Five(46)

Outfit on point, he is ready to leave for the station. It’s important to look like it’s a regular day and he’s just a guy on his way somewhere, waiting for the train so no one suspects him. Before he goes, Sonny looks around his flat where he once lived with his mother, where she spoke to the ghost of his father, where she died. She had chosen the spare bedroom to stay in once they knew the end was coming. She wanted Sonny to have the main bedroom when the flat was his and she did not want him to have the memory of her dying there. He walks into the spare bedroom now and lies down on the floor where he used to sleep in her final weeks and tries to feel her, hear her, but there is only silence.

His mother tried so hard to fix it: it—his addiction—it—his brain—it—his hyperactivity, his not fitting into a world that was not built for people like him. Her unshakable belief that he was hampered by it and that if only it could be medicated, accommodated, recognized, controlled, his life would be different, he would be like everyone else, better than everyone else. But it and Sonny are one. There is no Sonny without it, and there is no addiction and no attention deficit and no depression without Sonny. He is the common denominator.

He is about to turn off the lights and leave for the station when a thought occurs to him. On the back of an alumni magazine from his old prep school that is on the table with the rest of the post he writes, “Gabriela, it’s not your fault. Please make sure Valentina gets the flat. Thanks.”

Sonny locks the door and starts his walk to the station. He walks through the streets of the suburb he has known for most of his life, a place where his mother did not fit and where he fit even less, but that was, in the end, their home. He arrives at the station. He checks his watch. It is 7:01. He descends the stairs. He hesitates for just a moment before he steps down from the last one. His foot hovers over the concrete. He thinks about how he will never walk down a flight of stairs again, about how brilliant humans are that they invented stairs so many thousands of years ago.

Sonny looks at the tracks beyond the yellow line. He reckons the yellow line is about twelve steps away. One or two beyond it is the platform edge. He takes a one step, then another. A few more steps and then he will stop and stand. He will try to look natural. Then he will take a few more, and then he will be close enough to the edge when he needs to be.

He takes a step now and thinks of Valentina. He is conscious of the cold morning air, how it is sharpening his vision. He takes another step and thinks of his father, who he knows loved him, even if he does not remember it, and he briefly feels a feeling like flying. Sonny looks at the digital information display. It says that the train will be on time.

With his next step, Sonny adjusts Valentina’s scarf, and he hears a mother’s voice, not his mother, but someone’s mother shouting, with a tone that mothers of difficult children have that is so familiar to him, like a song from his childhood: “Goddamn it!”

And he cannot take another step because an old white woman with short white hair in a black coat has fallen at his feet. And before he knows what he’s doing, like a reflex, he is kneeling at her side.

“Um,” he says, “Are you all right?”

“Of course I am, don’t be ridiculous,” the old woman says, insulted.

“Okay,” he says, unsure what she means. “Are you here with someone?”

“Do I know you?” she asks in a tone that makes him feel as though his question was too personal.

Before he answers the old woman, his heart says, Mum? And he waits to hear Luna for the second time this morning, but he still doesn’t get an answer. Or maybe he doesn’t realize he already has one.

“Uh, no, I don’t think so. Look, do you think you can get up? Maybe you shouldn’t get up, actually. You hit your head, I think,” he says, looking down at her, then up at the digital information display.

It says that the train will be here soon.





Time





Destination





Expected




                       1st 7:06

                        London Victoria

                        7:08



                       Delayed South London Service formed of 8 coaches.



                       2nd 7:13

                        Bedford

                        7:16





07:06




Perhaps now is a good time to mention that, whenever possible, train drivers and dispatchers do try their hardest to make up lost time when delays happen. Even a minute improvement on a delay is an important contribution to the smooth running of the railway. Especially during the morning rush. Our passengers are quite busy at the moment, but if any of them happened to look up at the digital information board, they would see that it now says that the delayed 7:06 to London Victoria is currently expected at 7:08, a minute sooner than the previously reported 7:09. That’s why Sonny can see the train. That’s why they can all feel it coming.