Friday was taken aback to be asked if she could perform a crime. She had fled from the French police, so she was already committing one. She wondered if the woman could sense her criminality, but then Friday realised that was unlikely unless this old lady had superhuman levels of insight.

  ‘No,’ said Friday. ‘Well, I’m sure I could if I had the right computer, the right printer and access to hologram technology. Although, the easiest way to forge a passport would be to get a passport from someone who looks like you, then just adjust the printing on the name. That would be a lot easier than trying to create an entire passport from scratch. And it would certainly do the trick within Europe where internal borders don’t require passports.’

  The old lady stared at Friday. But Friday was too consumed by the interesting intellectual conundrum to notice.

  ‘But even if you did have a passport for a lady who looks like yourself,’ continued Friday. ‘I’d need the right ink in the right printer to adjust the name. I’d probably need some sort of paper-fabrication process too. The research alone on how to do it would take hours, or days. The equipment would be hard to locate anywhere other than a major city. They certainly wouldn’t have it on a moving train.’

  ‘That’s a “no” then, I take it,’ said the lady.

  ‘Yes, it’s a “no”,’ agreed Friday. ‘Also, I probably shouldn’t be aiding and abetting you if you need a fake passport to commit a crime.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want a fake passport,’ said the lady. ‘I just want my own passport. But my husband forgot to bring them.’

  ‘I said sorry,’ said the man.

  ‘Hmmpf,’ said the lady.

  ‘But you don’t need a passport to travel internally within Europe,’ said Friday.

  ‘You do if you need to hire a car,’ said the lady.

  ‘We’ll just go home,’ said the man. ‘We can rebook in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘He’s lying,’ Melanie muttered.

  Friday looked at her friend. Melanie was sound asleep. But Melanie did have a strange ability to tell if someone was lying. Could she even tell when she was asleep? And could she announce this by sleep talking? Apparently, she could.

  Friday turned back and looked at the man closely. He was wearing a blue tweed jacket, a warm flannel shirt and a tie. His clothes were very respectable. He also looked very nervous. Terrified even.

  ‘Sir, are you afraid of your wife?’ asked Friday.

  ‘No!’ exclaimed the man.

  ‘Lying,’ muttered Melanie.

  ‘Well . . . maybe a little bit,’ admitted the man. ‘But no more than any other husband.’

  ‘Where are you going today?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Geneva,’ said the woman. ‘We were going to have a week at a lake house. My sister is flying in from Italy. We were going to have dinner with her tonight.’

  Friday looked at the man. He was quivering.

  ‘You don’t seem happy about this trip,’ said Friday.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the lady. ‘We love Switzerland. We go every year.’

  ‘And your sister comes every year?’ asked Friday.

  ‘No,’ said the lady. ‘I haven’t seen her for five years. Her husband and my husband had a big argument. But her husband died two months ago. She just messaged me and asked to meet with us.’

  The old man took out a handkerchief and dabbed sweat from his forehead.

  ‘I see,’ said Friday. She looked from the man to the woman and back again. ‘Well, I know where your passports are, but the question is – do you want to know what I know?’

  The old lady glared at Friday with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Apart from being upset about your passports and missing a week at a lake house in Geneva, you seem like happy people,’ continued Friday. ‘Your husband wouldn’t be so worried about upsetting you otherwise. So I could return your passports to you and you could continue on your journey without asking any follow-up questions. Or I could pretend I don’t know where your passports are, and you could get off at the next station and go back to Paris. Or there is a third, more confronting, possibility – we could shine the cleansing light of truth on this whole situation. You get your passports back and you go forward with nothing to hide.’

  ‘I’d like to go home,’ said the man.

  ‘I want the truth,’ said the lady.

  ‘You say that,’ said Friday, ‘but people rarely want the truth. We tell ourselves lies all the time. More importantly, we let other people tell us lies all the time. And everyone goes along with this for the sake of harmony. It’s easier for everyone. So, if you are honestly happy with your life, it would probably be best if you don’t know the whole truth.’

  ‘I want the truth,’ said the lady. ‘I’m not that happy.’

  ‘Do you want to tell her or shall I?’ Friday asked the old man.

  He slumped with his face in his hands. ‘Alright, alright. I had an affair with your sister.’

  ‘Friday, what have you done?’ asked Melanie, suddenly sitting up.

  ‘I don’t know!’ said Friday. She was genuinely shocked. ‘I was just trying to help this nice old couple find their passports!’

  ‘It’s okay. I can’t bear living with the lies anymore,’ said the old man. ‘That’s why Paul and I had the fight. It’s why I’ve been avoiding your sister for five years. I’ve blocked her emails, hung up on her calls. I didn’t want her to tell you.’

  ‘That’s not what I was going to reveal,’ said Friday. ‘I was just going to tell her that you hid the passports in your coffee cup and put them in the bin. I saw you do it when your wife went to the bathroom.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I did that too,’ confessed the man.

  ‘Claude,’ said the woman. ‘How could you?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Leticia,’ said the man.

  ‘They were ten-year passports,’ said the lady. ‘I’d only just had them renewed. They cost 300 euros each. Plus, all the hassle of filling out the forms and getting the photos taken.’

  ‘I thought you’d be heartbroken about Phillipa,’ said the old man.

  ‘You silly man,’ said the lady. ‘I’ve always known about that. I had an affair with Paul and he told me.’

  ‘You did?’ said the man.

  ‘Just get the passports out of the bin,’ said the lady. ‘Wipe them off, give them to me to mind, and we’ll forget all about this silliness.’

  ‘All of it?’ said the man.

  ‘Not all of it,’ said the lady. ‘I’m not going to forget that you’re deeply silly. But I’m prepared to forget about this specific silliness.’

  ‘The silliness with your sister,’ said the man.

  ‘I’m not going to cut off my relationship with my sister, just because you are both idiots,’ said the lady. ‘And I am not filling out those ridiculous, rude passport applications again. Now get the passports out of the bin.’

  ‘You forgive me?’ asked the man.

  ‘Of course not,’ said the lady. ‘But if you buy me a very expensive watch when we get to Switzerland, I will pretend I do.’

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ said the old man, before shuffling over to the rubbish bin.

  Friday slid back to her window seat.

  Now her inner voice was yelling at her. ‘YOU’RE AN IDIOT!’ And on the whole, she agreed with it.

  There was no train station at CERN so they were going to have to get off at Bellegarde and take a bus the last few kilometres of the journey. As they travelled further and further from Paris, the countryside became more agricultural. It was a relief, when the train pulled in to the platform, to be able to step out into the crisp alpine air.

  The sky looked bigger. Which was ridiculous. The sky is a constant size. But there was something about the landscape – the mountains in the distance, the lack of tall buildings – that made nature feel much more present. The sky felt lower. It was probably the altitude – they must be 500 metres above sea level. The clouds were definitely closer.

  Not many people got off at Bellegarde station. Perhaps a couple of dozen. Most of the passengers were travelling on to Geneva. Bellegarde was a much smaller town, significant mainly because it was the nearest French city to the border with Switzerland so they had a big modern train station. Friday felt a bit ridiculous dressed up in her Parisian high-fashion outfit in this regional town.

  ‘Can I lose the coat?’ she asked Melanie.

  ‘It’s only eight degrees,’ said Melanie, pointing to a digital display on the station’s information board. ‘You’d be very silly to voluntarily give up your warmest garment. I know you don’t like looking fabulous, but surely your rational mind can see that it isn’t worth jeopardising your health.’

  ‘Urg,’ grunted Friday. She knew Melanie was right, but she didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of admitting it. She looked up and down the platform. ‘Where’s Ian?’ She was surprised he hadn’t gotten off yet. They’d agreed to meet on the platform.

  ‘Perhaps he fell asleep,’ said Melanie.

  ‘He’s not you,’ said Friday. ‘Which carriage did you say he was in?’

  Being in first class, Friday and Melanie were in the carriage closest to the station building. Friday started striding down the platform alongside the train.

  ‘E,’ called Melanie, following at a slower pace.

  The crowd had thinned. The last passenger, an elderly lady with a walking frame was being helped down onto the platform. Friday skirted around her and started jogging towards the final carriages. Behind her a whistle blasted loudly. The automatic doors on the train all slid shut.

  ‘No!’ cried Friday. She broke into a run. She was still twenty metres from Carriage E. ‘Ian!’ she cried.

  The train lurched and slowly started moving.

  Friday sprinted up to Carriage E. The train was starting to pick up pace. She ran as fast as she could. She looked in through the window and saw – Ian wasn’t there. The carriage was only about a third full. She only had a couple of seconds before the train was too fast, but that was enough time to scan the whole carriage. He wasn’t there.

  ‘Friday, STOP!’ Melanie cried.

  He was gone. Friday couldn’t catch a moving train. She stopped running. She turned back to Melanie.

  Melanie looked alarmed. ‘I thought you were going to run out of platform,’ she said.

  Friday looked down and realised she was within a metre of running right off the end and falling onto the tracks.

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Friday. ‘He wasn’t in the carriage.’

  Melanie looked at the train, now disappearing around a bend, as if she expected to see Ian waving from the back window.

  ‘Maybe he got stuck in the bathroom,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Really?’ said Friday sceptically.

  ‘Maybe he got off at the wrong station,’ said Melanie.

  ‘We’ll never find him,’ said Friday. ‘We’ve got no way of contacting him.’

  ‘Skywriting,’ said Melanie.

  ‘We’re on the run,’ said Friday. ‘We’re going to draw attention to ourselves if we do skywriting.’

  ‘You could skywrite a cryptic message,’ said Melanie.

  ‘What? Like Dear Ian, It’s Friday. Meet me at Burger King,’ said Friday.

  ‘No, he’d know it wasn’t you if you wrote that,’ said Melanie. ‘I’ve never seen you eat at a Burger King. No, you could write something like. Ian, will you marry me? Friday.’

  ‘What?’ said Friday. ‘How would that help me find him?’

  ‘It probably wouldn’t,’ said Melanie. ‘But it would give me satisfying closure on this relationship you’ve been teasing me with for years now.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Friday. She tried to gulp in a couple of deep breaths. Her chest felt heavy and tight. She had thought Ian was safely sitting six carriages back from them. She had thought that he would meet them on the platform with his usual laconic smile and perhaps a sarcastic witticism. Now she had to process the fact that he was gone. And she had no idea when or if she would see him again.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Melanie, realising that her friend had stopped coping. ‘He’s smart. He’s good at looking after himself. He’s charming. He’s good at talking his way out of problems. He probably just had to get off the train for some reason.’

  ‘What reason?’ asked Friday. A tear rolled down her cheek. It felt warm in the cold air.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Melanie. ‘But he knows we’re going to CERN. He’ll know to look for us there.’

  ‘We can’t abandon him,’ said Friday.

  ‘You can’t abandon a person if you don’t know where they are,’ said Melanie. ‘We’re not abandoning him. We’re following the plan. He’ll know to re-join the plan as soon as he can.’

  Friday still wasn’t convinced. But she knew there was no point standing on the platform looking out at the empty tracks. She let Melanie lead her down into the station to find the bus depot. She wanted to wait there for Ian. But she could see a police station across the road. It would be better if they kept moving. They skirted around the building to the bus stop.

  ‘If he stayed on the train the next stop is Geneva,’ said Melanie. ‘He won’t come back here. He’ll go straight to CERN from there.’

  This made sense, so Friday begrudgingly got on the bus and soon they were rolling along the motorway, passing freshly ploughed fields lying fallow, waiting for the ground to be warm enough for spring planting.

  The bus stop closest to CERN was Saint Giles de Porte. It was nice enough, but not deeply impressive. It looked a bit like an industrial area dropped in the middle of farmland.

  When they got off at the bus depot, there was a map of the area on the wall. Friday and Melanie stared at it, working out what to do next. Friday was still shell-shocked about Ian’s disappearance. Her brain was not working at all.

  ‘CERN is straight down the road,’ said Melanie, pointing to the Rue de Geneve on the map. ‘We can just walk.’

  ‘It’s two point three kilometres,’ said Friday. ‘We’ll be very visible on foot.’

  ‘Do you want to steal a car?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘No,’ said Friday. ‘Stealing is wrong.’

  ‘Well then, we don’t have much choice,’ said Melanie. ‘We’ve got to walk.’

  ‘I’ve got to walk,’ said Friday. ‘You don’t have to come. You don’t need to be arrested.’

  ‘Friday, if you do get arrested,’ said Melanie. ‘It will be much better if I’m arrested too. My father owns an airline. My mother is richer than my father. And my brother is engaged to the crown princess of Norway. They can’t stuff me in a prison cell and hope no-one notices. I’m your buoyancy vest. Most of the time I don’t do much. I’m just safely stowed under your seat. But in an emergency, I’ll save you from drowning.’

  ‘You’re talking metaphorically, aren’t you?’ said Friday. She was so distracted she couldn’t follow what Melanie was saying.

  ‘Yes,’ said Melanie. ‘Although I’m better at swimming than you too, so it works literally as well. Come on, let’s go.’

  The road was dead straight, so Friday and Melanie hadn’t been walking for long when they spotted border control up ahead. It looked pretty much as you’d expect a border checkpoint to look. It was a single-storey building in the middle of the road, with windows on either side so that motorists could pull up. It looked kind of like a double-sided drive-thru burger restaurant. Only instead of getting over-processed high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar food – they would be questioned by border police. Friday grew more and more nervous the closer they got.

  ‘They’re not stopping anyone going in,’ said Melanie. Her eyesight was better than Friday’s. She hadn’t spent her childhood reading small-print scientific journals all night.

  ‘What?’ said Friday.

  ‘They’re checking all the cars coming this way, out of Switzerland,’ said Melanie. ‘But they’re not stopping anyone going in.’

  Friday peered into the distance. As she watched, a car drove from France into Switzerland. It didn’t even slow for the border post. Whereas the traffic coming the other way was backed up in a long line as border guards carefully searched each vehicle exiting the country. Friday’s brain began to churn into gear.

  ‘It isn’t a passport control,’ said Friday. ‘It’s a customs checkpoint.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘At a passport checkpoint, you have to show your passport,’ said Friday.

  ‘I could have figured that out,’ said Melanie.

  ‘At a customs checkpoint,’ continued Friday, ‘they are checking for smugglers.’

  ‘Ooh, that sounds exciting,’ said Melanie. ‘Like pirates smuggling treasure. Or booty. And by booty, I mean stolen property, not bottoms. That would be weird.’

  ‘There is a lot of looted treasure in Switzerland that was hidden in bank vaults during the Second World War,’ said Friday. ‘But the Swiss government likes to pretend they don’t know about that. Most of the time, the main thing Swiss border control is looking for is grapes.’

  ‘Grapes?’ said Melanie.

  ‘Yes, they’re worried about Swiss grapes being smuggled out to France,’ said Friday.

  ‘But France is already full of grapes,’ said Melanie.

  ‘I know,’ said Friday. ‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But agriculture and winemaking is strictly controlled in Europe by local authorities and red tape. If you’ve got a glut of grapes that you don’t want to spoil before they’re turned into wine, there’s a big temptation to act illegally.’

  As they got closer, they could see half a dozen customs officers bustling about the cars leaving Switzerland. Two officers searched the car, while another inspected the paperwork and a fourth officer checked their information on a tablet computer. Two further officers were taking down the details of the next car in the line. But there was no-one checking the cars or pedestrians going into Switzerland.