‘Excuse me, is this the train for Salten?’ I panted.
She looked me up and down, and I could feel her appraising me, taking in my Salten House uniform, the navy-blue skirt, stiff with newness, and the pristine blazer I had taken off its hanger for the first time that morning.
‘I don’t know,’ she said at last, turning to a girl behind her. ‘Kate, is this the Salten train?’
‘Don’t be a dick, Thee,’ the girl said. Her husky voice sounded too old for her – I didn’t think she could be more than sixteen or seventeen. She had light brown hair cut very short, framing her face, and when she smiled at me, the nutmeg freckles across her nose crinkled. ‘Yes, this is the Salten train. Make sure you get into the right half though, it divides at Hampton’s Lee.’
Then they turned, and were halfway up the platform before it occurred to me, I hadn’t asked which was the right half.
I looked up at the announcement board.
Use front seven carriages for stations to Salten, read the display, but what did ‘front’ mean? Front as in the closest to the ticket barrier, or front as in the direction of travel when the train left the station?
There were no officials around to ask, but the clock above my head showed only moments to spare, and in the end I got onto the farther end, where the two other girls had headed for, and dragged my heavy case after me into the carriage.
It was a compartment, just six seats, and all were empty. Almost as soon as I had slammed the door the guard’s whistle sounded, and, with a horrible feeling that I might be in the wrong part of the train completely, I sat down, the scratchy wool of the train seat harsh against my legs.
With a clank and a screech of metal on metal, the train drew out of the dark cavern of the station, the sun flooding the compartment with a suddenness that blinded me. I put my head back on the seat, closing my eyes against the glare, and as we picked up speed I found myself imagining what would happen if I didn’t turn up in Salten, where the housemistress would be awaiting me. What if I were swept off to Brighton or Canterbury, or somewhere else entirely? Or worse – what if I ended up split down the middle when the train divided, living two lives, each diverging from the other all the time, growing further and further apart from the me I should have become.
‘Hello,’ said a voice, and my eyes snapped open. ‘I see you made the train.’
It was the tall girl from the platform, the one the other had called Thee. She was standing in the doorway to my compartment, leaning against the wooden frame, twirling an unlit cigarette between her fingers.
‘Yes,’ I said, a little resentful that she and her friend had not waited to explain which end to get. ‘At least, I hope so. This is the right end for Salten, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ the girl said laconically. She looked me up and down again, tapped her unlit cigarette against the door frame, and then said, with an air of someone about to confer a favour, ‘Look, don’t think I’m being a bitch, but I just wanted to let you know, people don’t wear their uniforms on the train.’
‘What?’
‘They change into them at Hampton’s Lee. It’s … I don’t know. It’s just a thing. I thought I’d tell you. Only first years and new girls wear them for the whole journey. It kind of makes you stand out.’
‘So … you’re at Salten House too?’
‘Yup. For my sins.’
‘Thea got expelled,’ a voice said from behind her, and I saw that the other girl, the short-haired one, was standing in the corridor, balancing two cups of tea. ‘From three other schools. Salten’s her last-chance saloon. Nowhere else would take her.’
‘At least I’m not a charity case,’ Thea said, but I could tell from the way she said it that the two were friends, and this goading banter was part of their act. ‘Kate’s father is the art master,’ she told me. ‘So a free place for his daughter is all part of the deal.’
‘No chance of Thea qualifying for charity,’ Kate said. Silver spoon, she mouthed over the top of the teas, and winked. I tried not to smile.
She and Thea shared a look and I felt some wordless question and answer pass between them, and then Thea spoke.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Isa,’ I said.
‘Well, Isa. Why don’t you come and join me and Kate?’ She raised one eyebrow. ‘We’ve got a compartment just up the corridor.’
I took a deep breath and, with the feeling that I was about to step off a very high diving board, gave a short nod. As I picked up my case and followed Thea’s retreating back, I had no idea that that one simple action had changed my life forever.
IT’S STRANGE BEING back at Victoria. The Salten train is new, with open-plan carriages and automatic doors, not the old-fashioned slam-door thing we used to take to school, but the platform has hardly changed, and I realise that I have spent seventeen years unconsciously avoiding this place – avoiding everything associated with that time.
Balancing my takeaway coffee precariously in one hand, I heave Freya’s pram onto the train, dump my coffee on an empty table, and then there’s the same long struggling moment there always is, as I attempt to unclip the cot attachment – wrestling with clasps that won’t undo and catches that won’t let go. Thank God the train is quiet and the carriage almost empty, so I don’t have the usual hot embarrassment of people queueing in front or behind, or pushing past in the inadequate space. At last – just as the guard’s whistle sounds, and the train rocks and sighs and begins to heave out of the station – the final clip gives, and Freya’s cot jerks up, light in my hands. I stow her safely, still sleeping, opposite the table where I left my coffee.
I take my cup with me when I go back to sort out my bags. There are sharp images in my head – the train jerking, the hot coffee drenching Freya. I know it’s irrational – she’s on the other side of the aisle. But this is the person I’ve become since having her. All my fears – the ones that used to flit between dividing trains, and lift doors, and strange taxi drivers, and talking to people I didn’t know – all those anxieties have settled to roost on Freya.
At last we’re both comfortable, me with my book and my coffee, Freya asleep, with her blankie clutched to her cheek. Her face, in the bright June sunshine, is cherubic – her skin impossibly fine and clear – and I am flooded with a scalding drench of love for her, as painful and shocking as if that coffee had spilled across my heart. I sit, and for a moment I am nothing but her mother, and there is no one in the world except the two of us in this pool of sunshine and love.
And then I realise that my phone is buzzing.
Fatima Chaudhry says the screen. And my heart does a little jump.
I open it up, my fingers shaking.