The Train

by Sarah Bourne

  ‘Are you okay, Dad?’

  He suddenly felt very tired. All he wanted was to lie down and sleep, and wake up five years ago, before Felice had left to go to university, before Frostie had become ill.

  ‘Your grandparents have made a will. You are to receive everything when they die, being the only grandchild. I had a meeting with them this morning. They wanted you to know. I don’t know why they didn’t tell you themselves.’ It was easier to talk about trusts and wills than it was to think about the loss of his daughter.

  Felice had sat straighter and looked shocked. Whether it was because of the abrupt change of topic or what Trevor had actually said, he didn’t know.

  ‘Wow, I always thought I might get something in their will, but I imagined they’d leave most of it to charity or the church.’

  ‘Apparently not. You will be an heiress. I don’t think there’s much cash, but the house must be worth quite a bit. What does Liam do for money?’

  ‘He doesn’t live off me, if that’s what you’re thinking, and he won’t want to fritter away my inheritance. He gets a bit from his parents and he works in a photography shop a couple of days a week, photographs the occasional wedding. He lives in a dive with four others, so the rent is low. He gets by.’

  Trevor imagined a dope den. Five young men spending their time getting stoned day in, day out.

  ‘Look, Dad, I know what you’re thinking, but give him a chance, please. For me. I think you’ll like him when you get to know him.’

  Trevor didn’t know anything anymore. He’d been so proud when Felice had been offered her place at Oxford. His main worry was that she’d meet a toffee-nosed type who looked down on her family. He couldn’t have imagined that not only would the boy she fell in love with be from a wealthy family but he would also be mad. No one expected such a thing, surely.

  ‘Just tell me what happened.’ He had to know. He didn’t want to like this boy. He didn’t want anything bad to happen to him, he just wanted him gone from his daughter’s life.

  ‘He wants to tell you himself, and it’ll be better coming from him.’

  A silence lengthened into the shadows of the room. Trevor considered leaving, running back to Milton Keynes, but he couldn’t outrun the future.

  He drank his tea slowly, as if by doing so he could slow time down. Felice talked to him as she prepared dinner in her tiny kitchen. He was perching on the edge of the sofa, watching her through the open door, trying to remember every detail of their time together, just the two of them.

  He imagined himself at home later, thinking back to this time, calling it The Time Before. He had always divided his life into eras.

  There wasn’t much he wanted to remember from his childhood. His brothers were bullies and although he knew his mother loved him she was ineffectual, unable to intervene in what she must have known was happening. Perhaps she had been as scared of his brothers as he was. Or maybe she thought he should toughen up and deal with it himself. Well, he had dealt with it. He’d left.

  At university there had been little fun and lots of hard work; as the first person in his family to finish school let alone go on to do a degree, he had something to prove. And his brothers were left behind, underemployed and feckless.

  Teaching followed, and weekend bike rides. Drinking. Not too much usually, but sometimes a lot, to dull the ache of loneliness. His university friends had marched into jobs all over the British Isles and he had ended up a token black teacher in a white neighbourhood and no one asked him to dinner.

  Then he’d met Frostie. He thought of meeting her as the beginning of his real life, the life he’d been preparing for. His mother had recently died of a brain tumour and he had volunteered to help at a fundraising event for a cancer charity. He’d been selling raffle tickets at the door and Frostie – she introduced herself as Veronica – had been taking coats. He knew as soon as he heard her voice and looked into her eyes that she was the one for him.

  Theirs was true love. He’d rush home to spend long evenings with Frostie cooking, eating, talking, going to movies, seeing friends, having picnics, bike rides. All the things that matter so much more when there are two people instead of one. And they made love, oh, how they made love. Black and white and white and black in the kitchen, on the sofa, in the bath, behind the shed where the hydrangeas offered privacy from nosy neighbours, in their bed, beside their bed, and, when Frostie was heavy with their soon-to-be-born daughter, in the nursery.

  With Felice’s birth he felt a sense of completion. Now he had his own family to love and protect. The joy he felt was marred only by the anxiety he wasn’t equal to the task.

  When Frostie became ill he couldn’t shake the belief that somehow he had failed her. If he’d been a better husband she wouldn’t have got sick, wouldn’t have died.

  After his wife’s death there was Felice. Only Felice. His one joy, his one success. He loved her fiercely but she was already away at university. He still taught at the local high school but with Frostie and Felice gone he had nothing left in his heart for the children nor his subject. He knew he was letting the students down, they deserved more, and yet he had no reserves to draw on; he was barely managing to get out of bed each day.

  So what should he do now she was living her own life, a life of her choosing, a life and a partner he may not approve of? Yes, tonight was the cusp and he couldn’t see what lay beyond.

  ‘Dad – did you hear me?’

  He lifted his head. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

  His daughter smiled at him. ‘Honestly, Dad, you live too much in your head. You ought to get out more. I asked you to open the wine.’

  ‘Open the wine? But he’s not here yet.’

  Felice handed him a bottle and a corkscrew. ‘It’s red, needs to breathe.’

  Since when had she known red wine needed to breathe? And when had she been able to afford a wine to which breathing made enough difference to notice? He shrugged and did as he was told. ‘You are so sophisticated these days,’ he said, and smiled. She winked and blew him a Hollywood kiss, then turned her back on him to attend to something in the kitchen.

  ‘Felice, are you sure this is the boy for you?’ He knew it was wrong to ask again but the question was out of his mouth before he could stop it. She looked at him with eyebrows raised, took a deep breath and was about to speak when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Be nice,’ she said to him as she took her apron off and ran her hands through her hair. As she passed him, Trevor noticed her face had softened. And he realised that if he wanted her to include him in her life with this boy, he had to make an effort.

  Trevor stood as a tall, blond man came in, kissed Felice on the cheek and then turned towards him. His first impression was that he looked nothing like his father, the angular man with the abrasive manner. A point in his favour, as far as Trevor was concerned. He also noticed how Felice looked; like Frostie had when they fell in love – more alive, somehow, as if all the cells of her body were suddenly infused with the elixir of life and were straining to reach out to him, to this man, this Liam, whose cells were behaving in the same way. It was a moment so intimate Trevor had to look away. His daughter and this man, they brightened each other.

  He felt a small, sharp pain in his side and recognised it as envy. He’d had what they had and he wanted it again. The sense that the day was worth living because at the end of it you’d see the one you loved, that there was someone else out there in the world who thought you into existence during the day and was pleased to see the flesh-and-blood you when they got home.

  He plastered a smile over his pain and shook Liam’s hand. It felt like a damp fish in his firm grasp. Trevor put a cross in his ledger of Liam. A strong handshake was the mark of a decisive person and this Liam had produced a limp offering.

  ‘Sit down, you two, I’ll get the wine,’ said Felice. Trevor noticed her voice was strained through her anxiety and wondered if Liam knew her well enough to notice.

  ‘Not for me, thank
s, Felice.’ In his mouth her name sounded like Fliss. Was it an endearment or an attempt to make it sound more English? Either way, Trevor didn’t like it. He’d always loved her name. He and Frostie had taken almost the whole six weeks they were allowed before registering her birth, just to make sure it was exactly right for her. They sang it to her, said it to each other, wrote it down with fancy embellishments and in square capital letters. And they agreed it was the most beautiful name in the world for the most beautiful girl in the universe. Fliss sounded like a waitress or something you cleaned your teeth with. Another cross.

  ‘So, Liam,’ said Trevor, and stopped. He couldn’t ask the thing he most wanted to know: How did you get sick and are you going to go in and out of madness all your life? Which was shorthand for Will you weigh my daughter down, or lift her up?

  ‘Mr Jackson, it’s so good to meet you at last. I’m sorry about my father earlier – Fliss phoned and told me what happened.’

  He spoke like he couldn’t move his tongue very well, so his vowels were flat and his consonants too soft. Trevor wondered if it was the drugs or if he always sounded like that. He didn’t like this boy apologising for his father either. Mr Lawrence Kelly was, undoubtedly, racist, but he had only been doing what Trevor himself wanted to do – keep these two apart. They were allies, of a sort. He decided to ignore the comment.

  ‘Tell me, Liam, what it is you do?’

  ‘I’m studying photography and working in a photographic shop. I hope to be a freelance nature photographer but I’ll do weddings and other things too – the bread-and-butter stuff.’

  ‘I already told you that, Dad,’ said Felice from the kitchen.

  ‘So you did, Sweetpea, so you did.’ Trevor wondered if Liam ever called her Sweetpea or Starlight, or any of the other names he had for her. He drummed his fingers on the table, unable to think of anything else to say.

  ‘Ta-da!’ said Felice, setting a casserole dish down on the table and going back to the kitchen to collect a salad. ‘Let’s eat.’ She looked at him and then at Liam. Trevor suddenly had no appetite and no energy for this dinner. It didn’t matter whether he liked this boy or not, or if he was sane or mad, rich or poor. His daughter had made her choice, just as he and Frostie had done all those years ago and there were plenty of people telling them they were making a mistake. He loved his daughter and had to try and trust she knew what she was doing. What goes around comes around, he thought, and almost laughed.

  ‘It smells good.’ He managed a smile.

  Liam nodded and took a deep breath. ‘Fliss is a great cook.’

  Trevor knew that. He didn’t need this stakki boy to tell him. He bit his lip to stop himself from saying anything. This Liam was a hard boy to like. Or was it that his own prejudice was too great an obstacle to see past?

  Liam looked at him. ‘I’m sure you want to know why I’m in hospital and what will happen in the future. I would, I suspect, if I were in your shoes.’ He looked into Felice’s eyes as if for support.

  ‘Yes.’ Trevor didn’t trust himself to say anything more.

  ‘I am ashamed to say it was all my own fault. After university I was rather rudderless. I’d done a course I loved but it led to nothing I wanted to do. My father was pressuring me into making decisions about a career. He wanted me to go into law, like him, and I suppose I rebelled. I drank too much and smoked too much weed – marijuana–’

  ‘I know what weed is.’

  ‘Of course.’ Liam nodded but didn’t look Trevor in the eye. ‘It went on for a few weeks. When Fliss’ – he looked at her and took her hand in a gesture that was reassurance and apology – ‘and my friends tried to stop me I felt they didn’t understand, that they were against me somehow, so I smoked more. I had a psychotic episode and was sectioned. I realise now how stupid I was and my doctor reckons that as long as I stay off the weed, it’ll never happen again.’

  ‘And can you – stay off the weed, I mean?’ asked Trevor.

  Felice gasped and he realised he had sounded aggressive but he had to know.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Liam. ‘I wouldn’t want to go through it all again, for my sake or Fliss’s.’ He looked at her and smiled.

  Trevor felt angry. This Liam had been a self-indulgent fool. If it was only his life he was messing up, fine, but Trevor knew that even if he never smoked again, there were no guarantees he would stay well – his cousin back in Jamaica had never been the same after his first ganja-induced episode.

  The evening didn’t go well. Trevor would start to say something and hear the accusation in his voice – you are not good enough for her – and stop. Liam feigned interest in his half-statements but was defensive and didn’t offer anything more of himself. Felice tried to introduce non-controversial topics but the air was so heavy with the things none of them were saying that the conversation fell between them and settled into a congealed mass that, in the end, none of them could find the energy to wade through.

  Trevor made his excuses and left soon after nine, seeing the accusation in his daughter’s eyes: You didn’t try.

  He shook Liam’s wet-fish hand, tried to hug Felice, who stiffened in his arms, and went out into the night. Two young boys who should have been tucked up in bed were lighting cigarettes, shading the match with their hands, heads together. Trevor wanted to tell them to stop now, to go home and stay safe. But home wasn’t always safe as well he knew, and anyway, who was he to tell anyone else what to do with their life?

  He walked slowly towards the station, hands in his pockets, trying to breathe past the tightness in his throat and chest.

  At Bank Station he changed from the Docklands Light Railway to the Tube and sat staring at the adverts without seeing them until he got off at Euston. He’d just missed the ten o’clock train, and now they were all slow, stopping at every station. He sighed. Nothing was going his way.

  He heard himself, thinking the thoughts of a man defeated by life, and took a deep breath. That wasn’t who he was. He had survived the bullying of his brothers, the death of his wife, the departure of his daughter. He was still alive, still healthy, still able to make choices. But he had behaved badly at Felice’s and was ashamed. He would have to do better in future.

  He pulled his phone out to text her and saw a notification from the MK Citizen, the local online news. He opened the app and scrolled down the list of headlines. And there it was.

  Local woman dies in tragic circumstances.

  He read on, intrigued to know more.

  Judith Strasser, 43, of Stoke Hammond, took her own life today. Estate Agent and tireless fundraiser for an animal sanctuary in the local area, she will be missed by family, friends and colleagues.

  Trevor bit his lips. Here she was, the woman who killed herself in front of the train. It had to be her, he knew the name – she had briefly joined the cycling club a few years back. Quiet woman. Frostie had thought she was lonely and made an effort to get to know her but she was very shy, didn’t mix much and soon she stopped coming.

  He took some deep, steadying breaths. He hadn’t known Judith Strasser more than to nod a greeting to, or make small talk about the weather or the route they were cycling but he felt a sense of loss nonetheless. She had been a living person who had been sad or desperate enough to end her own life. What a terrible thing.

  Walking towards the platform, he wondered what had prompted her to throw herself in front of the train that morning. Had she had a big heart that had broken? Life was so precious, and yet for some, so precarious. He wondered how her parents were coping. How did anyone cope with news like that? One minute you have a daughter, the next, she’s gone, and in such a terrible way. No time to say goodbye, I’m sorry, I love you. No chance to put back the clock and make things right.

  And he thought about his own daughter who was alive and happy. He loved her and was going do whatever was necessary to stay in her life. He wouldn’t let his feelings about this Liam boy get in the way of his relationship with his daughter and any possible child
ren they might have. He wanted to be the kind of granddad who had his grandkids for the weekend and took them on adventures, taught them to ride a bike, catch tadpoles, eat fish and chips in front of the telly. Because Frostie’s parents had never really accepted him they’d never had the closeness with Felice they would have enjoyed. It saddened him to think of it now, the wasted opportunity for all of them. And Trevor’s family hadn’t been involved in Felice’s life either, but for different reasons. They didn’t care that he had married a white woman, they just didn’t care, full stop.

  He sat on a bench, pulled out his phone and wrote a text.

  So sorry for appalling behaviour this evening. Blame it on your old dad being jealous. Liam seems a nice boy. I’m sure we’ll get on fine. I love you xxx

  He hit send and sat watching the screen, willing it to light up with a response from his daughter.

  With his spirits sinking, he boarded the train and found a seat in the surprisingly full carriage. Who’d have thought so many people were still out after ten on a weeknight?

  Trevor set himself a goal: by the time the train reached Milton Keynes he would have a plan for the rest of his life. Or if not the rest of his life, because that was quite a big task, at least the first step on the way. Felice was right; he couldn’t sit around waiting for life to happen to him, he had to do things to invite opportunities.

  He stared out the window as London slipped by, lit by street lamps, car headlights, shop signs.

  Number one, he was going to rejoin the cycle club. He hadn’t been since Frostie got ill – time with her was too precious to go cycling, even though she encouraged him to continue. And after she’d died, he didn’t want to have to talk to anyone about it so he’d avoided everyone who knew her.