The Girl Who Didn't Know What To Believe

met in a long time.
The fields soon gave way to factories, blocks of flats
and playgrounds, and it was time for Meritxell to brush the
crumbs off, repack her bag, and get ready to disembark.
Eva and Hillary were carrying on to the next station, and
continued talking as one person who had split into two:
“Lovely to meet you”, “Such a delight”, “Try reading Aristotle”,
“But just don’t believe anything he says”, “Except
when it’s true”, even as the train was slowing down. As
Meritxell left, they were starting to pour out more tea.
Meritxell and Hume climbed onto the platform, where
Aunt Dora was already waiting. Dora was being practical
and acting as if everything was normal, much like Meritxell’s
Mother, as she greeted them and took the suitcase.
It was a short walk from the station to the apartment,
and they rode up in the lift to the very top. Meritxell put
her stuff into the room she always stayed in, put a blanket
down for Hume, and stared out over the city, with the people
crawling like ants down below, and the rooftops shining
in the sunshine and stretching into the distance. Life wasn’t
back to normal, it was still very strange and different, and
the train journey with Eva and Hillary felt like a dream that
might or might not have happened at all. But her tears in
the train seemed to have washed part of the stress of the
previous day away. It did for the first time since Grandpa’s
turn, feel better rather than worse, in the way it does when
you’ve started tidying your room, even though you know
you have most of it to do still.
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