Page 20 of The Last Train Home
‘I’ll walk you to a station in a bit,’ he says softly.
‘It’s fine. You don’t need to do that. I’ll grab a cab.’
He looks at me, seems to understand my reluctance to get on the Tube. ‘OK. I’ll pay, though. I did lure you out tonight.’
‘I had a nice time,’ I say.
‘Really?’ he asks.
‘Yeah, it was nice to hang out, but you don’t need to pay for my taxi.’
We stand up, dust grass off ourselves and scoop up our rubbish. I hand him back his jacket as I begin scanning the street for a cab. It’s late. I need to get to Natasha’s, but in a way I wish Tom and I could stay here all night.
‘I’m paying,’ he says and hands me £20. ‘That’ll cover Docklands, right?’
I don’t reach for it.
‘If you don’t take it, I’ll only hand it straight to the driver.’
‘You really don’t have to do this.’
‘I can’tnot, now I know how much you earn. And also it’s about staying safe, especially at this time of night.’
I reach reluctantly for the note. ‘Thank you,’ I say and walk towards a bin, piling our rubbish inside.
‘Hey,’ he says and points towards the grass. ‘You forgot these little guys.’ He bends down and picks up our bears, walking over and handing one to me. ‘I might keep mine,’ he says. ‘I’ll put it on my desk at work.’
‘So that all your colleagues know Tom isn’t just a numbers-and-statistics guy, that he actually has a hidden heart?’
He laughs and I put my bear in my rucksack. ‘I think I’ll keep mine on my desk too.’
‘So it can join the hundred other soft toys sitting on it.’
‘I don’t have anything like that on my desk, thank you.’ I give him a little shove and he fakes being mortally wounded.
A black cab drops someone off on the other side of the street and Tom whistles in his direction. We watch while the driver does a quick turn to pull up on our side of the road. I tell him Natasha’s address.
‘Thank you,’ I say, turning back to Tom, ‘for tonight, and for the taxi.’
‘My pleasure,’ he says and then follows it with, ‘you’re an unexpected friend, Abbie. I’m really glad I met you. Even though I wish we’d met under different circumstances.’
I climb inside the taxi.
‘I’m really glad I met you too,’ I say. He bends down, kisses me on the cheek. ‘Especially now I know you own a hotel in the British Virgin Islands.Hello, free holidays.’
He chuckles, closes the cab door and the taxi pulls away. I turn back to wave at Tom, who raises his hand in return. And then I watch him put his Beanie Baby in his inside jacket pocket and begin walking the few streets home.
Chapter 12
Tom
I don’t know what possessed me, but on the way back to my flat I responded to a text from Sean. He’d failed to get lucky and wanted to know which club we were in, then demanded to know where I was. Going back and joining them was inevitable, really. I don’t know why I do this to myself, especially as I was practically at my front door when the message came through. I don’t want to miss out, I guess. Although I neverquiteenjoy it as much as I think I’m going to. And then we ended up halfway across town at another club, and now it’s eight a.m. and I’m bleary-headed and travelling back to mine, after crashing on our colleague Dave’s sofa in the back end of Earls Court. Crashing. Crash. Poor choice of word, after what happened to me – what happened to us: me and Abbie, on the Tube. It’s an especially poor choice of word given that I’m actually on the Tube for the first time since that day. I didn’t think; too tired, I suppose. I just got on it.
The need hadn’t arisen to get the Tube before this. And if it had and if I’d been thinking straighter, would I have done it so easily as I did just now? I simply walked towards thestation on autopilot, tapped my Oyster card and took a seat, before it struck me what I was doing, where I was.
To say the Underground’s not my favourite thing these days is a bit of an understatement. I wish I’d picked up a paper this morning to distract myself. There’s no signal down here, either, so I can’t even do anything useful on my phone. I crick my neck a few times, and the woman opposite me looks up to see where the sound of crunching bones is coming from. I give her a polite smile and will the journey to be over. I’m not prone to drama, I hope; and avoiding thinking back to that day has been relatively easy, what with work and going out drinking. But I’m actually in a carriage now, wondering if lightningcanstrike twice. What ifthisTube derails? Or what if something else happens to it? Who would I save first, if it happened again – if I lived? There’s a pregnant woman sitting further down the carriage. She’s wearing one of those ‘Baby on board’ badges.
Her. I’d try to save her first. I might stand up actually. I might casually saunter over to her now, so I’m ready if it happens again.
