It is twenty-three hours and fifty minutes since Maya first saw Seth or Milo or Train Man.
Please please please let him be a commuter and not a tourist.
Maya has got to the train station early so as not to look flustered or dewy, and is already standing at the front end of the platform, where the first carriages will stop. It’s a sunnier, fresher morning than yesterday, reflecting the optimism burning inside her. Gone are the sweatshirt, jeans and Converse in favour of a soft black T-shirt tucked into a large fulsome skirt in a black and white graphic print that swings into swathes at her calves. Red wedges with a raffia heel give Maya the oomph her average-height legs need.
The clock ticks. 8.16 a.m.
There's still time.
Maya rummages in her satchel.
8.17 a.m.
Please come.
She starts to feel ridiculous but still she reapplies lip balm.
8.19 a.m.
Shit. What if he’s further back and I never know. I committed too soon.
Hang on. Did Maya just see Train Man coming through the ticket barrier on the other side of the tracks?
Not sure from this far up. If it was, he probably won’t make it.
8.20 a.m., an Inferior Train pulls in.
I could cry.
The train departs at 8.21 a.m., on time for once. Maya feels small, hope squashed like the flies the train driver is trying to look through on the windscreen in front of him.
Maya sinks into the seat of the Inferior Train and a puff of grey dust hovers in the space between the top of her head and the luggage rack. She swipes a bare arm in front of her face to clear the dust cloud and sees a figure through the thin glass rectangle of the internal door beyond it. Train Man turns a door handle and bows a little so he can walk through the too-small carriage door and into Maya’s life.
Not a tourist. A commuter.
Happy day.
Black rectangles slip a little down his beautiful nose as he ducks his head. Maya is facing backwards today, and can see wide, lovely eyes look around the carriage, searching for a seat.
Please sit near me…
That’s the trouble with Britain. No one talks on public transport. In Mexico City Maya couldn’t hear herself think on the train while women shouted exuberantly across her. In San Salvador people chatted on buses so loudly that Maya didn’t even bother to listen to her iPod, although probably best she kept it out of sight. But this uptight British train carriage is so quiet, Maya can hear the sound of people clenching in their seat. Buttocks on polyester on dirty blue gum-stained seats. How is Train Man supposed to make a connection and fall in love with Maya when she can’t say a word to him? She wants to tell him she won a game show recently. That always makes people a) impressed, b) laugh and c) want to talk to her more. It’s the best chat-up line she’s ever had, but she’s not been able to use it.
Train Man sits down across the aisle from Maya, also facing backwards, and Maya’s heart soars so high, even an Inferior Train can’t quash the wonderful feeling.
If I were to raise my arm a little, I would be able to hold his hand.
Maya can sense that Train Man is having a bad day. Nearly late. Flustered. Glasses not sitting properly on his nose. And now she gets the impression he doesn’t like having to sit backwards. But that’s not the thing that’s making him feel most uncomfortable today. Maya doesn’t know that this morning, as James walked along Sandringham Road, it didn’t feel like the happy kingdom he knew last night. The open windows of the terraced houses blaring out a British victory in the tennis were shut; the bright evening full of bounce and excitement at the prospect of giving a gift had turned flat; the really good fish ’n’ chips from his new local chip shop gave him a knot in his stomach. And the four hundred pound art print was still scrunched up on the floor where Kitty dropped it. Maya doesn’t know any of that.
To make matters worse, as James sat down in his seat on a train he nearly missed, he remembered he should be preparing for a pitch he and Dominic have to deliver later in the week but all he wants to do is get lost in a book.
He opens the backpack he only just placed on the floor between his legs and takes out his book.
Maya tries to glance into Train Man’s bag for more clues by only moving her eyes and not turning her head.
Calm, methodical, gentle. Words tumble onto James’s lap. He forgets the Donwood, he forgets the fact he should be reading up on depilatory products and enters another world, oblivious to everyone around him. Oblivious to the girl he didn’t notice yesterday even though she was dressed almost identically to him. Oblivious to the effort she has made today in a fifties-style tight tee and swirly skirt. Oblivious to her soft chestnut-brown hair with caramel-tinged tips, her faint freckles, her small waist and her strong, if not spectacular, legs. James gets lost in One Hundred Years Of Solitude, in Macondo and a world away from Maya.
Did he even notice me?
Maya strokes her straightened hair, today’s more polished version of herself that Jacob laughed at as she left home this morning.
‘Sucking up to the boss?’ he teased.
Of course he didn’t notice, he was looking for a seat, he’s not looking for me.