Waiting in the cold. Waiting in the dank. The train finally pulled in, beaming impressively as it cut through the foggy darkness around the platforms. Fortunately he was able to grab a window seat, before the inevitable scramble of this and other stations.
His carriage a sanctuary of sorts. Dim beige lighting and bold-red seats adorned with a faint patchwork in a paler red.
They rolled slowly through the centre of the metropolis, its indomitable backdrop of rising steel and glass bars and Battenberg-cake lights. And soon they ground to a halt at West.
The carriage beginning to bulge. But one of the first ones on, in his peripheral vision simply a rushing silhouette, dropped into the seat next to him.
'I presume this is free,' she said, and it was more a statement than question. Harry nodded, and immediately anticipated she'd be a chatty one. He turned down his headphone music. But she'd already started so he heard a fractured bit of sentence '... and getting worse.'
'Sorry?'
'These kids at the station.'
'Ah yeah. What did they do?'
'Nothing tonight. I mean generally.'
'Yeah. You've gotta be careful. All the time. It's busy tonight?'
To amplify his point a welter of YouTube bombast flooded the carriage.
'Haven't seen it like this for ages. Can't get on the train, almost. I don't mind it that much I guess. You look sad.'
'What. Oh. No. I'm fine. End of the night I suppose.'
He glanced side-long at himself in the reflective glass, and it's true that his emergent melancholy was visible on the surface. Then he glanced back, and although not directly at this sociable soul, he recognised an echo of something that had captured him distantly, in another era - it panged faintly as though it were not really him.
Incredible, after everything, how such forces are known, and exclusive.
'Sure. Haha. Where are you going?'
'Silvertown.'
'Ah, further than me.'
'Right.'
'I'll get a lift from Max, it's not that far then. To be honest, I like it out there. Bored of all of this.'
She nodded towards the gradually shrinking tangle of creeping office blocks, peppered with and given an anachronistic after-hours life by the odd solitary light.
'You been here long then?'
'Four years now. About that. Max's family are from around there. Max, my partner.'
His stomach plummeted. But the sensation was distant, removed from him.
'Mmm.'
'Just come back off tour, again. That suits him. And me, I think. Round there you can get in and out quickly anyway. You can get into the airport, back down here. So yeah, good for us.'
The rhythmic groove of the carriages.
'And we can build, or just keep the land, got a bit of plant stuff, veg, herbs, sound good? You don't seem impressed.'
Shocked, he was, mainly. She'd displayed a talent for speaking with such a flow and meandering quality that he'd seen in only one person before. Uncanny, especially on this day. But probably just a coincidence, right? But just her doing this simple act likewise brought it back, that blinding talent, in a sense proved it didn't have to stay dead.
'No, you're fine. It's just...'
'Sorry, I go on. Ha. Without me here though you'd just be staring into space.'
'Ppfhh yeah. Like every train ride.'
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