The Midnight Train (The Midnight World, #2)(25)

‘Why?’

‘Warmth, touch, presence, shared air. It’s the difference between the voice and an echo. You could hear the echo of a song for all time, but it would never beat hearing the song …’

‘Right, but—’

‘And to live life well you need to know when to ignore what is expected of you. Even if it means breaking the rules.’

Suddenly, and seemingly from nowhere, there was Agnes standing over them, straightening her hat as if ready for business. ‘That’s quite enough of that.’

Miss Graham took another inhale of her eternal cigarette. ‘I get the hint.’ And she exhaled a cloud of smoke, behind which she disappeared.

Agnes sat down in the now empty seat, looked down at her lap and smoothed a crease out of her skirt. ‘She really shouldn’t have been here. And you must ignore her radical ideas. She was always in the shop, you know, telling me to stock more communists and miserable French radical theorists. I always told her life is too fragile to deconstruct it all the time. Rules may look boring, but they are there in every novel and painting. They keep things whole. And Miss Graham, well, she found it easy to dismantle …’

‘I always liked her,’ said the Ghost, feeling a flicker of bravery in his disagreement.

Agnes sighed. ‘Well, yes. She was quite charming, I suppose. But think about it … she didn’t opt to become your life guide, did she? No. That was me.’

‘Something I still don’t understand. Why you wanted to help me.’

‘I remembered how you used to come into the shop. So hungry for books. And yet you still turned down the offer of me buying you one. I always remembered that. So I thought this was my chance. To give you a story. Metaphorically speaking.’

‘Well, thank you.’

‘But you are going to have to see the glass as half full. Because that way, when you reach the end of the line, everything will be fine. Eternity is good. I mean, it isn’t life, but J.M. Barrie was right, actually. It’s an awfully big adventure, death. It’s not like this. There is no rush, no timeframe, no fleeting conversations on a train. There are no lessons to learn. Think of the train as the question and the destination as the answer. And the answer is always the feeling you have about your life at the end of the journey.’ She smiled encouragingly and patted his knee. ‘So … best get on with it, eh, Old Bean?’

Wilbur looked out of the window and saw himself walking past a newsstand for the Daily Mirror. He caught sight of the front page: CASSIUS CLAY NEW BOXING CHAMP!

The night was there as well as the day. All in the same sky. Blurring together and intertwining like an abstract painting.

A little further along, his mother was walking down the street carrying some meat from the butcher, with a face on the edge of tears, only forcing a smile as she saw Wilbur leaving the house.

It was getting closer …

Out of the window he saw Dougie arriving home from prison. Then he saw two tickets to the concert lying on the table that had once been a bomb shelter.

He was very nearly there, at the night that changed everything …

The train was slowing towards somewhere he knew he didn’t want to revisit.

‘I don’t want to stop here. Agnes, really, I don’t want to stop here!’

It was too late. ‘The train is stopping. And it isn’t going anywhere until you get off.’

The train gently stopped, but Wilbur – or the Ghost – was feeling more rebellious after the chat with Miss Graham.

‘That’s okay. I will just stay here. On this carriage. I have all the time in the world.’





A Feeling of Intense Discomfort


And he did stay there.

He stayed on the seat with nothing to look at but a portrait of a Wilbur that was stuck at the age of eighteen. Back when his forehead didn’t have a single crease.

But after what felt like an hour – which could in fact have been a second or a day – it began to happen.

A feeling of intense discomfort.

Wilbur looked down and saw his clothes and tanned youthful limbs begin to flicker. He could see the green velvet seat where his denim-clad legs should have been. Blinking on and off. He was like a lightbulb that had been left on too long. But that wasn’t the issue. The issue was the feeling.

An intense claustrophobia.

A stuckness.

When he tried to stand up he felt like he was in a straitjacket he couldn’t get out of. His mind writhed and wriggled but he stayed steadfast within his seat, within his now itching, restless, burning body. He was – undeniably, indisputably, improbably – stuck.

Agnes walked down the aisle and shook her head. ‘Oh dear, Old Bean. You are in quite the pickle there, aren’t you?’

‘What’s … going on?’

‘In The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler writes about how the deadliest traps are laid by no one but ourselves. His masterpiece, in my opinion. Even Miss Graham would agree with that … Now, I am the truth of the universe, yet I also contain the essence of Mrs Agnes Deborah Amaryllis Bagdale. I do sincerely care. And you are quite a frustrating creature to care for, I have to say.’

‘Please, Mrs Bag— Agnes … try and help me.’

She sighed disapprovingly. ‘The only way you can escape this feeling, the only way you can break this curse, is to stand up and face what happened.’