Semi-Detached Marriage by Sally Wentworth

at the self-service
counter and eventually managed to get a coffee and a sandwich, but then had to
stand up to eat them because all the seats round the tables were taken; not
that Cassie particularly wanted to sit down when she saw the white plastic
tables piled with dirty crockery, their surfaces unwiped and wet with spilt
drinks.
    After half an hour she went back to the desk
anddemanded to know what was happening.
    'I'm sorry, madam,' the receptionist told
her, `but all flights to Scotland have been grounded indefinitely because of
freezing fog that's come down in the Glasgow and Edinburgh area.'
    `Indefinitely?' Cassie stared at the man in
horror. `But haven't you any idea how long it's going to be?'
            
    `Sorry, we've just got to wait until the fog
lifts.'
            
    `But that might not be until tomorrow!'
    'That's possible, quite likely even,' the man
said with a shrug, then pointed out, 'But perhaps, if you don't want to wait,
you might consider going by train? I could phone through and book you a seat on
the night express to Glasgow if you like?'
    Cassie hesitated only a moment; there was no
way she wanted to go home and then come all the way out to the airport again
tomorrow. 'Yes, all right, do that for me, would you? And book me a sleeper,
please.'
    The receptionist phoned through while Cassie
thought miserably of the long journey ahead, but at least she'd be able to get
some sleep on the way. But that, too, was to be denied her in this worst of all
weeks.
    'I'm sorry, Mrs. Ventris, but all the
sleepers have been taken, but I've managed to get you a first class seat. The
train leaves at nine thirty.'
    'Thanks.' Cassie picked up her case again and
walked out into the cold air to get a taxi to take her back into London.
    She spent the hours on the train in reading a
novel that she'd bought at the bookstall in the station. She had also had a
meal in the restaurant there because there was no buffet car on the train, so
at least she wasn't hungry, only extremely bored as the high-speed train
scorched through the night, past towns whose inhabitants were snugly tucked up
in bed or seated in front of the fire, watching television. Cassie pictured
them in her imagination and heartily envied them, her only comfort that she
would be with Simon in just a few more hours.
    Towards midnight it grew colder, despite the
heating, and when she lifted up the blind she saw that it was snowing, large
driving flakes that pelted the windows of the swiftly moving train. They
stopped only three times on the way up, at Birmingham, Manchester and Carlisle,
close to the Scottish border.
    At the latter station Cassie got up to
stretch her legs and noted gloomily that the snow was already quite deep,
clinging to the roofs and blowing into drifts at every exposed corner. But at
least there was no fog here, although that didn't necessarily mean that there
wouldn't be any further north in Glasgow, of course, but Cassie lived in hope.
    And she was right; there wasn't any fog when
she finally arrived in Glasgow in the early hours of the morning, just snow, a
blinding, raging blizzard of snow that had taken every taxi off the streets and
left them white and deserted, so that it looked more like Moscow in the depths
of winter than anything else. Cassie took one look at it and hurried back into
the station to find a phone. First she tried the airport, only to be told that
conditions in the north-west were even worse than in Glasgow and that
nothing-planes or helicopters— would be taking off until the blizzard stopped.
Next she tried to phone Simon, but had to go through the operator and there was
a great deal of delay and wrong connections until she finally got through to
him.
    'Cassie?' he exclaimed in sleepy surprise
when he heard her voice, then, on a sharper note, `What is it? What's
happened?'
    `The plane couldn't take off because there
was fog in Glasgow, so I took a train,' she explained. 'But now there's