Five(15)

“I’ve interrupted something,” he says. “I thought you were expecting me.” He folds his arms, noticing the blood-stained cushion that landed at the foot of the stairs on his right.

“No, I mean, you’re not interrupting anything at all, and of course, yes I was expecting you, two on the dot,” she says faster than she can think of the words. She wants to say no, she was not expecting him, no, she had never expected any of this. That what she expects and what she gets are usually very different.

She stands in front of him, smiles, and pulls at the fingers of her gloves one at a time as she peels them off and says, “I must look absolutely mad,” and she half laughs with false confidence.

She uses her teeth to pull at the last finger, the limp gloves in her hand like dark dead roses. And he says, “Absolutely.” He smiles using the slight gap between his teeth to its full effect.





Time





Destination





Expected




                       1st 7:06

                        London Victoria

                        3 min



                       South London Service formed of 8 coaches.



                       2nd 7:13

                        Bedford

                        10 min





07:03




The train is one station away, and the driver is about to release the brake at 7:03 and nine seconds, but he stops. The doors in the seventh carriage are not closed. There is a middle-aged man, a partner at an accounting firm, in head-to-toe yellow Rapha cycling gear blocking the doors with his carbon-fiber Pinarello. He’s having trouble getting on board. It is only his third time taking the bike onto the train with the intention of then cycling from Victoria Station to his office, as many of his suburban brethren do. He hates cycling, but he found this out only after he spent ?500 on his cycling clothes and helmet and ?3,000 on the bike. He made the purchases after a recent dinner party because cycling was all the other dads of his son’s friends would talk about, so he thought he would give it a try. He thought he might get invited on their Saturday morning cycle rides. And of course, if he was invited, he couldn’t just turn up in a T-shirt with his old mountain bike. So he got all the gear, but the invitation still hasn’t come. He thinks it might be because they don’t think he can keep up with them yet. Or because of what his son did to that other kid. Or what they all know he did to his son when he found out about it.

Realizing that his reflective, waterproof backpack is obstructing the door, he shuffles in, moves his bike further into the carriage, rolls it over a stranger’s foot accidentally, and mutters, “Sorry, sorry, so sorry.” The doors close, then open again and then close, and the train driver releases the brake, and as the train gets under way and picks up speed, the accountant examines his Lycra reflection in the train door windows and wonders why rich people can’t just do cocaine at dinner parties like they used to, instead of shaming one another into elitist exercise trends.

The other passengers shift in their seats. Three people internally curse the delay caused by the accountant, one looks at him and says, “Tory piece of shit,” under her breath, others ignore their nagging bladders, two turn up the volume of their audiobooks to drown out the woman at the other end of the carriage who is shouting into her phone, and another tries not to get caught looking at the saucy text chain being read by the passenger next to them. Some catch up on work emails. Some drink their morning tea from travel mugs. All is proceeding the way it does every weekday morning on this train on this track.

However, the travelers on Platform 1 are currently living the moments that later they will come to think of as before—before they recognized the fragility of life, before they comprehended the impermanence of the body, before they hoped that repentance of the soul was real. Before they witnessed the death. Some of them will do something to defy their destiny. Some of them will stay out of the way. Some of them were born knowing there is nothing they can do. Some were born believing they can do anything. Regardless of their individual outlooks, the result will be the same.

Review everyone’s positions. Consider what they might do next. Consider what you know that they do not, and will not, until it happens, until the train that is headed toward them is unable to stop in time.

Emma and Liam are on the tracks. Liam is holding Emma’s phone in the air to lure her back onto the platform.

Gideon is attached to Liam’s back, yelling, “That’s Mama’s!” trying to get Emma’s phone off Liam by biting into his neck.