Page 1 of The Last Train Home
Chapter 1
Abbie
October 2005
Why is it that so many of us can talk to the person opposite us on a train when it’s midnight and everyone’s been out having fun, but you wouldneverin a hundred years do the same thing on the morning commute? And how is it that every train journey is the same as all the other journeys that have come before, until it’s not? An ordinary day that becomes unlike any other. Because of a moment. Because of a person. Because of an event beyond anyone’s control.
I dash down the Underground stairs at Tottenham Court Road and run onto the Central Line Tube just as the doors close. I lean back on the glass partition and breathe in with a sense of triumph. When I look back at this exact moment, I often wonder if it’s fate that I made it in time. That I was supposed to be there, on the last eastbound train of the night. Supposed to meet Tom.
How different everything might have been if I hadn’t run a bit faster, hadn’t downed my drink and left the pub a little bit earlier. In the end, perhaps it was always meant to be like this.
‘That was lucky. I didn’t think you were going to make it in time.’ I look up to see where the voice came from. There’s a man about my age wearing a deep-grey suit, standing and looking up at me from his newspaper. He looks vaguely familiar, as if I might have passed him in the street. Maybe.
I give him a quick, polite smile, sharing in my silent joy that I didn’t get stuck on the platform, missing the last train and having to get a taxi all the way home, or (and I think this might be worse) stuck between the doors as they closed, bouncing off me, prompting everyone to glance up and stare at the person causing the delay. That’s happened to me before and it is humiliating.
There are no free seats, so I stay where I am as the train leaves the station.
‘I didn’t think I was going to make that, either,’ I confess over the noise of other intoxicated and buoyant travellers making their way home on one of the last Tubes of the night. I’m breathless. I can hear it in my own voice. I open my nearly empty water bottle and drink the last of it.
‘I’ve got one I’ve not opened yet,’ he says in a slightly slurred voice. ‘Do you want it?’
‘Ah, that’s really sweet, but it’s OK. I’m sure I’ll make it home without dehydrating.’ No matter how parched and tipsy I am, I can’t take someone’s water bottle from them when I’ve only just met them. That’s so weird.
He smiles, glances back down at his newspaper and I find myself watching him absent-mindedly as a bunch of blokes, dressed in matching football T-shirts with Hawaiian garlands draped round their necks, make their way towards us through the busy carriage, singing drunkenly. The man opposite me looks up.Everyonelooks up with amused expressions. It’shard not to share in their joy, as they’ve brought the revelry in this carriage up about a hundred points.
They amble past, cheering and singing, and find a space further down the carriage. I’m still watching them and chuckling to myself when the man who offered me his water says, ‘What do we think? Are they on a stag-do or on their way home from a match?’
Overcoming my reservations about conversing with strangers is easy when I’m half a bottle of wine and three cocktails into the night. ‘Hmm, tough one,’ I reply with an expression that pretends I’m really thinking about it. ‘The Hawaiian garlands are throwing me.’
‘Me too,’ he says.
‘Shall we ask them?’ I offer.
‘Go for it,’ he replies with a smile that makes the sides of his blue eyes crinkle. ‘Tenner says it’s a stag-do.’
‘But what if I also think it’s a stag-do – then who wins the money?’
He narrows his eyes. ‘I think I’m too drunk to understand what you’ve just asked me.’
‘Excuse me!’ I call down to the group of jubilant men. ‘Have you had a really good night out or is one of you getting married?’
They cheer loudly and shove one of their number towards me. ‘This is Jonno,’ one cheers. ‘He’s just lost his virginity, so we’re celebrating—’
‘Sod off!’ Jonno looks incensed and rolls his eyes. ‘I’m getting married in a week. It’s my stag-do.’
‘Congratulations,’ we say in unison.
Jonno leans forward and clinks his can of lager with us. ‘Cheers,’ he says loudly, and we cheers him in return.
‘Where have you guys been?’ the man opposite me asks Jonno, who is now swaying from side to side as the train carriage takes us through the network of tunnels carrying me towards Liverpool Street to catch my overground train home.
Jonno lists an American restaurant and a few bars near Oxford Street, then his mates start singing a song about him losing his virginity and Jonno turns back and gamely joins in.
‘I remember those days,’ the man opposite says to me. ‘All those tourist traps luring me into London because we didn’t know anywhere better to go.’
‘Same,’ I reply. ‘I used to love getting dressed up and catching the train to go clubbing at Fabric.’
He makes a face. ‘Fabric. I think I just travelled back in time.’
