48 292
Adam Thorpe
48
Then she wakes up and
is saved, beamed out of
there into her real life.
She feels even closer to
actual death, like there’s a
hailstorm inside her brain.
The hammer drill was the
noise of the train. Whump.
Whump. Whump. Tea
please. Now. One sugar.
No such thing as a snacks
trolley on this train.
Jasper is having a shut-
eye, too. His mouth is
pursed again, as if he is
thinking hard. She loves
him very much. He is
actually edible. No other
boy like him. Seeing Jed
with the kids made Suzie
think about how Jasper
might be with his kids. His
and Suzie’s kids. It made
her go all warm and at
the same time scared.
She fishes out her phone,
flicking it open to check
for messages, sending a
couple of replies that have
less thought in them than
her thumb.
She leans out sideways
a bit, into the aisle, and
sees how the girl’s elbow
is jigging about above the
arm-rest, as if she is having
a sit-down bop: listening
to her music and bopping
away in her seat. Retro
eighties, or something.
Something
everyone
knows, anyway. Suzie liked
the way the girl called
the person on the other
end of the phone, male
or female, ‘mate’. Suzie
wishes she could be like
the girl, a Londoner able
to make jokes out of thin
air. The train should have
been leaving Stevenage by
now but instead they are
chugging past a sign saying
Bedfordshire: County of
Opportunity
.Maybeweare
secretly going backwards.
You wouldn’t know.
Who’s the girl going to give