The Passenger by Daniel Hurst (great book club books TXT) 📕

23

AMANDA

‘An escort? You? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t see it.’

I have just finished telling the man opposite me about my extracurricular activities to earn more cash, but I can already see it was a mistake. I was hoping that my confession would garner a little sympathy for me and show him that I’m more than just some office drone who has saved up a portion of her wages over the years. Rather, I am a hard-working mother determined to do anything to better my life. But he just keeps laughing at me.

‘So that’s how you saved up so much money. People paid to go on a date with you,’ he says, shaking his head in amusement. ‘Are there really that many desperate men in the world?’

‘They weren’t desperate. They were just lonely,’ I correct him.

‘Whatever. I can’t get over the fact that you were an escort.’

‘Why not?’

‘Aren’t escorts supposed to be all glamorous?’

I’d be more offended by the statement if it hadn’t come after all the threats to me and my daughter. Instead, my level of hate for this man can’t get any higher than it already is right now.

‘I had a disguise,’ I tell him, referring to the blonde wig I used to put on.

‘Well, it must have been a bloody good one because I still can’t see it working, I’m afraid.’

‘Fuck you,’ I tell him, and this time it’s my turn to stubbornly cross my arms.

‘Did you, you know…’ he says suggestively.

‘No, I did not,’ I reply firmly, knowing exactly what he is referring to.

He takes a moment to enjoy the hatred coming at him across the table before shrugging his shoulders.

‘Okay, I admit it. You were right. There is more to you than meets the eye,’ he says with an appreciative nod of the head. ‘But that doesn’t change anything. So you made your money as an escort. So what? That money is still going to be mine by the time we get to Brighton.’

I watch him check the time on his watch again as I feel the train slowing as we make our approach to the next station. Several passengers take out their headphones, close their newspapers or put away their phones and go through the tedious routine of gathering up their belongings in preparation to disembark.

I watch a couple of them, including an elderly woman in a business suit who moves slowly and looks exhausted. She looks to be in her mid-sixties. Retirement age. She should be enjoying herself at her age, not clinging on to the back of her seat for balance as the train sways while she attempts to reach her coat in the overhead storage area. I wonder why she is still commuting. The obvious answer is that she still needs the money, but she looks old enough to be drawing a pension. Unless of course, she is one of the unfortunate ones who got screwed by the government when they changed the age of entitlement. There is a woman in my office who suffered the same fate. She could have retired at sixty, but she has fallen into the group that must work until they are sixty-five now through no fault of her own. She isn’t happy about it, and she isn’t the only one. There have been petitions, protests, and plenty of pleading with the powers that be about allowing those unlucky workers who had the goalposts moved on them to retire earlier, but they have all gone unheard. Keep working. There’s no escape.

Not yet.

I notice the woman is struggling to remove her coat from the overhead space. It seems to have been trapped beneath a heavy briefcase, and I’m just about to offer my help when my tormentor offers his instead.

‘Let me get that for you.’

He gets up from his seat and lends his assistance to the passenger, lifting up the briefcase and allowing the woman to pull her coat out more easily. I’m surprised to see the show of chivalry from the man who is currently trying to extort money out of me, as well as being dismayed to see that he has kept his phone in his hand as he does it.

‘Thank you,’ the woman says as she pulls on her coat as he retakes his seat.

‘No problem at all,’ he says with a wide smile that I would just love to wipe off his face.

Then the woman turns to me before she departs. ‘You’ve got yourself a good one there,’ she says, beaming at us both before shuffling away towards the doors and out onto the platform.

I didn’t get a chance to correct her and tell her that I’m not actually with this man, nor is he as gentlemanly as he appears, but she is gone, disappearing with everybody else who disembarked at the same time.

The train is much quieter now, and most of the seats are available as the doors close, and we set off again on the penultimate part of the journey. I don’t need him to tell me that we are now only eighteen minutes from Brighton.

As the train passes along the platform, I notice that the large grin on his face is still there. He seems rather proud of himself for what he has just done.

‘See. I’m not all bad.’

‘I guess that was your one good deed for the day,’ I reply sarcastically.

‘No. There is still plenty of time for one more. I can give your daughter the gift of life. You only have to say the magic words. Or rather, the magic numbers.’

He holds up his phone again to remind me that all of this could potentially be over with a simple call to his partner, but that’s not what I’m thinking about right now. I’m thinking about if I have any chance of grabbing that phone from his hand and running down the carriage before he can catch up with me.

Probably not.

Why would that work when everything else has gone wrong for