It’s past midnight now. The station is deserted; the only sound is the haunting flap of a pigeon’s wings. My train to Manchester cancelled, I’m forced to stay here until the next one. I feel I should text Luke to tell him that I’ll be late, but my battery is dead. Hopefully he won’t worry too much.
My heavy bag has fallen over by my feet. I clasp my hand around the paper cup in my hands. Even the warmth of the coffee in the biting cold is unable to distract me. A figure is occupying my attention. She entrances me. She wouldn’t look out of place in a costume drama. But this is the 21st century, as depressing as it might be. Perhaps she’s mad, one of those token people that every community has. But just doing things in a certain way doesn’t make you mad, does it? Sure, she was there all the time, sitting in old-fashioned clothes, never moving… Okay, the odds were stacked against her, I admit.
She’s always there. She never moves, simply sits, watching. She never twitches, not even to brush the persistent hair from her face, although it must be irritating.
The trains come and go with a roar-the groan of heavy luggage and the clatter of running feet. Most people at the station, like me, are in a rush, wanting to be whisked away, to be anywhere but this station. But she never leaves her seat; the only movement is the fluttering of petticoats around her ankles.
I have tried to follow her gaze but she seems to stare at nothing in particular, her aquamarine eyes peeping from behind thick lashes. She occasionally blinks. Her skin is like a china doll’s. It has started to rain. She still just stares. The drops soak her skirts, her velvet jacket, her hair.
Whenever I see her on the usual commute, people don’t give her a second thought. Youths try to break her gaze. They grab hold of her shoulders and point. Businessmen ignore her. To them she’s like a piece of track, or a brick in the wall. But the children at the station become enchanted with her. Clutching at their mother’s hands, they look towards the woman, eyes wide. Their mothers simply drag them away.
I can’t handle the silence any longer. The boredom strangles my soul and I still have at least five hours to wait. I have to go and try and say hi, even if just for sheer politeness. Very British social talk about the weather and delays and what the queen had for breakfast or something else utterly ridiculous, while the other person tells you of how the shop had ran out of normal milk and that soy milk is simply not the same. Even that type of talk was better than nothing. And finding out anything about the mysterious figure at the end of the platform would be something.
I stand up, the screech of metal chair legs against concrete piercing the air. I don’t want to sneak up on her, it seems cruel. But charging over making masses of noise seems inappropriate. As she sits there, she looks like a museum artefact. I step carefully over the concrete, trying not to make any sudden movements. I wonder why I’m being so ridiculous.
My foot makes contact with a discarded can. I jump. It bounces metallically, comes to a stop, then rattles again in the breeze. She doesn’t even flinch.
Something tells me that I shouldn’t bother. But, then, my heart is too soft. I want to make sure she’s okay, I suppose.
She still hasn’t noticed me walking towards her, my solitary footsteps tramping the pavement in the clumsy fashion of someone with a too heavy bag on their back. I stop and sit on the bench beside her, putting my bag on the ground with a thud. I don’t want to intimidate her so I sit on the very edge. The bench is ice cold. I put my head down and try to look as if I am in deep thought. I peep across at her through my own stubby lashes.
She’s just as much of an enigma up close. I can smell faint wafts of lavender scented soap and freshly washed cotton. Her hair is more knotted and tangled than it had looked from further away. It’s simply tied up behind her head.
The silence is agonising. She doesn’t seem to have registered that the only other person in the station has moved purposely to sit next to her. Or she’s making it look like she hasn’t noticed. That’s always a possibility.
I feel suddenly slightly hot. Like I’m not supposed to be here. There is something about her which makes me feel uncomfortable and out of place, like a chess piece in a game of draughts, or a Polly Pocket trying to talk to a Barbie.
Whilst I shuffle and fidget, she is statuesque. I root around in my bag for my water bottle. I have never seen her drink anything.
I haven’t seen her eat either but who turns down free food?
I search through my bag once more, and produce a packet of biscuits. Chocolate digestives: the biscuit barrel staple.
I take one out of the packet, and pop it in my mouth. I brush the crumbs from my top and proffer the packet in her direction.
She doesn’t respond.
I shake it slightly.
Still no response.
I clear my throat.
Nothing.
The rain has stopped.
“Excuse me?” I struggle to get the words to sound right, or even come out at all. I am normally so confident. She doesn’t seem to hear me. I continue anyway.
“Would you like a biscuit?” The question sounds stupid now it’s out in the air. I brandish the packet towards her once again.
She still fails to react. It’s like she can’t hear me. Perhaps she can’t.
Or she’s ignoring me.
If she’s deaf, I’ll have to make myself more noticeable. I suddenly wish I had taken that sign language class at uni. I move slightly closer to her. No warmth comes off her body, and I can only just about hear her breathing.
She still refuses to move.
And then, just when I think all is lost and I’m sentenced to spending the night ‘alone’ on the freezing platform, I hear something. The voice is well spoken, but soft. It is for my ears only (although no one else would have heard even if she’d shouted). One tiny word. A solitary word. I turn to her. Her eyes have changed, her pupils wider. She is staring at me.
I jump and have to stop myself screaming. It is so sudden. Before I would have relished the slightest glimmer of movement. Now the prospect petrifies me.
I have to leave. I can’t stay here, not now. Her eyes are piercing. I can feel myself staring back and have to pull myself away. The corners of her small pink lips turn up in a smirk.
I pick up my stuff in a hurry. The biscuits crumble in my grasp, a small shower of crumbs falling to the floor. I wrestle my bag over my shoulder, not caring that my coat is caught up in the strap. She continues to look at me.
I stand up, and smile at her politely, because I’m afraid. She makes no gesture in return. I walk as quickly as I can. There’s a hostel the other side of the road. That would do. I turn briefly to see her still staring at me. The rest of her body hasn’t moved, only her head.
I reach the exit and step back out onto the streets, and normality. A laugh, fills the abandoned station behind me, like the sound of glass quivering on the verge of being shattered.
When I reached the hostel, I was unable to pay attention to anything. I have vague memories of trying to pay for the room with my Boots Advantage Card and the woman having none of it. She carried on puffing away on her cigarette and no doubt writing some bitchy text to her best mate about the weird woman trying to pay for with a loyalty card with her overly long nailed other hand. I also had managed to book myself into a shared room. I hadn’t paid attention to the damp clinging to the ceiling above my bunk bed, or the occasional scuttle of what sounded like tiny claws scrabbling along the floor. The word had overpowered all the noise from the drunken group banging about in the corridors, and the much too loud parle of the French couple across the room. I got an hour’s sleep, and that was all the word.
The word still hasn’t left me. It’s been six months. The days pass in a blur of paperwork and train journeys. I’m on autopilot. At night I lay awake, hearing the word ringing in my ears. My mind can’t handle it.
Luke is worrying about me, my constant distance, my shouts and screams. He booked me into some anxiety class. It didn’t help. He’s starting to look more and more strained, but he can’t hear the word. It’s like a broken record with no chance of ever being fixed. I want to escape.
A couple of weekends ago he took me away. A change of scenery, he said. Although it felt like something more. The Lake District was perfect, beautiful, secluded. But the word never left me. A week ago I overheard him talking desperately on the phone. When I entered, he kissed me on the forehead and walked away mumbling something about his mum. I haven’t seen him since.
I saw an ex work colleague early a couple of mornings later. She stopped and smiled at me, a Versace suit adorning her curvaceous body. I stood slightly hunched over, my Tesco suit crumpled and baggy. “How have you been?” She asked, her white teeth glimmering as brightly as the diamond earrings. I muttered some kind of polite response, hoping that what I was saying was vaguely relevant. The word was the only thing I was really paying attention to. I asked her how she was. She then prattled on for the next quarter of an hour about her new jet set lifestyle since getting that new job. Her doctor and part time model husband. Her holidays on private yachts around the Maldives. I think she asked how I was doing, how Luke was. I think I mumbled some words and then hurried away. The word had decided that the conversation was over.
I still have to go to the station. There is no escaping work and mundane capitalism. The to-ing and the fro-ing never stops.
When I get off the train, she is the first and the last thing I look for when I get on the next train to Derby. As I always did. Almost every day. The same journey.
I get off the train and can’t see her. I look around panicked, trying to find her. But she isn’t here. I walk to the bench. One of the ignorant businessmen sits there, next to the emptiness. No one else seems to notice that she’s disappeared.
I ask the man. He raises his eyebrows at me, over his glasses and copy of the Guardian. I ask again. He shakes his head frantically and moves as far as possible away from me. I check the waiting rooms, the toilets, the overly priced café. I run out of the station. Perhaps she actually left? But she’s nowhere to be seen. I’ve lost her.
I return, out of breath. The station is crowded, something you only notice as an observer. In the midst of everything, it doesn’t seem to matter. But now it makes it a chore to cross the platform especially when you can hardly concentrate on your own thoughts. I try to find a seat. But only one is left. The one I don’t want.
I have to sit down.
The seat is cold like before, the paint slightly worn and flaking. I stare across. At the wall. I become fascinated by the bricks, the slightly crumbling cement holding them together. I hear the announcement of my train coming in. I hear the train leave again.
I was only one train away from normality.
Now I am transfixed. I can no longer leave. The word is at the forefront of all I do. The constant commute will be no more. The word is still in my head, but quieter. I watch the sun rise. I watch the sun set. The bricks never change. The station is now my home, my work place, my everything. No one has tried to find me. It dawns upon me that this is it.
I will never see her again. Now I have taken her place. The word is still there, but fainter. It is now my responsibility.