Once more the carriages began to rattle as the train's speed decreased. Noise from those in the aisles in anticipation, and then as the doors swooshed open, the late-night, nocturnal crowd thinned out further. Harry felt secure. Not yet had the uneasy sensation that had started to rise and swell earlier been given a chance to creep. Various abstract possibilities sloshed through his mind.
Tantalising ways of life. Almost impossible trajectories.
'How was your night, anyway?'
'Good yeah. Saw some old mates. It's hard to see them now, really. We went to Jalland's, lovely. Excellent. You heard of it?'
'Ah. They've got one in Sloane Square, well, near Sloane Square? Sure I went there once.'
'Sloane Square? Mmm. Didn't know there was one there to be honest. I thought it was new.'
'Wait. What did you say. Jalland's? No. Actually I'm thinking of Joolans.'
'Joolans, right.'
'Totally different.'
'Yes.'
The train swaying. More echoey since the last stop, where the surround-sound noise had seemed to depart at once with the moving-off current of tipsy bodies. The silence suddenly felt burdensome.
'Sloane Square's not really my kind of area.' He felt feeble, cleared his throat.
'I mean, there's nothing wrong with it... what?! Don't pull that face. Ha, sorry. I just don't normally go there, that's all.'
'You'd be surprised.'
He was considering a deft response when, under the required splash of downlight, his eyes caught a long scar on the junction of her neck and backbone. It suddenly jumped into Harry's eyes, a dim but visible thread, like a vein of protruding rock through sand. He assumed it was a brief glance, but her eyes followed his and she stopped.
'Brutal right.'
'Sorry. What...'
'You noticed.'
Distances getting closer.
'Bloom, she kicked me off, she got too excited. I can't blame her.' Extra intensity swirling. 'Bloom.' He thought he already knew but she went on.
'My horse.'
His face flushed. More ghosts gathered. It was as though he'd begun to watch an episode of his younger existence on repeat, on slo-mo. Rare. Surreal.
'Sorry. Ah. Were you OK? When was it?'
'2010. OK, yeah, in the end. I was dragged off, and straight onto the ground, smashed my head. But the scar's from a branch, just before I got there.'
Life and its nuances are sometimes not worth questioning. If you draw the correct lines from the data, then it's possible to make out an unexpected symmetry.
'I was on painkillers then, for a long time, still a little now, but not so much. They make me wrecked though. I sleep a lot, I'm really drowsy.'
Harry had already half-stopped listening. Because the tale was deeply familiar to him, or at least the skeleton of it was. Her words resembling the floury but immensely tactile narrative of a dream. But what now?
'I know... .'
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