A Night on the Orient Express by Veronica Henry Read Free Book Online Page A

that?’
    ‘Doesn’t everyone?’
    Jay tore the page carefully out of the magazine and folded it up.
    ‘What sort of competition is it?’ Archie was even more suspicious now.
    ‘Never you mind.’
    A nurse stepped out of a door. ‘Jay Hampton.’
    The two men looked at each other.
    ‘Do you want me to come in with you?’ asked Archie.
    Jay shook his head. ‘Nah. I won’t be long.’ He got up, stuffing the page he had torn out of the magazine into his pocket.
    Archie looked down at the grey, institutional carpet, lining his feet up carefully inside one of the tiles. He didn’t have a good feeling. Jay was defiantly optimistic; Archie was filled with dread.
    The two of them had grown up on neighbouring farms in the heart of the Cotswolds. Jay’s parents had recently sold up, weary of the tough times that farmers were facing and knowing their children didn’t want to follow them into the business. Archie, conversely, was playing the dutiful son, helping his father run the family farm. They just managed to keep it afloat by selling prime organic lamb and beef, while his mother rented out the courtyard of barns they had converted into holiday lets. This venture had proved such a success that Archie started a business advising other farmers on how to do the same, and set up a farm holiday website through which all the bookings could be coordinated. A couple of girls helped him run it from the farm office, and it was ticking over very nicely. Archie might not be wealthy, but he had a tiny cottage on the farm, and a Morgan sports car, and two border terriers called Sid and Nancy – what more could he want?
    Jay, meanwhile, was renting a house with a workshop in the next village where he’d set up in business restoring and renovating old beds. The idea of getting a proper job horrified him, despite his first-class honours degree. He could have done anything, but he wanted to work for himself, to decide what time he got up in the morning, to choose his own hours.
    ‘Everyone needs a bed,’ he told Archie. ‘And everyone loves their bed. And everyone loves old beds . . . brass beds, iron beds, wooden beds. Watch me. I’ll make a fortune.’
    Jay had the entrepreneurial spirit all right. He knew just how to market himself. His brochures were lush and stunningly photographed: just the right side of decent yet with an erotic allure. His good looks made him perfect interview fodder for the interiors magazines and the Sunday supplements, and he interviewed well. A Jay Hampton bed became a status symbol, the middle-class must-have to sit alongside the Jo Malone candles and the White Company bedding. The beds were selling as quickly as he could reclaim them from the scrapyard and then work his magic on them, sandblasting and powder-coating them back to perfection. And he was right – he was making a fortune. If Archie hadn’t loved his friend so much, he could have gone right off him, but they were still as thick as thieves, years after leaving school. They suited each other down to the ground. They were wildly different, but they balanced each other out. Jay, maverick and spontaneous. Archie, solid and reliable.
    Then Jay went on holiday to Thailand for two weeks of sun and adventure and felt ropey once he got back. Tired. Not his usual energetic self. He had a persistent cough and lost weight. Archie worried about the change in him. He thought that perhaps he had taken things a step too far in Thailand. Jay was always a risk-taker and a thrill-seeker. He did bungee jumps, threw himself off cliffs into the sea, ate unidentifiable food with the natives. Archie wondered if he had picked up some virus on his holiday, and persuaded him to go to the doctor.
    ‘They’re not easy to get rid of, these bugs. You could do yourself serious damage if you don’t get it seen to.’
    Jay phoned him a week later. His voice was bright. ‘You were right, Archie. There is something the matter. I’ve got leukaemia.’
    Only the