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

posh buggers with their hoity-toity airs and graces were no different to anyone else.

With a shudder and a few clanks the train started moving, slowly at first, as if it needed to stretch and warm up again. Bit like her mum who did yoga to a video every morning. Alice wished she earned enough to move out. She closed her eyes and made a wish – let me be successful today. Let this be the first day of the rest of my life.

She checked the time on her phone. She could have gone home and slept for a couple of hours in the time they’d wasted. But she had taken the extra shift partly because she knew she wouldn’t have slept anyway and might as well have something to take her mind off the day. And here it was. The day that was going to be the first step to her new life. She crossed her fingers. Suddenly a shiver went along her spine. What if the suicide was a bad omen? She stifled a groan.

‘Don’t be so bloody superstitious, you idiot.’ She clenched her fists. But having thought of the jumper, she couldn’t get him out of her mind. She wondered what had driven him to suicide. A failed relationship? The lack of a relationship? She was experiencing that right now, for the first time since she was fourteen. She always had a guy in her life, although most of them turned out to be toerags. Sometimes, although never for long, she even regretted breaking up with Karl, two months before. He had been far too self-absorbed and didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. He hadn’t even sent a card on Valentine’s Day; she’d had to dash out and buy one at lunchtime so she had something to show her friends that night. And a bunch of roses. She hadn’t realised how expensive they were. It was then she knew he had to go. She sighed, her head lolling in time with the clattering of the wheels.

The door at the end of the carriage opened and the ticket collector started slowly along the aisle, checking tickets, smiling, having short conversations with the other passengers. He was tall and quite good-looking. His shirt was coming untucked on one side in a cute sort of way; she wanted to pull it out all the way and look at his body. She sat straighter, tucked her hair behind her ears, shrugged herself out of her coat and pulled her shoulders back, just enough to make her breasts seem a little fuller.

‘Morning,’ she said as he took her ticket.

He nodded in her direction but didn’t actually look at her, and he was gone. Not even a word. No smile. Rude bugger. She turned and watched him take the old lady’s ticket, have a bit of a chat, and then he moved out of her sight along the carriage.

Maybe he fancied her, and that was why he didn’t look at her – perhaps he was shy. Or gay. Or in a committed relationship with someone who got jealous if he looked at an attractive girl. She slumped in her seat again. She was a catch, so why was it that Mr Right hadn’t found her yet and swept her off her feet? Fuck the ticket collector. Who wanted to go out with someone who couldn’t get a better job than that?

She pulled a book out of her bag. Illicit Love by Pauline de Winter. It was the third book she’d read by her, and she loved them all. So romantic, but spicy too. This Pauline de Winter certainly knew her stuff. She must have lived such an exciting life. The things the lovers did together, too, made her blush, but in a good way. The women were strong, not the sorts that needed saving, but not so independent they didn’t know a good thing when it came along. And the men were always bold, but not too bold, handsome, but unaware of it, courteous without being pussies. And, of course, they always adored the heroine. Oh, how Alice wanted a man like that. She opened the book and started reading.

He lifted her onto the chaise carefully. She felt his powerful arms around her and turned towards him, her face inches away from his. He smelled musky. She could feel his breath on her cheek, his heart beating, strong and steady.

‘Are you sure this is what you want, Katherine?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she breathed, unlacing her bodice, revealing her pert breasts, the nipples already erect, waiting for his kisses.

He looked at her and she heard his breath quicken.

‘Come to me,’ she said.

He lay next to her, his hands on her breasts, squeezing gently, his member hard against her thigh. She felt the heat spreading in her groin and moaned in anticipation as he lifted her skirts and started slowly easing her underwear off.

‘Oh, Clifford,’ she said, and then, as he found her pink pearl, waves of pleasure engulfed her and she couldn’t talk any more.

Alice stopped reading and closed her eyes to imagine the rest of the scene. Lady Katherine Quincy and lowly Clifford Brown, the gardener, making love in her boudoir.

The man next to her coughed quietly and she opened her eyes, wondering if she’d been groaning or sighing or somehow alerting him to the fact that she was feeling quite aroused. But he was deep in his newspaper, reading about Brexit. Couldn’t happen fast enough for her. She thought all the foreign health workers who could hardly speak English were a disgrace to the National Health Service. And made getting jobs harder for people like her, born and bred in England. She knew how she’d be voting come June 23rd. Closing her eyes again, she let her thoughts drift back to her book.

She wanted a Clifford Brown, although she’d prefer it if he wasn’t a gardener. Maybe a personal trainer so he was fit and tanned with a six-pack. Or a doctor