James sits at a small dining table, leaning against the wall in a room with little natural light. A large orange lampshade made of glass illuminates muesli and cornflakes, which James raises to his mouth slowly and rhythmically. The sound of James eating makes Kitty place her coffee cup on the table with an agitated bang. She scrunches her face semi-apologetically, mostly revealing surprise at her own force, but doesn’t say anything.
James stares into the space of the front room and the front door ahead of him, unfazed by the thump, then puts his hand over his mouth to stifle a springtime sneeze.
Kitty scowls.
‘How about a career change?’ James says, breaking the silence with a bombshell – to see if Kitty is listening, more than anything else.
Pale brows furrow.
‘I love my job.’
‘Not you, me.’
‘James, I’m late. I really need to get my train. What are you talking about – and why the bloody hell bring it up now?’
James shrugs and raises his breakfast to his lips with a lacklustre spoon.
Kitty ruffles her hair in exasperation before slicking it back down with a pang of guilt. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘I was thinking of retraining, becoming a photographer.’
‘What? Are you crazy? Be some diva photographer’s bitch like that guy you went to South Africa with? Work for peanuts for five years until you realise you gave up a good salary for nothing?’
‘I don’t care about the money, I’d rather do something I loved.’
‘Yes but little hobbies don’t pay the rent.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’
‘Get real, James.’
James watches as Kitty slings a large canvas bag bursting with folders and files, angles protruding, over her shoulder blade.
‘I have to go.’ She turns on a low heel and opens the front door.
James tries to finish his mouthful of breakfast to say goodbye but he’s not quick enough. The door slams.
‘Bye,’ James says, to no one.
*
Doors ding, lights illuminate, and the throng of commuters who gather at that spot on that platform every morning edge into the carriage. It’s an Inferior Train and James is worried that his day, which started badly, is going to continue in this vein. As he boards the train, he sees a man in a three-piece suit and remembers he has a 10 a.m. catch-up with Sebastian and Duncan from Fisher + Whyman, who have reverted to formal type since the sundowners and shorts of South Africa. For the second half of the meeting Sebastian and Duncan will bring in Cynthia and Mike from Fisher + Whyman’s beauty division to talk to MFDD about a pitch they want James and Dominic to give for a haircare brand. James curses himself for not remembering to dress a little smarter today than his raglan top, jeans and Converse.
The man with the red nose, who always gasps in the last of a John Player Special Blue on his approach to the station, turns right into the carriage and James follows him, despite the lingering smell of nicotine, tar and formaldehyde, because he knows that red nose is good at sniffing out hidden seats on an Inferior Train.
James lowers his backpack off his shoulders so as not to knock anyone, and follows the man towards three remaining seats in a set of five that are squashed together in the middle of the train.
Two seats face forward, three seats face backwards, no table between, just knees trying not to knock other knees. The man with the red nose sits facing forwards in the last seat of the pair. Two of the three seats facing backwards remain. The window seat is already taken by the large woman who chews her nails. James takes the worst of the remaining two, the one in the middle, and slumps in.
Why did I pick the middle seat?
The seat on James’s left is free, he weighs up whether it’s best to be squished in next to the woman who chews her nails or slide along to the aisle seat where he’ll be knocked into by the commuters who are forced to stand.
Before James can properly consider his options, a girl slumps into the last remaining seat next to him and for a second their outer thighs touch, before she quickly pulls her leg away. James tries not to look at her but he already knows that it is the girl with wavy hair and beautiful shoulders. He saw her asleep one time, which afforded him the chance to look up and notice that the curve of her collarbone looked so creamy, dappled with the tiniest sparkles of brown, that he wanted to run his finger along it, but he looked straight back down and carried on reading, hoping she hadn’t heard his thoughts.
James opens The Road and tries to find the page with the corner folded over neatly. He looks down. Green bows distract him from a reluctant rendezvous with a father and a son in hell. The train snakes slowly, sleepily, expectantly along the track for thirty tense minutes.
*
‘Can I give you this?’
The girl with the wavy hair and the smooth shoulders has risen from her seat and is standing awkwardly on the cusp of five blue faux-velveteen seats. Figures in the aisle wonder what the girl is doing, getting up prematurely to get out of the space she was fortunate to have had, and they stand firm huffily.
We’re not stopping yet.
She had a seat.
I’m not moving.
I can’t move.
James looks up. The sun shining through the window illuminates brown and orange eyes and he wonders why the girl with the wavy hair is standing looking at him.
What did I do?
‘Sorry?’ he says.
‘Can I just give you this?’ Maya says again, this time even more self-consciously; face reddening, pulse quickening, knowing more ears are pricking up this second time around.
James takes buds out of his ears. He thinks he caught what she said this time but is still confused as to why the girl who gets his train is standing over him. Smartly dressed in a green and white silk blouse tucked into grey culottes that stop below her knees, showing slender ankles anchored to the carriage floor by green bows.
‘Er, yeah sure,’ James says, taking the folded piece of white paper from Maya, hands not touching, not knowing that the paper is slightly less crisp and pristine than it was eleven days ago and that it now it has a horizontal fold cutting through her words.
Maya lets go of the note and turns awkwardly on a pressing heel. Without saying another word, she clutches her bag to her tummy and sees she is blockaded in. She says a few polite but firm ‘excuse me’s to people reluctant to move out of her way until they are ready to get off.
She had a seat, now she wants to get off before me.
The cheek!
I’ve got to get out of here.
James unfolds the note and reveals the dimple in his left cheek as he reads, although Maya has already gone, a heart hurting with relief and curiosity. Hoping three sentences and a friendly sign-off will change her life. Later today she will discover it won’t.
*
‘Bloody hell, Millsy, you’re a jammy bastard aren’t you?’
James blushes and laughs. ‘Why does that shit never happen to me?’ Dominic is sitting on James’s desk, scratching his chin, pudgy brown eyes re-reading the letter. ‘Is she fit?’
James thinks of the girl with the wavy hair – Maya Flowers – and the curve of her collarbone leading to her neck.
‘I dunno, I hadn’t really noticed.’
‘Bollocks. She gets your train every day and you hadn’t noticed her? So if you’re not gonna tell me, then she’s either really fit or really butters. And if she was butters you wouldn’t have shown me this.’ Dominic flaps the note in the air as if it’s the golden ticket.
James laughs, a slightly proud laugh, and changes the subject.
‘Come on, Duncan and Sebastian are in reception, let’s sort our strategy.’
‘What are you going to say to her?’
‘Who, Cynthia?’
‘Not Cynthia. Crazy Train Lady. What will you say to her?’
‘That I have a girlfriend of course.’
‘And will you tell Kitty?’
‘Of course I will, we have no secrets,’ James says as they head to meet the team from Fisher + Whyman, wondering when it would ever come up with Kitty, given they barely communicate at all.