Halfway to Calais

About this book

Seventy years after the Channel Tunnel Railway opened, a hundred metres under the sea, a line of brass divides a frontier hall: Britain on one side, France on the other. In the summer of 1961 seventeen-year-old Nell Hatch pours tea on the British side, and Rémi Caudron, eighteen, a rule-loving apprentice in the French tunnel fire brigade, guards a smoke door on the other. Tea goes over the line. Insults go over it in two bad languages. A kiss happens with one foot in each country. Then on 26 August a freight train burns, a door closes three minutes late, a man is badly hurt, and Rémi takes the blame. Now Nell is giving evidence to the Anglo-French inquiry, and she promises she will tell you exactly what happened. She is very convincing. But how much of it is true?