Paris for two days, then we are travelling by sleeper train to Moscow, then joining one of the Trans-Siberian tours to Beijing and finally spending a few days in Beijing; we’ll be away for about a month. I dread to think how much this holiday has cost as the visas alone have run to nearly £3000; that’s seven visas for Russia, Mongolia, China and seven transit visas for Belarus.

We arrived at St Pancras International just before half past ten; about an hour before the Eurostar train was due to depart for Paris Gare du Nord.

“Bye Jon, bye Jennie,” I said hugging my friends.

“I’m gonna miss you guys,” Kodi said, also giving them a hug. “Thanks for coming to see us off.”

“Kyle, Kodi, hurry up you two. We need to get checked in.”

“Coming dad,” Kodi said.

“How’s Margot doing?” I asked. Mika’s mum had been rushed into hospital two days ago in agony. Turns out she has gallstones – Mika reckons her mum has more gallstones than gallbladder, but I’m sure she’s exaggerating.

“She’s doing better. The pain’s gone, she’s keeping food down, and she’s got a date for surgery next week. Mika’s up the hospital with her at the moment.”

“Give them both our love Jon,” Kodi said.

“Boys! Here! Now!”

“Coming dad,” Kodi said for the second time.

“Bye guys. Have a great time,” Jennie said.

After another quick round of hugs, Kodi and I trotted off to the check in desk. With the long queues and the fact that two of the x-ray machines were not working meant it took us nearly forty five minutes to clear check in, leaving us only quarter of an hour until the train was due to depart.

When the tickets were being booked, sorting out and agreeing upon the seating arrangements on the Eurostar with there being seven of us had caused a few arguments. Naturally Jessica wanted to sit with Kodi and I, and not with her parents, but we wanted a Club 2 (two seats either side of a table) to ourselves – mainly so we could make goo-goo eyes at each other and play footsie for two and half hours. That left four parents and one now very stroppy ten year old, but of course the parents couldn’t take up a Club 4 (four seats around a table) and have Jess sit on her own. So after much debate, it was finally agreed that Jess, Janet and Richard (Kodi and her parents) and Clare (my mum) would share a table and Stuart (my dad) would play Billy No Mates and sit on his Tod - and enjoy the scenery and like it.

We walked along the crowded platform at St Pancras International, with Janet keeping a tight hold of Jessica so as to not lose her in this tsunami of humanity, until we found our carriage. We put our bags in the luggage rack and made our way to our seats.

Kodi and I had come prepared for the journey. Kodi had brought his rather battered paperback of Stephen King’s The Stand, and I had my even more battered paperback of Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out; I could buy a new copy I suppose, but it was originally my granddad’s, and he left it to me after he passed away. Mum doesn’t like me reading it though; she thinks it will get me into the occult or some such thing. But since she can’t get to sleep if she watches a scary film at night (unless she watches some Disney film afterwards), I can understand where she is coming from. Sure we both have a Kindle, and we have more stories on them than you can shake a stick at, but there is just something about reading an actual book. I don’t know, it’s hard to describe, but I feel connected to the book, the author and the characters somehow. Even Jessica had brought a book to read; I couldn’t make out the title from where I was sitting, but knowing her taste in literature it was probably one of Jacqueline Wilson’s books. I suppose our parents planned to talk for the entire journey since I didn’t see any of them bring a book or anything.

As the last of the passengers boarded the train, I could hear the member of staff on the platform blowing his whistle, indicating that it was time for the train to leave. The train pulled out of the station at 11:30, just two minutes behind schedule; and I’m quite sure that those two minutes will be made up very easily en route.

I was glad that we were on the non-stop service into Paris; at least that meant we could move around and what empty seats there were would remain empty for the entire journey. It also had the added benefit that I was even more sure that we would make up those two minutes; some of the Eurostar trains actually stop at four stations between London and Paris! Crazy, just crazy.

We had been travelling for about six minutes, when Kodi said, “Kyle, look at that.”

I looked out of the window and could see the Olympic Village. It was hard for me to imagine all the time, effort and expense that had gone into building it for what is essentially a two week long sports gala. With the Games now in their second week, Stratford was full of people to-ing and fro-ing, and team GB were doing us proud with thirty nine medals all ready; twenty two of which were gold.

“Kodi, you remember when the Stratford train station was first being built? How they were talking about having Eurostar trains stopping here?”

“Yeah, I remember. I wonder whatever happened to that plan.”

“I think it was scraped. It was something to do with the fact that Stratford is only six or seven minutes outside of St Pancras; it didn’t seem a good idea to have two high speed international train stations so close together.”

Jessica had leapt off of her seat and was climbing over me to get a look at the Olympic Village. She had pressed her face right up to the window as if that would help her get a better view.

“Jess . . . Jess . . . sweetie . . . be careful,” I said wincing, as she drove her knee further and further into my groin.

Kodi leaned across the table and whispered, “Want me to kiss it better?”

Jess’ eyes bugged when she heard that, and a huge grin spread across my face. I got the full implication of what Kodi had said, but I had the feeling that Jessica thought he simply meant to kiss it. Unfortunately for Kodi, his mum had also heard his little comment.

“Kodi Waughrin! Not in front of your sister!”

“Sorry, mum. Sorry, Jess.”

Jess just smiled, but their mum looked like she was ready to kill. I sat Jessica in my lap and wrapped my arms around her. I was so glad to have her knee off of the one place that God only ever intended to be treated nicely.

A few minutes later the ticket inspector came along and checked our tickets. The rather unpleasant lady looked at Jessica sitting on my lap, and I swear I could read her mind - wondering why she was on my lap and not in a seat. She even took an extra few minutes double checking our tickets making sure we had the right number of tickets to passengers and the right fares had been paid. I don’t know though, maybe it was just my imagination; she reminded me so much of Miss Trunchbull from Matilda I was expecting her to behave the same.

About twenty minutes into the journey the meal arrived; one of the many perks of travelling first class. Jessica returned to her seat as soon as she caught a whiff of food. The lunch consisted of a warm salmon salad and some kind of sponge cake. I’m not a huge salmon fan, but hey, I’m also not one to turn my nose up at a free meal. Kodi and I had a couple of cokes with lunch, whereas our parents had one of those miniature bottles of wine each.

I was just starting to read my book when we entered the Channel Tunnel. An announcement came over the intercom system, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have just entered the Channel Tunnel and we expect a transit time of approximately twenty minutes.” The announcement was repeated in French and what I think was German.

Kodi and I read our books for the entire time we were in the Tunnel, and as soon as we exited on the French side all of our mobile phones went off – alarms, text messages, lots of different tones filled the carriage. I advanced the time on my mobile by one hour and deleted the text message offering me cheap deals on phone calls from my mobile to the UK, and it seemed as though everyone else in the carriage was carrying out the exact same ritual. There was some kind of further announcement, I assume welcoming us to France, but I was too preoccupied with my mobile to really pay attention.

Kodi and I read our books for the remainder of the journey, and played footsie. Although the total journey time was two and a quarter hours, Jessica was getting really antsy with about ten minutes left until we arrived in Gare du Nord and she refused to sit still. She went from Janet’s lap, to my lap, to Kodi’s lap and just kept on repeating the circuit until I was starting to feel sea-sick.

We arrived in Paris at 14:47, exactly when we were scheduled to arrive. We had made up the two minutes en route; not that it really matters much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the principle.

We walked along the Eurostar platform and I heard lots of announcements in French; most of which I didn’t understand. There was a guy waiting for us at the end of the platform, who turned out to be the taxi driver that dad had pre-booked. It was a good job as well, because when we exited the station the queue at the taxi rank was insane; there must have been over two hundred people milling around, and the queue stretched the entire length of the station and around the corner. If dad hadn’t of had the foresight to pre-book a taxi we could have waited for a couple of hours for one.

Dad had booked us three rooms in the Hilton Arc de Triomphe: one room for Jessica, Janet and Richard, one room for my parents, and one room for Kodi and I. The rooms have views of the Eiffel Tower and we have access to the lounge in the hotel which has free food and drinks all day. Dad has always been one to book chain hotels when abroad to avoid surprises over hotel quality; apparently he had a bad experience in Budapest shortly before I was born, and he has vowed to never repeat that mistake again.

It took us around twenty minutes to do the journey from the Gare du Nord to our hotel on the rue de Courcelles, so we able to check straight into the hotel. Dad had managed to get us three rooms next to each other, so there would be no worry about us being scattered around the hotel.

Kodi and I went into what be our room for the next three nights. We were up on the top floor of the hotel, we could see the Eiffel Tower and beyond in the distance, and we had our own private balcony from which to enjoy the view. The room itself was huge, about thirty square metres; that’s over three hundred square feet all to ourselves. Kodi opened the door to the bathroom and his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Kyle, come and look at this.”

I looked inside the bathroom and there was a huge bath that was easily big enough for the two of us to share. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking Kodi.”

“And what would that be, my cariad?”

“That after a long journey like we’ve just had, that we should have a bath and relax.”

Kodi raised his eyebrows and kissed me on the lips. “You got that right.” He started running the bath and closed the door.