Strangers on the 16_02

by Priya Basil

  About the Book

  It’s a hot, crowded train. Helen Summer is on her way to see her sister Jill to tell her an awful secret. Another passenger, Kerm, is on his way back from his grandfather’s funeral.

  They are strangers, jammed against each other in a crowded carriage. Noisy school kids fill the train – and three of them are about to cause a whole heap of trouble. In the chaos, Helen and Kerm are thrown together in a way they never expected.

  Catching a train? Read Strangers on the 16:02 and you’ll never feel the same way about your fellow passengers again.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Strangers on the 16:02

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About the Author

  Also by Priya Basil

  Copyright

  Strangers on

  the 16:02

  Priya Basil

  To my brother Agam, who related an incident that inspired this story

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to my ever-wonderful editor Jane Lawson. I’m also grateful to all the different people at Transworld Publishers and Quick Reads who helped in various ways with this book. Thanks as well to the team at my agency Rogers, Coleridge & White.

  Chapter One

  Helen is wishing it was all out in the open.

  Then she wouldn’t have to pretend.

  Helen Summers re-reads the words she’s typed into her mobile phone. Just one more tap on the screen and the two sentences will be posted, through the internet link in her phone, onto her Facebook page. All her Facebook friends will be able to see the comment. There’s a chance Jill, her sister, might spot it too. Helen’s index finger remains in mid-air, unsure whether to press down and seal her fate.

  The train she’s on suddenly swerves around a bend, and she grabs at the nearby rail to steady herself. Outside, the terraced houses, open playing fields and dowdy high streets of London’s outer suburbs slip by under a darkening winter sky.

  A strange mix of commuters surrounds Helen. They’re not the suited crowd who fill the carriages at peak times, their faces grey with the stress of long journeys between work and home. This 16:02 train from Hampton to Waterloo is carrying a different kind of traveller. The sort who by chance, design, bad luck or, like Helen, due to some mishap, has escaped, for today at least, the humdrum nine-to-five routine. There are senior citizens with Freedom Passes, cleaners heading for offices that will soon be empty and tourists fresh from seeing Tudor history at Hampton Court Palace.

  Helen’s hazel eyes remain fixed on her phone. The gadget is also connected to her ears, with music travelling up a white cord to some earphones. She lets go of the handrail and moves her feet further apart so she can balance better. Then she takes a deep breath and posts the comment on her Facebook page.

  There, it’s done. A sigh of relief and a jolt of worry pass through her at the same time. She thinks of the man whose actions have put her in this mess. Just the hint of his face in her mind’s eye makes her shiver. She had never trusted Danny. His Aston Martin and designer clothes didn’t persuade her that his online business, selling land in space, was a success.

  OK, all this climate change end-of-the-world stuff was getting serious. And yes, a few people who weren’t astronauts, but were rich enough, had travelled to outer space, but still. Helen couldn’t believe there were many people ready to pay money for a piece of paper that claimed they owned a plot of land somewhere that wasn’t on earth.

  Was it even legal? Helen had often wondered. Didn’t you have to own something to sell it? What right did Danny have to flog off bits of the solar system for his own profit? Then again, as Helen’s mother, Sheila, liked to say, ‘That man would sell water to the sea if he had half a chance.’

  Helen shakes her head. Why is she focusing on him? She raises the volume of the music so the sound blots out her thoughts. Already replies to her Facebook post are starting to appear. She reads them:

  Carrie Marsh: Sounds scary. What’s going on?

  David Grimleigh: R u OK?

  Pablo Perez: Heh? Good or bad?

  Helen smiles at her phone. This concern has the same effect as a hand stroking her back and makes her feel less alone. Another post pops up:

  Parveen Oberoi: Are you pregnant?

  That makes her laugh out loud. One or two people turn to look. The eyes of the man sitting in front of Helen flick up. He looks for the source of the lively giggle. A sound that cuts through the quiet of the carriage like the trill of an exotic bird piercing the silence of a graveyard.

  The man sees plump, but shapely calves rising out of some ankle boots. Fuck-me shoes, that’s what his friends call this kind of footwear, and for the first time Kerm understands what they mean. The long, thin, spiky heels make his lips pucker, as if he’s about to whistle. His right leg is almost between hers; if he stretched out and lifted it up . . .

  He whips his head round, looking over one shoulder as if there’s something he can’t miss outside the window. Control yourself, man, he tells himself. It seems especially wrong to be having such thoughts today, just hours after his grandfather’s funeral.

  Through his work he has grown used to death. He doesn’t see it as often as he did when he was a junior doctor training in hospital, but he gets a hint of it almost every day. Usually it’s via his older patients, but sometimes they are young, even younger than him, and often they seem healthier than him too. These are the cases that shake him up and make him vow to give up smoking. Until two hours later, when he finds himself ducking around the back of the surgery for a cigarette.

  Baoji was the first person close to Kerm who has died, though the closeness was more of blood than of the heart. Kerm’s deeper feelings lie with his mother’s side of the family, but his fate, if the elders are to be believed, is bound up with his father’s side of the family. They were men remembered for their authority and long lives.

  Kerm was born exactly one hundred and one years (to the day) after his great-grandfather on his father’s side, Kamaveer Singh Vora. This was seen as a good sign because Sikhs consider odd numbers to be especially lucky. With gifts of money, for example, they never give a whole number. One extra pound is always added to the sum, so, for example, it’s £21, £51, £101 . . .

  Some of Kerm’s father’s relatives are convinced that he is the reincarnation of his great-grandfather. The older female members of the Vora family often say, ‘Niri Veer-ji’, meaning ‘the spitting image of Veer’. They pat Kerm’s high cheekbones, pull at his long chin, tap his sharp nose and shake their heads at the likeness.

  His face may display the typical Vora features, but Kerm’s physique comes from his mother. The Vora men tend to be short and stocky, while Kerm is tall and gangly. That’s why he was nicknamed Kermit, later shortened by almost everyone to Kerm.

  Sometimes he wonders jokingly who he is. Where is Kerm in this being whose soul is said to come from an ancestor and whose body is not completely his own either?

  Kerm has had trouble with his eyesight and has had to have both eyes operated on. His left cornea – the see-through disc at the front of the eyeball – once belonged to a nineteen-year-old from Glasgow who died of a stab wound to the heart. His right cornea was donated by a fifty-one-year-old German woman who died of a stroke.

  Try as he might, Kerm can’t forget about this. As a doctor, he understands the science o
f transplants. He’s aware that corneas don’t age or change unless there is some specific direct damage, like an acid burn. So there’s no chance that the lives of his donors have affected their corneas. Moreover, Kerm knows that just because you have someone else’s heart or eyes, doesn’t mean you start feeling or seeing like them.

  And yet, there’s a part of him that believes some experiences can invade the blood, flesh, organs and even the cells of people. He himself has been, and is still being, formed and changed in this way. He doesn’t want to remember some of the things, but they are embedded in him. They are a kind of DNA that affects everything, and they’re all the more powerful for being unseen.

  Chapter Two

  Kerm had last visited his grandfather in hospital two days before his death. He knew that in his family’s opinion he hadn’t gone often enough. He’d made it three times during the five weeks Baoji had been an in-patient. It would have felt false to turn up more regularly. A closeness that had never existed couldn’t suddenly be forced, Kerm felt.

  ‘You don’t go just for the one who’s dying,’ his mother had said, ‘you go to support those who will be most affected by the loss, like your father. Go for your dad’s sake, Kerm.’ Her logic would have made sense if the bond with his father had been stronger. Sadly, it too was flimsy, like a rope weakened by neglect rather than over-use.

  Nevertheless Kerm had gone, maybe because showing up at such moments was one of the basic principles of being a family. And also because having your father’s approval still seemed to matter, even when you were thirty-two years old, and already owned a better car than any your father had driven.

  The first time Kerm had been to the hospital was two weeks before the end, on a Saturday afternoon. He’d caught a whiff of curry as he got out of the lift in the Medicine for the Elderly unit. He assumed the hospital had served Indian food for lunch that day, but in his grandfather’s ward the smell was much stronger. It was as if an Indian fair was in full swing.

  Baoji’s four sons and one daughter were there, and everyone except Kerm’s dad had a spouse with them. Some had brought children and grandchildren along, too. Even Sam, the son who hadn’t spoken to his father for years, had come over from Uganda. Everyone was crowded around the bed, chatting, snacking and arguing as if they were at home. Kerm couldn’t believe the hospital had allowed such a crowd, let alone such a smell, to build up.

  While his Aunt Veena offered him samosas, Kerm glanced at the other patients in the ward, and beyond them towards the nurses’ station.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dr Kermit, I’ve given them some as well. I haven’t been coming here all these weeks without learning a thing or two.’ Veena took a bite of the samosa Kerm had refused.

  ‘All these weeks!’ Her brother Vishal said as he ushered Kerm through the ring of bodies towards Baoji. ‘You were in Canada when Dad was admitted. You only got back ten days ago.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been here morning to night ever since, unlike some people who have to go to work.’ Veena stood with one hand on her hip, while the other held her half-eaten samosa in mid-air. ‘It’s been a full-time job for me. Feels like longer than ten days.’

  The other uncles and aunts began welcoming Kerm. His Aunt Sajini piped up with her usual, ‘Hello, Kermit, how’s your mummy?’ Her eyes were always on Kerm’s dad as she asked the question, as though she expected him to burst into tears, even twenty years after the divorce.

  Baoji was a picture of peace amidst his loud family. Maybe there were some advantages to having poor sight and hearing in old age, Kerm thought. The old man looked so small. It was hard to believe those narrow, bony shoulders poking through the green hospital vest were the same ones Kerm had climbed on as a child.

  ‘He looks all right, doesn’t he?’ one of the uncles said.

  Kerm swallowed. He knew how easy it was to get used to illness, how even the most wasted face could begin to look normal to those who saw it every day. Maybe Baoji had been worse before. Perhaps he was looking better compared to last week. ‘Is he showing signs of improvement then?’

  ‘Yah yah. You know he ate quite well today.’ Kerm’s dad, Rajan, pointed to the plastic bottle on Baoji’s bedside table. It looked like the kind of thing body builders might drink to bulk up on muscle. In fact it was an orange-coloured liquid rich in nutrients that was given to patients who could no longer eat properly. ‘I managed to get three spoons of that down him this morning.’

  ‘Well, I managed to feed him five spoons last night,’ Veena added. In her brightly patterned outfit, she looked like one of the flower arrangements on the nearby shelf. ‘That sounds good, doesn’t it, Kerm?’

  He nodded slowly. It didn’t seem the moment to suggest otherwise.

  A nurse came up then to say there were too many people around the hospital bed. ‘I’m afraid it’s a fire hazard,’ she said, screwing up her nose as if the smoke had already got to her. ‘Only six at a time maximum. The rest of you will have to wait outside and take it in turns.’

  ‘But he’s a doctor,’ Veena pointed at Kerm.

  The nurse raised her eyebrows as if she didn’t see the point of the comment.

  ‘Anyway, nurse,’ Veena crossed her arms under her heavy breasts, ‘my father’s sheets haven’t been changed today, and we’re still waiting for the consultant. My nephew’, she pointed at Kerm again, ‘has some professional queries for him.’

  Kerm winced. Offers of smelly food, veiled threats and bragging about the doctors amongst your visitors was not the way to get hospital staff on side. They were exactly the type of family he and his fellow doctors had joked about when he had done his training. They were the kind of people nobody wanted to treat. The kind you tossed a coin for and cursed when you lost.

  Chapter Three

  As the train approaches a station, Kerm can see the platforms heaving with people, many of them dressed the same way. He’s about to get caught in the end-of-school rush. He turns away from the window again, unfolds the newspaper lying in his lap and tries to read, but soon his eyes stray back to the woman with the lovely laugh.

  Kerm’s gaze follows the length of the camel-coloured suede coat that drapes three-quarters of her body. The flowing cut of the garment shows little of her figure. There’s a splash of emerald-green wool where the buttons of the coat are open at her chest. A thin gold chain glistens against the pale skin at her throat. She has a pretty face: her slightly chubby cheeks look healthy and her skin is as smooth and flawless as a child’s. Her eyes are cast down, fixed on the screen of her phone, but he can see long black lashes curving upwards.

  The train doors open and an insanity of noise hits Kerm’s ears. It’s so loud they could be passing through a zoo where a premiership football match is taking place. School children pile onto the train in groups, jostling one another and talking noisily. Some are in uniform, ties askew, blazers hanging off one shoulder. Others take casual-wear to absurd extremes: guys in jeans with waistbands sagging below the bum, and girls defying the winter weather by flashing bare legs under their skirts. Nearly all the students hold carrier bags marked with a sports brand logo. The sharp corners of files or text books poke through the plastic, jabbing into anyone close by.

  Helen, who’s still standing in the middle of the carriage, between two rows of seats, has hardly noticed the crowd thickening around her. The mini speakers tucked into her ears ooze an electronic funk that masks the noise of the train and other passengers. Helen’s eyes remain glued to her phone. Her cheeks are covered by shoulder-length brown hair that falls forwards, cutting off the view on either side. She scrolls down her Facebook page, enjoying the messages posted by friends:

  Tina just ate a 6-serving chocolate pudding to get her through the chaos. It helped.

  Helen taps on the option ‘Like’ that appears just below the comment, and her name is added to the tally of five other people to have given Tina’s comment a thumbs-up. She does the same for another remark Tina posted that afternoon, an hour after the first one:
/>
  Tina wants to know when her hips will finally give way to her will.

  All Tina’s Facebook chat is somehow related to her weight. Helen can sympathise because she too is on a constant crusade against calories. She smiles as she reads John Manfield’s update:

  John knows that no one looks back at their life and remembers the nights they got plenty of sleep.

  Sometimes, Helen feels, there is more practical wisdom to be found on Facebook than in the philosophical texts she studies at university. Occasionally, she finds, Facebook is even more entertaining than a good novel. There’s a lot more room for playing guessing games because you know the characters personally and the plot can have countless strands. What’s more, you can chip in with a line or two of your own and maybe even influence the outcome. Facebook as the future of fiction: maybe that should be the subject of her next essay. She giggles aloud as she reads another update:

  Janet caught Jessie’s vomit in her cupped hands in the middle of Tesco food hall this lunchtime.

  Helen continues to scroll down the screen, enjoying other people’s mistakes and musings. Then she sees another comment appear in response to her own post. It’s from Jeremy Turner:

  ‘Where (or of what) one cannot speak, one must pass over in silence.’

  Helen comes out in goose bumps. She can almost feel the hairs on her arms stiffen and prick against her clothes. Jeremy is one of her tutors, the youngest professor in a department where no one is under forty. He’s an expert on the philosopher Wittgenstein and a regular user of Facebook. Most of his activity on the social network involves him posting profound quotations that are spookily relevant to most daily situations.