The Train by Sarah Bourne (fiction books to read txt) 📕

into bed. The stairlift they’d got for her father was a blessing. Her mother loved it, going up and down two or three times every night before she’d go to bed, laughing as she waved her hands in the air with the excitement of it all.

Clare flopped down on the sofa and stretched her legs out. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could go on like this. Marion was fantastic, but she didn’t want to work more hours. Nursing homes were expensive, and her father had always said he wanted to die at home, not in a urine-smelling, plastic-chaired facility people went into to wait for death to take them. She had money now, it was true, but how long would it last if she had to pay for a home for her mother and twenty-four-hour care for her father? Not long. A lifetime of having to be careful, of scrimping and saving had made her wary of spending. She wasn’t going to squander it on things she could manage herself.

She laughed at the idea she could go off on a holiday, leaving her parents at home. It wasn’t going to happen. A sob choked her. Nothing was going to be different. She had been wrong earlier when she thought this was the day her life changed. The reality was she was going to spend the next however many years looking after her demented mother and her frail father, wishing their lives away so hers could begin, hoping that by then she wasn’t too old to enjoy it.

She sucked in her lips, took a deep breath and heard May’s voice in her head telling her to put her feelings into a strong box and slam the lid on them. Of course, May only meant her to put her panicky feelings in a box, but Clare found it a useful exercise for any emotions she didn’t want to feel. It took a while to stuff them all in, but she was well practised. In her mind’s eye, she put the box of feelings in a safe and locked it away.

She got out her notebook and pen and started writing.

3

Tim

Tim was tired. He’d worked overtime for the last two weeks, what with Danny being off with one complaint or another. Danny was often off. Tim and the boys wondered if he was moonlighting somewhere, working on the trains not being enough.

‘Wouldn’t put it past him,’ Tim had said last time they talked about him. ‘He’s a sly one that Danny. Notice the way he’s never there when it’s time to buy a round? Always there to drink it though. Tight-arse. Wouldn’t surprise me if he was a millionaire on the quiet. Cash-in-the-mattress type. Not one to trust a bank.’

Frank had laughed. ‘Yer probably right there,’ he’d said, and scratched his excuse for a beard.

Frank was proud of his bumfluff. Tim had once laughed at him as he groomed it with a special brush in the Men’s. Frank had called him a worthless bastard and Tim hadn’t mentioned it again.

Tim hated the early trains. Too many wankers and uppity country types who were outraged in their uptight, going-puce-but-saying-nothing way if someone sat in their seat. As if it was their seat.

He rolled his shoulders to relax them a bit. They’d just left Milton Keynes, it was still before eight and he was doing a double shift. Wouldn’t be home till gone nine this evening. Three trips. At least he’d be sleeping in his own bed, not like last night when he got stranded in Manchester and had to kip at a mate’s place. What a dosshouse. He shuddered at the memory. Wouldn’t be surprised if he got fleas, and he scratched at an imagined bite. Still, at least it was free.

He made his way to the on-board food shop and got Sandra to make him a cup of tea the way he liked it – two teabags and a breath of milk. His mum used to say it’d put hairs on his chest. What did she know – when was the last time she’d seen his chest, or any of the rest of him for that matter? Must be more than fourteen years – he’d been about nine. They used to drink tea together in the evenings while she watched Coronation Street and he pretended to do his homework, in the peaceful time before his dad got home. He spent the first few months after she left believing she’d come back and the time since wondering whether there was anything he could have done to make her stay.

He downed the tea, thanked Sandra and headed off down the train. Ticket time.

Suddenly the brakes squealed and the train started slowing down fast. Either a twat had pulled on the emergency brake, or there was a problem. He braced himself against the wall just inside the first-class coach, closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. The screech of the brakes was like a knife in his head, and the air smelled of burning metal. Eventually the train stopped and Tim opened his eyes. The passengers were looking out the windows to see what had happened. There were paper cups and sandwich wrappers all over the floor, and spilt tea running across the aisles, but everyone stayed in their seats and quickly got back to their phones or laptops.

As he tried to make a quiet exit to find out what had happened, some pillock in a suit caught him by the sleeve, wanting to know how long it would be until they got going again.

‘I have a very important meeting. I can’t be late.’

‘I understand, sir,’ Tim said, in his most soothing voice, pulling his arm away from the man’s grasp, ‘and I’ll look into it, but right now I need to find out what’s happened and make an announcement for all the passengers.’ He emphasised the ‘all the passengers’, so this twat knew he was being an arsehole.

The man followed him along