The SECRET TO NOT DROWNING

by Colette Snowden

  I rummage through my bag and then remember that I’ve put it in my pocket so that I can find it easily. He looks at it, clips it and gives it back to me. I look back at the window but I can’t find my raindrop again. It’s just one of a thousand raindrops on the window. They all look the same.

  I put my ticket back into my coat pocket and feel something else in there. I take it out. It’s a folded piece of thick cream paper and it says:

  “Once I was a princess and my grandpa handed me the best rose from his garden when I went round to visit. I remember that I am a princess.”

  I fold it up again and put it back in my pocket. It reminds me of the Princess and The Pea, when she arrives at the prince’s palace in the rain and she’s so wet that the rain is gushing out of her shoe at the heel and she just stands on the doorstep saying ‘I am a real princess, I am a real princess.’ Of course, I know that I’m not a real princess. I tried the dried pea under just one mattress when I was about seven. It didn’t work, I slept like a log. I am not a princess and I am not a Charlie’s Angel and I am not a raindrop. But as the train rushes me back home it says to me ‘you are a mum, you are a mum, you are a mum’ and the rhythm won’t let me have a single other thought.

  It’s still raining as the train approaches the station and, just as I’m clearing my bits and pieces off the table and into my bag, my phone starts to buzz and flash its little light.

  His text reads; “Running 5 mins late. W8 on platform 4 me. X’

  Typical. He’s probably sitting, engine running, in the waiting-only short stay, trying to park for free for fifteen minutes instead of paying £1 for an hour.

  My phone buzzes and flashes again. It’s Julie: “U coming home 2day? Am in all evening if u want to talk/pop round.”

  I start to text her back but I’m not sure what to say. I’m sitting with my phone in my hand with my finger hovering over the keys, wishing myself back to a time when phones were only for making calls and only worked when plugged in to a socket in a wall. Then you knew if something you said sounded stupid from the silence or the sigh of the person on the other end. Back then you made arrangements and just stuck to them.

  There is a man sitting across from me looking at me as I hesitate with my phone. He knows that I can see him looking at me from the corner of my eye but he’s looking at me anyway. So I do something I never do: instead of pretending that I haven’t noticed I look straight at him and almost make eye contact and he smiles at me and I think he might even say something before he looks back down at his newspaper and takes a sip of coffee.

  “Thanks. Ur a star. Will catch up soon xxx.”

  Not exactly Nobel Prize winning stuff but I think it was the right thing to say.

  It’s still raining as the train pulls in at the platform. I have no umbrella and no proper coat, just a cotton jacket with no hood that soaks up water like a tea towel.

  I check my phone again. No update. He must be on his way. So I get off the train with my suitcase and my dog and stand on the platform next to a bench that’s too wet to sit on.

  I have always loved railway stations. They are magical places. Places with endless possibilities. Perhaps he just won’t turn up. Perhaps he’ll get here and be that skinny bloke from years ago and stay that way for good this time. Perhaps I could just be gone by the time he gets here.

  And then I see him. He’s behind the barrier at the end of the platform, arguing with a woman in uniform and waving at me and pointing at me. He’s beckoning me to him and she’s looking at me too, waiting for me to take this bolshie fella off her hands. So I take my dog in one hand and the handle of my suitcase in the other and walk up the platform towards him, trying to control Chips’ little legs and the suitcase’s wonky wheels.

  “She wouldn’t let me on the platform without a ticket,” he starts to tell me before I even get to where he’s standing. “How ridiculous is that?” And he waits for me to be on his side while he gives this woman a dressing down for her unforgiveable conduct.

  “Come on then,” he says, “I’m in the restricted stay car park, I’ll have a ticket by the time we get back if we don’t get a move on.”

  He reaches over to take my suitcase and I hand him the dog instead. And then I do something that I didn’t know I was going to do and even as I’m doing it I feel like it’s not really happening. I might suddenly wake up on the landing and be guided back to bed at three in the morning.

  I turn with my suitcase to the next platform, where the guard is getting ready to blow his whistle. I step onto the train just in time for the door to close behind me. As I hear the ‘beep beep beep’ to warn me that the doors are locking, I turn to see him running up the platform with Chips’ little legs running alongside him. He bangs on the button to open the door but it’s already locked. He keeps on banging as the train starts to move but it’s not going to open and the train is not going to stop moving.

  “For fuck’s sake!” I see him say through the door.

  There are plenty of seats to choose from in the carriage and I put my suitcase in the luggage rack and choose a seat with a table by the window. I don’t know where this train is going and I don’t care. We don’t care.

  There must be fifteen people in this carriage, maybe even twenty. But only one of them is me. I’m the only one who doesn’t know where I’m going and doesn’t know what I’ll do when I get there. I’m the only one who will find out.

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank Kevin, Lin and the team at Bluemoose, not least for smoothing out the rough edges with such patience and enthusiasm.

  I’d also like to thank Commonword, whose workshops and First Three Chapters competition gave me the kick up the bum I needed to write this. In particular Martin De Mello for his kind but uncompromising criticism.

  Thanks also to Emma Howard and Margaret Jaskulski for being my guinea pig readers.