Chapter 1.1

 

Three Thirty-three AM. She thought that was some train scheduler’s idea of a joke for a train to stop in the deep cutting of Laverstone station at the precise time. She almost hadn’t made it, thanks to the wet leaves on the steep drive of the house causing her to slip and fall. She’d have caught herself with the handrail, only she was on the wrong side of the path, and both her hands were full. Even then, her hands wouldn’t have been grazed to what felt like the bone if she hadn’t been wearing the ancient rucksack her dad had used when he was in the Air Force. Not that he’d ever actually seen service. He’d been shipped to Afghanistan when the British and American governments pulled out and left the Afghans to live or die on their own but all he’d done was oversee the dismantling of several vehicles the RAF hadn’t wanted to fall into the hands of what they called the insurgents. The rucksack, full of clothes and the items she deemed required to keep her on the right line of sanity, had overbalanced her into an impact with the wet concrete. Her sotto-voce language would have made a sailor blush, especially since she had promised her mum she’d sweep off the leaves two days ago.

            As luck would have it the same leaves, or at least similar ones, had helped her not to miss the departure, since the train, in typical Southern Rail style, had been delayed in departing from Plymouth since the tracks were covered in “the wrong sort of leaves” and they’d had to get someone to free the wheels. At least it had stopped raining some time before midnight, so the forty-minute walk to the station had been mostly dry, except when a lorry had gone past and sent a shower of water from the canopy of London Planes the Avenue was named after.

She could see the train on the platform as she clattered down the ironwork steps from the access bridge. There were no staff members about, not even in the relative warmth of the ticket area, and she was slowed considerably by the flapping art portfolio in her hand and the front of the train was past the walkway, which meant the driver couldn’t see her. She was three steps from the bottom when the train whistle blew, and, thankful she was wearing sturdy boots rather than the courts her mother preferred her to wear, she took the three steps in one stride and raced to the nearest carriage, transferring the bulky portfolio to her left hand to wrestle the door open with her right. Local trains would have had easy-press buttons for the pneumatic doors, but this being an inter-city train, they had to be wrestled open by brute force. She slung the huge case inside and clambered into the carriage just as the driver released the brakes and the train juddered into motion, send her stumbling into the door of the toilet and making her hiss in pain as her already-grazed hand scraped across the protruding lock, leaving a faint smear of blood which the laminate door rendered invisible the moment it dried. Regaining her balance against the rocking motion of the carriage, she picked up her portfolio and stumbled through the sliding door of the carriage proper, and into the first seat on her left, dumping her bag onto the table and her portfolio between the seats, then turned to shrug off the bulky rucksack and collapsed into the outside seat, facing forwards, just as the driver made an announcement.

“This is the Three-thirty from Plymouth, calling at all stations to Glasgow Central. Next stop will be Exeter St Davids in approximately fifteen minutes.”