Five(70)

Medical Student returns, reluctantly, to Officer Chubb, who says, “I have a few more questions for you, I know you’ve had a rough morning, but—”

Medical Student agrees to sit with the officer but gives only very short answers and pretends not to understand English well, although his English is perfect. He gives a brief statement. He says he left his ID at home. When asked for his contact details, he swaps two of the numbers around in his phone number and gives an old address. He wants no further interaction with police at all because it will lead to questions about his status in this country and he knows those conversations rarely have good outcomes, even when the police are patting him on the back, even when they are calling him “hero.”

As he leaves the station he remembers, fleetingly, news footage of a man from Mali who scaled a building in Paris to save a child who was dangling off a balcony, four stories up, out of reach of his shrieking parents. And that the French government gave him citizenship for his bravery. But Medical Student knows what country he is living in, and he doubts he will be rewarded for saving a man who wanted to die but not saving the one who didn’t.

Who, as you know by now, is Liam. You may have guessed it earlier, during the countdown. You may have ranked him as your first-choice candidate because of the bullying, the misogyny, and his membership in the 1 percent (with Gideon ranked a close second, even though we know you really wanted to put him first), and you are pleased that you have solved today’s mystery. Perhaps you could take a poll at book club to see how many people knew it was Liam before the last platform scene. Or thought they knew it, or knew they knew it but rejected their instinct and thought it must be one of the others because it’s too improbable, too convenient, similarly to the earlier train delay, to have a character fall on the tracks once, be rescued, and then die anyway. What are the chances of that really happening?

Well, quite high, actually, if you’ve been paying attention. For surely, you have learned by now from the lives of our five passengers that life and death happen because they do. In the way that they do. Life and death happen regardless of what you think, or guess, or put in your online review, or dream of, or work for, or choose, or want. Or deserve.

Remember Anne, Ollie, Louise? Graham? Luna and Doreen? Brendon? Jo and Gerald? Remember little Rusty?

Did they deserve what they got?

Did you?

Yesterday, when Liam left Emma’s house, she called a tabloid to leak the story about Danny’s wedding and Liam’s violence. Or Emma called a celebrity gossip podcast host to leak the story about Liam’s love child and how he would not support her as a single mother of his bastard son. Or Emma called Danny to do what Liam had asked her to so he wouldn’t take Gideon away from her. Or Emma called a hit man to kill Liam, but the train got him first.

Liam came to the station this morning to apologize to Emma for threatening her. Or he came to the station to suggest they go see Danny together to resolve their conflict. Or he came to the station to make sure Gideon was all right. Or he came to the station to take Gideon away from his mother.

Liam’s story can be told any number of ways, and we will never know why he really came to the station this morning, but we will always know that at the end he died. Because no matter what Emma and Liam did or didn’t do, no matter why they did it or why they did not, the result is Liam’s death. And Gideon’s life.

Because our passengers were too busy with other events on the platform to see what Liam, with his blurred vision and throbbing head, saw. There was too much happening for them to see Emma moving closer to the edge of the platform with her son struggling against her. To see Gideon kicking to get away from his mother as she brought him nearer to the tracks and the train. To see Liam stepping in between Emma and Gideon and pulling Emma away from her son and pushing Gideon back to safety. Mother and child falling into the arms of a man with a bad back behind them, and Liam losing his balance, and falling in front of the train, believing, because of the blow to his head, that Gideon was Danny, the brother he loved from before he even took his first breath, for whom he would have always given his life if asked. Always.

Wait, not yet, Liam thought in the chaos on the platform. He had so much more to do.

Now? No, he thought, as he reached for Danny. Liam was not used to not getting his way.

Please, God, he thought, just before it happened. Liam, like many others, didn’t believe in God, not until the end. Not until he had to.

I can’t go, please, Liam thought, and then he did not think again.

After Liam’s death, Danny makes the investment in the project with lifesaving potential on a world-changing scale after Emma tells him about her last meeting with his brother. Danny gives Emma back her old job, and she earns the money to send Gideon to a therapeutic school where he does well and gets better for several years. And so, Liam keeps his promise, in the end, to take care of Gideon and Emma, although he had to die to make it happen.

Unfortunately, Liam’s phone is crushed by the train. He saw the email but had not yet responded. It said, The data is off. Can’t make those claims yet. Something’s not right. Hold your fire at the meeting. Don’t put the money in, not yet.

Liam’s widow, his third wife, Elizabeth the Second, drops her boys at school and is on her way to Pilates when her Waze flags heavy traffic around the train station. “Ugh,” she groans. The cars in front of her slow. She hears an ambulance in the distance that she does not know is for her husband’s body, and a cute emergency vehicle icon pops up on the map on her screen. Her phone rings over the car’s console. Danny. She doesn’t answer and lets it go to voicemail. Weird. They haven’t spoken since his and Brendon’s nonwedding. She can’t deal with him now, it’s too early, she’ll call him back after class when she’s feeling more Zen.