The Midnight Train (The Midnight World, #2)(56)

Maggie tapped his knee under the table. ‘Well, if it makes you happy, it makes us happy, doesn’t it, Wilbur? Wilbur? Wilbur!’

But Wilbur was standing up now, throwing his napkin down on the table, right next to the carrots. He stormed out of the room.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Maggie. ‘He’s just been a bit overworked recently.’

Edith sighed. ‘It’s all right, love. It’s not your fault … I should have made him feel happier from the start.’

And just then the unseen observers heard the faint rhythmic chugging of the train, ready to take them further down the line.





Not Every Stop Is a Crash


‘I heard a poll reported on the radio once,’ said the Ghost, back on the train. ‘About the most common regrets of the dying. One was wishing they hadn’t worked so hard. And the others were about courage. The courage to be yourself, the courage to express your feelings. They all seem related to letting go of fear. I have lived a life in perpetual motion. I was stuck for ever in that car. Always racing. I needed to realise that not every stop is a crash.’

The Dreamer liked that, and echoed it. ‘Not every stop is a crash. Yeah.’

They sat quiet for a moment of reflection.

The Ghost sighed after a little while, and said, ‘I miss him so much.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’





The Heaviness of Dead Men


A little later Agnes walked into the carriage holding a book. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. One of her favourites. The train rattled and she fell awkwardly onto a seat, holding onto her hat with her free hand as she landed beside the Ghost and opposite the Dreamer.

‘The ride has definitely become a little rockier since the rules were broken,’ said Agnes, looking at the Ghost.

‘Sorry, Agnes,’ said the Ghost. ‘My fault.’

‘As I said to you before you staged your mini-rebellion, we are in a whole new world of uncertainty now.’

‘Yes, I get that …’ The reality of the situation was finally being felt by the Dreamer. ‘At the end, I’ll wake up, right?’

‘Yes,’ said the Ghost. ‘Hopefully.’

Agnes tutted. ‘He sacrificed eternity for a possibility that might not exist.’

The Dreamer looked genuinely scared.

‘Listen,’ soothed Agnes. ‘The train is still on its tracks. So don’t worry too much.’

‘The thing is,’ said the Ghost, ‘I spent our whole life never really waking up. Now you’ll get a chance to.’

Agnes sighed. ‘He actually has a point I suppose.’

She started to read a bit of her book. And the Ghost remembered reading it himself when he was younger, though before the wisdom of Chandler’s words could really sink in.

He thought about how Chandler wrote about death, and of broken hearts. And he looked at the Dreamer – and he longed for him to keep his lightness.





Away


Outside the window their unlived life continued to speed by. Wilbur in his office, working. At an airport, staring up at a board. In a hotel in Edinburgh, ignoring a view of the castle as he scribbled business plans on a sheet of paper.

The Dreamer was trying not to think too deeply about his possible death at the end of the journey, so he focused hard on what he was seeing.

‘I don’t understand …’ said the Dreamer. ‘Why am I seeing myself on my own all the time?’

Agnes was reading her book. ‘Oh, I think that’s a question for your ghost. He has lived all this, after all.’

The Ghost considered. ‘Because your work takes you away. I suppose, now I think about it, that was the whole point. Look, there we are in Edinburgh, at the first Scottish branch. And there on Concorde to New York …’

Days went by. Weeks. Months. Years. Faster and faster. Brief flashes of Maggie, but otherwise just prolonged stretches of offices and hotels. Never a sight of his mother, or Alfred, or any friends except Charlie, but only ever in the office. No cemetery visits any more. No reading anything but business reports and papers now. The dullest and most repetitive landscape of the whole journey was passing the windows. But then the sight of Wilbur on the phone, crying, as he heard his mother had been rushed to hospital.

The train slowed.

The view became darkness.

‘What is happening?’ wondered the Dreamer.

‘The future,’ said Agnes. ‘The past. Both at once.’

The Ghost nodded mournfully. ‘And I’m afraid it’s going to get worse.’





In Her Own Way


They were at Edith’s funeral. There weren’t many people there.

Wilbur, at the pulpit, was giving a speech he had cobbled together on the train up from King’s Cross while Maggie had compiled a list of things she planned to help her father with while they were in Sheffield.

Maggie, Alfred, Charlie, Claudette. A few red-faced regulars from the pub. Jim, the landlord, wearing a suit he’d had since the Queen’s coronation. And, of course, Mr Parkin. He was sitting on a lonely front pew across the aisle from Wilbur, Maggie and Alfred. Wilbur had walked past him on his way to the pulpit without even a glance in his direction. He was now an old man with white hair and a stoop, today dressed in a smart new black suit. He had his long umbrella that he used as a walking stick.