‘Let’s get the wine out,’ says a chirpy Joss, climbing the stairs with Luke and Joe in tow.
‘Sara’s still on the phone to her dad, she’ll be up shortly,’ Luke says to me, crossing the carriage to take a seat beside me at the same time I scoot over. We’re like automated moving parts, working in sync, and I don’t think either of us quite registered that we were doing it until it was done.
Alex is next up the stairs, changed into a look that screams ‘natural snow-bunny’. She’s in thermal leggings, fleece-lined boots and a thermal waffle top bearing a Canadian ice hockey team. I catch Ember taking her in.
Luke spots it too, and beside me he holds his hand out in a ‘low five’ gesture, and I silently sweep my fingertips over his, a shared connection.
‘Good afternoon, everyone, and happy holidays,’ says a man in a Santa hat ascending the stairs, carrying four bottles of wine in his arms. Behind him is another man balancing a folder and a tray of wine glasses.
‘Hey, Logan, Ned,’ Alex greets them.
‘Alex, good to see a familiar face at one of our wine tastings. Be nice,’ he warns, a jokey tone to his voice. ‘We’ve got four of these today in various carriages.’
‘This is a good crowd.’ She smiles, then glances at Ember. ‘I think.’
‘We like wine,’ I say with enthusiasm.
Here’s my plan. I’d like us to have a couple of drinks, get confident enough to clear the air once and for all, become best friends again, then enjoy the rest of Christmas night together with no drama and maybe some festive snogging if anyone wants to? Then tomorrow we can arrive in Vancouver bright and early and Bryn will be so pleased we’ve all made up (the best wedding present we could have given her, she might say?) and she’ll apologise as well and we’ll all cry and hug and be inseparable again forever without any more arguing. Ever. Ever. Ever.
I don’t know how Ember fits into this plan yet.
The wine tasting gentlemen set about pouring measures of a juicy-looking bottle of red into the glasses. They sway in movement with the train, which is most impressive. We all watch and listen, very well behaved, like proper grown-ups at a proper posh wine tasting.
‘Our first red,’ says Logan, ‘is a Pinot Noir from the Niagara Peninsula. Have a smell and a taste and tell me what you all think the flavours are.’
Just as the first glass is being handed out, Christmas music fades in from a speaker somewhere. Gentle festive tunes that complement the white and blue landscape beyond the domed glass of the carriage.
When we clink glasses, Joe makes a comment that causes Ember to look confused. ‘Our first cheers in years,’ he quips.
‘Years? I gathered you hadn’t spoken for a while, but . . . what?’
‘Try five whole years,’ Joss smirks, filling up her glass.
‘Five years?’ Ember and Alex cry in unison.
‘What happened?’ asks Alex.
I look anywhere but at Luke, my heart thumping, my cheeks blushing. ‘Just something that . . . pissed off everyone.’
Ember holds her hands up in the air. I reach over and put a glass of wine in one of them for her. ‘Oh. Thank you. So, you all fell out not long after Bryn and I broke up?’
We all look to each other and I think back. ‘Um, yeah, I guess so. Bryn was still moping and we were hoping the holiday would help, I think.’
Ember sits back in her seat. ‘Huh.’ She puts her wine to her lips, and turns her gaze to the window. Alex’s arm, resting on the seat behind her, shifts a little to place fingertips on her shoulder.
Logan and Ned exchange a look, waiting, until Ned prompts, ‘Shall we have a smell?’
We follow his lead as he swirls the glass in his hand, the wine forming dropletty legs inside the bowl. I stick my nose in. Mmm, winey. I’m about to take a gulp when Logan asks, ‘What can you smell?’
‘Grapes?’ I offer.
‘And wine,’ adds Luke. I smother a laugh.
Joss takes a sniff so big I’m surprised she hasn’t snorted the liquid up her nose. ‘I think I can smell vanilla.’
‘Interesting,’ says Ned, which I think might be code for ‘wrong’. He can see we’re getting twitchy so he lets us take our first sip. ‘Any thoughts on the taste?’
Sara sloshes it in her mouth. ‘Tastes quite fruity.’
