Platform Seven

by Louise Doughty

  He was dressed and ready for work. His bag was already by the door. I was still in my pyjamas. I would have to get dressed soon and haul my exhausted carcass to school, but there was time to sit and have a cup of tea.

  He brought the tea over and placed it on the table. ‘Thank you,’ I said in a small voice. He turned back to the counter and picked something up, then dropped it in front of me. It was the free newspaper that came through the main door downstairs on Saturdays, the Weekend Journal. It’s mostly advertising for garden centres but they always run a couple of news stories on the first few pages. Three or four copies would get dropped through the main door and quite often, no one picked them up. When a heap of them had built up someone, usually me, put them straight into the recycling.

  Matty unfolded the paper with one hand. He lifted his tea with his other hand and took a gulp. ‘Maybe you should read that,’ he said.

  He took another gulp of tea. ‘Right, I’m going to work, to spend the rest of my day trying to help sick people get better. I wonder if this is her.’ He tapped the front page of the paper. I looked down at it, a woman’s face in a blurry black-and-white shot.

  ‘You know,’ he added, ‘the woman you walked on past that summer. You know the one. You saw her being abused but you carried on walking because you wanted to go to the cinema with your friend. Wasn’t going to say anything but hey, maybe it’ll give you something else to think about rather than how hard your life is.’

  He turned, picked up his bag from beside the door, patted the pocket of his jacket to check he had his car keys, and left. I could hear his steps descend the stairs, the jaunty tap of them echoey in the stairwell, the heavy slam of the main door.

  The front-page article was a report of a local trial. A man called James Burton had been sentenced after his conviction for the manslaughter of his former partner, Donna Carlton, forty-six years old. She had been beaten and strangled. He had been charged with murder but found not guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility. A mitigation plea had cited his remorse. He had been sent to prison for four years. There was a quote from Donna Carlton’s sister calling James Burton ‘pure evil’. It was the kind of story that appears in the papers every day.

  I sat at my kitchen table, my head down over the article, reading through it. The couple lived on Star Road. I studied Donna Carlton’s picture and even though it was blurry and her face was partially obscured by a lock of hair, I was sure. It was the woman I had seen in the window, the day I was rushing to the cinema, that sunny day.

  Matty had seen through me, through the careful and competent self I had constructed over the years, coping with my condition, training as a teacher, buying my own flat and building my busy social life with friends who liked me. He had seen through it all in a few short months, because he was clever and passionate and worked harder than any other person I knew. He knew the truth about me. He had loved the carapace I had created, but he had seen through it, and now he despised me because he knew the full and plain truth that I was the worst human being on the planet.

  *

  I cannot remember what I did for the rest of that morning. At some point in the afternoon, I took to my bed and lay there, staring at the wall, waiting for Matty to come home. My phone, which was still plugged in by my side of the bed, buzzed and buzzed again, repeatedly. I ignored it.

  *

  When Matty came home, he didn’t come into the bedroom. I heard him move around the kitchen, clattering objects. I heard the low murmur of the television at one point, then he turned it off. I lay there and cried softly.

  At some point in the evening – I had lost all sense of time by then – he came into the bedroom and said, ‘What the fuck are you doing in the dark with the curtains open?’ He turned the light on and the sudden flood of white that filled the room startled me upright from where I lay. ‘God,’ he said, ‘you look dreadful.’

  He went over to the window and drew the curtains. Then he stood for a moment. ‘Have you been there all day?’ he asked. I nodded, unable to look at him. ‘Have you eaten anything?’

  He went back to the kitchen and I heard the ping of the microwave. He returned after a short while with the helping of pasta left over from the previous day. I had left it in the fridge in a Tupperware. He had decanted it into a bowl and grated some cheese on top.

  I sat up in bed, took the bowl from him and rested it on my lap, looking down at it.

  He sat on the edge of the bed. When he spoke, his voice was calm and low. ‘Don’t think this means you are forgiven for attacking me,’ he said. ‘The way you’ve treated me, you’ve got a lot of apologising to do.’

  *

  I didn’t need to undress for bed because I hadn’t got dressed that day. When Matty came to bed, I rose and used the toilet, brushed my teeth, that was all I needed to do. When I got back to the bedroom, he had already turned the light off.

  As I huddled beneath the duvet, I thought, I wonder what will happen if I don’t go to the school tomorrow, will this be the beginning of the process where I lose my job? Is this the start of me losing everything? Matty hates me, he’ll move out soon. With my job gone how will I pay the mortgage? It is unconscionable behaviour for a teacher to just not show up, no explanation, to not even answer their calls. It will have caused all sorts of problems for Adrian. But then, that’s the kind of person I am, the kind of person who lets everybody down. To my surprise, I fell asleep.

  *

  I was woken by Matty shaking my shoulder and talking to me in a loud voice. ‘Where is it then? Where is it, Lisa? Fuck’s sake!’

  I blinked hard and propped myself up on one elbow. ‘Where is what?’ I said blearily. Dear God, I was in the deepest of sleeps just then. It was the first deep sleep for ages. Why was Matty shaking me awake?

  He got out of bed and began to pace up and down the room. He could only go a few steps before he had to turn, like a tiger in a cage.

  ‘It’s Ian, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I’ve worked it out. That’s why you’re doing this to me. You’re seeing Ian, and this is all some plot to treat me like shit so I’ll walk out and make it easy for you, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’

  ‘No, Matty.’ I sat up and put my head in my hands. God, that sleep I was in was so sweet. ‘No … no … I haven’t seen Ian in months … Where’s what?’

  He stepped towards me and grabbed two fistfuls of my pyjama top and pulled me in close. ‘Where. Is. My. Apology. Where is it, Lisa? Where? You can’t treat me like this!’ He pushed me back onto the bed. Then he turned and, with a shout of frustration, began pacing again.

  I was frightened then. He had never woken me in the night before – it was an escalation, and I saw that along with him driving me mad, I had driven him mad too. While he was turning, I reached out and pulled my phone from the charging cable and slipped it into the pocket of my pyjama bottoms. I lifted both hands and said, ‘Matty, you know I love you. I’m sorry, you know I am. Look, I’m going to make us tea, and we’re going to sit in bed and talk this through, it’s okay. I’m really sorry, look …’

  He turned then and kicked the wardrobe door, three times in a row. It made a cracking, splintery sound and shuddered on its hinges.

  I was out of the bed, hands raised. ‘Look, I’m going to make tea.’

  He fell on his knees and put his head in his hands.

  ‘Matty, I’ll be right back.’

  He was by the wardrobe. I could reach the door. In the sitting room, to the right of the bedroom door, there was the coat rack and the shoe pile. I couldn’t risk stopping to lace up trainers but I had a pair of loafers I didn’t often wear that were placed neatly to one side. I pushed my feet in and grabbed at the first coat that came to hand, my work mac, which wouldn’t be warm enough but I couldn’t take the risk of pausing to find a thicker coat.

  I was down the stairs so fast it felt as though my feet were not even touching the steps. The main door slammed shut behind me. Outside, I turned left onto the main road.

&n
bsp; *

  My phone began ringing as I stomped along Thorpe Road, heading out of town. I hadn’t got far. I pulled it out of my pocket and looked at it, which was a mistake. If I had left it, I might have been able to screen the call but as soon as I saw it was Matty, I was too frightened to not answer – because then if he said, later, you knew it was me calling and you screened the call, I wouldn’t be able to lie.

  It was a Whatsapp voice call. His phone signal was so bad in my flat and he usually used Whatsapp on our wifi when he was at home.

  ‘Where the fuck are you? Where have you gone? Where the fuck are you this time?’

  ‘Matty …’ My voice was calm but he continued without pause.

  ‘You’re a lying piece of shit, Lisa. Have you any fucking idea what it’s like for me, have you? Have you any idea what you put me through? How selfish you are? I’ve got to be up at 6 a.m. tomorrow for a twelve-hour shift, I’m the on-call registrar, and it’s three o’clock in the fucking morning. Do you like tormenting me, seriously, seriously, do you?’

  ‘No, just, just leave me …’ Stop, I wanted to say. I just want everything to stop.

  ‘Oh yeah, right, cos like I’m really going to do that when you’re out in the middle of the fucking night doing God knows what mad shit, seriously Lisa, I deal with crap all day long and then I come home and I have to deal with it from you … don’t insult me. How dare you insult me? You owe me a fucking apology and you know it.’

  His voice became low.

  ‘Stay where you are. You’re on the main road, I saw you from the window. I’m coming to get you, I’m coming to get you right fucking now and then we are going to have words about this because there’s no point in me trying to get any more fucking sleep now, is there, when I’ve got to be up again in three hours and it’s bloody typical of you that you don’t …’

  I hung up and put the phone in my coat pocket. I looked around. He would be leaving the flat already, car keys in hand. He would drive out of our side street and onto Thorpe Road – the road was wide and empty and even though I had kept walking I would be clearly visible on the pavement as he turned left out of our street. I had seconds.

  I crossed the road. On the right, I could see the entrance to a small slip road that took a sharp dive down to some kind of depot at the back of the railway station. There were iron gates stopping vehicle access but on the path that ran alongside, there was no gate. It was dark down there and I would be out of sight. I hesitated at the top of the slip road, looking back. Why are you doing this to me, Lisa? I felt it then, the grasp he would use – but more than that, I felt the power of his hatred and scorn, the low disdain in his voice, the sheer force of his disgust. Matthew had never hit me, perhaps he never would, but the situation between us was only going to deteriorate. What was I waiting for, for some unequivocal sign? A man like Matthew would never cross the line, I saw that now, he would just make me feel worse and worse until I didn’t trust a single thought I had any more. If you want to boil a frog, put it in cold water and turn the heat up gradually. It won’t even move. It will just die.

  I wanted my parents. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be sitting in a bar with a bottle of prosecco with Rosie, saying, it’s so hard to tell when you’re in it, you just don’t have any sense of perspective, that’s why it took me so long to work it out … Rosaria lived too far away for me to reach on foot. I had to get to Dogsthorpe.

  The quickest way was to go back along Thorpe Road but that would mean going past the entrance to our street. I was close enough to see the lights on Crescent Bridge from here – once I was the other side of that, I could just turn left and onto Bourges Boulevard – or cut through past the front of the railway station, right up Bright Street … Lincoln Road, Dogsthorpe Road … I had my own set of keys but what would my parents think about me letting myself into their house at three in the morning? It would be best to ring the bell – if I woke them by making a noise downstairs it would frighten the life out of them. Then I remembered that I didn’t have my keys on me. That settled it. I could already picture them, coming down the stairs, their dressing gowns pulled tight, their faces blank with concern. Mum, Dad, I’ve made a terrible mistake … My mother would put the kettle on – her first reflex in any crisis – and together we would sit around the kitchen table, the dark outside, the clock ticking, and Dad would take my hand where it lay on the table and say, ‘You’re freezing, love, should I put the heating on?’ As I explained to them what had happened, what it had been like the last few months, since Matty moved in, they would exchange glances, and tears of relief would begin to roll down my cheeks and Mum would get up from her chair and put an arm round my shoulder and rub it and say, ‘It’s okay, love, I just wish you’d told us all this before.’ I still wouldn’t tell them the full truth, but I would use a phrase like ‘gets a bit rough with me’, and at that, my father’s face would redden. ‘Reckon I might go round in the morning and have a word with that lad.’ And at that, I would smile. The next day I would have to work out what to do about getting some stuff from the flat – I would be staying with my parents until Matty moved out – but would think to myself, I’ll worry about that in the morning.

  I looked back. Turning out of our side road were the headlights of a car.

  I turned to my right and ran down the slip road. Matty wouldn’t be able to drive down here. I’d never been down this way before but if the pathway was open for pedestrian access it had to lead somewhere, maybe to the housing estate on the far side of the depot. I didn’t know – I only knew that if I stayed on Thorpe Road or tried to go back across Crescent Bridge, Matty couldn’t fail to see me.

  The road curved to the left. Only when I turned the corner out of sight of the main road did I slow my pace to work out where I was. The path I was on was well lit by very tall lampposts with small, bright lights on the top, making me clearly visible, so I crossed the road and walked on the path on the other side, which ran along some scrubby ground.

  I stepped off the path and crossed the ground, to make sure I was out of sight. I stopped for a moment, gulping the cold air and looking up at the great arc of the sky, so distant and vast. I thought about all the things up there in the infinite blackness of it, the swallowing dark – aeroplanes and satellites, the little stars. There was a whole world beyond all this, I thought, if I could just stop and draw breath and know that it was there, waiting for me. I breathed.

  To my left, there were huge, derelict-looking sheds, vast pale grey things with valley roofs, several in a row. Ghost sheds. I walked towards them and when I stumbled on the rough ground, I got my phone out and turned the torch on, looking down. I had stumbled because the ground was covered in lumps of ballast, every size from pebbles to fist-sized rocks. As I checked the ground in front of my feet, I saw two iron rails, embedded in the earth, running towards the pale sheds – the original Victorian tracks. The buildings must be the old ones where the steam engines were once kept. I thought of how my dad would love a good nose around here. I put my phone away and was in darkness. Now I was off the road and hidden, I paused for a moment to catch my breath. Matty was probably driving up and down Thorpe Road looking for me – how long would he do that before he gave up and went home? How long before I could safely go back up?

  Beyond the old sheds was a large, two-storey Portakabin. The doors were closed and the blinds down on the windows but inside, the lights were on. I wondered if they were just security lights or if anyone was around, whether I should bang on the door and ask if I could get through this way, but there was no sign of movement anywhere.

  To my right was a tall metal fence and, clearly visible just beyond it, a set of railway tracks. Across the tracks was the station, deserted at this hour but brightly lit. The metal fence was too tall and solid for someone as physically incompetent as me to scale – although someone stronger and braver might give it a go. Annoying that fence looks so secure, I thought. If it wasn’t for that, I could just nip across the first set of tracks, cros
s the station using the covered walkway and go straight out the front. There were no trains around, after all, it was the middle of the night and the station was closed. I wondered if that meant they locked the front entrance, though even if I could get through, would I be able to get out the other side?

  I stopped for a moment, there in the dark, looking across the road and through the dull silver bars of the fence. I looked at the tracks, the station. It was odd to see it from this angle, to see somewhere that was so busy during the day so deserted at night – I was seeing the secret life of the place, the life that was there every night. How beguiling it was, to be spying on a world where I didn’t belong.

  This secret life has always been here, I thought, and I’ve never even thought about it. A slight mist hung in the air. I shivered, pulled the mac round me. The platform nearest to me, Platform Seven, was the brand new one they built a couple of years ago, along with a huge Waitrose – the disruption the works caused kept the inhabitants of Peterborough talking for months. I could still remember when it was just five platforms, and how the shiny new ones seemed a bit unreal when they opened, as if they didn’t really belong to the old station. Just through the fence and across the tracks, standing in the middle of the platform, there was a fox. It was motionless, facing my way. I was too far away and sheltered by the darkness but still I had the sensation it could see me. It lifted its snout and gave a single warning bark.

  My choices seemed to be to press on up this way, towards the housing estate, and see if there was a way through to Spital Bridge further up the tracks, or to turn back and … as I thought this, I turned, and there, at the far end of the slip road, standing right in the middle and silhouetted in the light from the Portakabin, was a tall figure in a hooded parka. The face was lost in darkness but by the stature, I knew it to be Matty. He was stock still, legs slightly apart, hands in pockets.