When I opened my eyes again, the two girls were
in the carriage. They looked friendly, so I said, ‘Hullo.’
‘Hi!’ they said.
‘You're American,’ I said.
‘Or Canadian. Right?’ ‘American,’ the taller girl said. She smiled.
‘And you're twenty-three, your name’s Tom Walsh, you’ve got blue eyes
and your mum lives in Burnham-on Sea, UK. Right?’ ‘How did you know all
that?’ I asked. The second girl laughed. ‘She looked at your passport.
It’s in your coat pocket.’ ‘Oh. Right.’ My coat was on the seat next to
me. I took my passport out of my pocket and put it back in my bag. ‘Who are
you, then?’ I asked. They told me. Melanie and carol from Los Angeles, USA.
They liked Europe, they said. They knew a lot of places – Britain, Holland,
Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece… ‘I’m
going to Bulgaria now,’ I said. ‘For about a month. Then I’m going south
for the winter. Cyprus, or perhaps North Africa.’ ‘Oh yes?’ they said.
‘We love Bulgaria. Sofia’s a great town.
Wonderful.’ ? What do you do about money?’ I asked. ‘Well, you know,’
Carol smiled. ‘Sometimes we get a little job. This and that. But what about
you??’ ‘Yeah, come on,’ Melanie said. ‘Tell us about you – Tom Walsh
with the blue eyes and the mum in Burnham-on-Sea. What are you doing with your
life, hey?’ So I told them. They were nice girls. They were older than me,
perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight, but I liked them. We talked and laughed
for hours. I told them a lot of stories about my life. Some of the stories were
true, some weren’t. But the girls laughed and said I was a great guy. I asked
them about Bulgaria because I didn’t know the country. They knew Sofia well,
they said.
