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

the woman out of the corner of his eye as she slipped her shoe back on and looked around. Their eyes met, briefly, then she looked away.

He took a deep breath. He wasn’t looking forward to the day. It wasn’t just this awful case he was working on and the client meeting he had later; he felt burnt out and wanted to retire. What he really wanted to do was go off on his motorbike. Just him, a credit card and the open road. His wife had called it his mid-life crisis – a BMW R 1200 GS, a great roaring beast that throbbed under him. He’d got a hard-on when he took it out for a test drive. He bought it on a whim, and had barely ridden it, but he could ride from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, or around the coast of Australia. Even Land’s End to John O’Groats would do. Or he could buy a boat and sail solo round the world, no one expecting anything of him, no one relying on him. He could afford it but it just wasn’t done, to go off and leave a wife at home like that. Especially now. Damn her and that bloody horse.

He closed his eyes for a moment. As if he didn’t have enough to deal with already, today he had the added problem of Liam. He clenched his jaw and took his paper out, trying to shake off any thought of his son. He attempted to concentrate on the news but in the lead up to the referendum, he was bored with the whole thing. There was no way the UK was going to vote itself out of Europe, no one was that crazy even with the fool Farage whipping people into a frenzy with his xenophobia, and Boris Johnson standing there and saying we’d all be better off and the NHS would be saved. What rubbish.

He looked at his watch and at the police cars in the field, glad he wasn’t in court today at least.

The carriage door opened and in came the guard. He was about the same age as Liam, and Lawrence felt the surge of anger that always accompanied thoughts of his son these days. Bloody young fool. Why couldn’t he get a job and settle down – he’d had a far better education than this lad but he wouldn’t even get a job on the trains the way he was going.

He got his season ticket out and flashed it.

‘Suicide?’ he asked.

The guard’s lips tightened for a moment and he didn’t make eye contact.

‘I’m not at liberty to say anything at the moment, I’m afraid.’

Which, as far as Lawrence was concerned, meant, Yes, suicide. ‘Is the driver all right?’ he asked.

The conductor looked surprised.

‘What I mean is, will he be looked after? My grandfather drove a train and it happened to him once. He never got into the driving cab again.’

‘He’ll have his sick leave and that,’ said the conductor.

Lawrence drew a card out of his wallet. ‘If he has any trouble, call me. I can put him on to the right lawyer if he needs one.’

When the young man had gone, Lawrence smiled to himself. He might be pissed off with his son, but he was still a decent sort. Giving the guard his card had been a magnanimous gesture. He was unlikely to use it.

He closed his eyes and thought about his grandfather. He remembered him as a humourless man who had made a fortune when he was still quite young and let it go to his head.

He’d been a train driver – steam trains, of course – before he’d invented the gadget that had made him rich. An addition to the braking system that made it more efficient, and had started him on the road to making his fortune. No one had been more surprised than him, but he’d had the foresight to patent his invention and was able to raise some capital. He left the railways to start an engineering company manufacturing his gadget and others and eventually settled into the life of the wealthy – ‘hunting, shooting and fishing’. Although there was no fishing for him, he said it was too passive. He liked the thrill of the chase. He’d bought an estate near Northampton from a man whose gambling and womanising was running it into the ground. Lawrence smiled to himself. He loved the house and gardens, had wonderful memories of playing there with his cousin, Jeff, when they were children. Then there’d been the terrible falling out in the mid-seventies over his grandfather’s will, in which he left the entire estate to Jeff’s father, and not a penny to his own. Lawrence didn’t know what it was all about, but his anal sphincter still clenched when he thought of it, the injustice of it all. His grandfather may have had an issue with Lawrence’s father, but that was no reason to cut his grandchildren out of the will. If he’d been a lawyer then he’d have contested it, but he’d only been a powerless teenager. His father had refused to talk about it and had never spoken to his brother again. Lawrence was just glad he and Jeff hadn’t allowed it to mar their relationship.

The thought of Jeff made his chest feel tight. Grief, he’d been told, could do things like that to a person. Fucking cancer. How many years had it been – three? He forced himself to relax, to lay his hands gently in his lap, to think of other things. He hadn’t seen Jeff’s kids for ages. He wondered what Elspeth was doing these days and why Russell wasn’t married. Lawrence had thought Lucy was the one for him and suddenly it was all over.

He looked around. He was on his own again. Well, not exactly on his own, there were other people in the carriage, but they nodded to each other when they got on and didn’t look at each other