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

He made sure she had adequate pain medication. He looked after her with care and devotion and still she slipped away.

He sighed and wondered if it took everybody so long to mourn for their wife. He still felt as if it had happened a week ago rather than years. A colleague at school who found him sobbing in the staff toilet suggested that maybe he should see someone but he didn’t want to do that. A counsellor might encourage him to get over it and in many ways he didn’t want to. Grief gave shape to his life now, where once his wife and daughter had.

He sat straighter in his seat. The passengers were restless, raising eyebrows, looking at watches, texting work. No one was reading the paper like they normally would. Some were even talking to each other. He wondered if the food shop was open, or did they close for a suicide? He needed a cup of tea – two teabags, a good dollop of milk, three sugars. And having thought about it, he had to go and see if he could get one.

Half the train had had the same idea and the food shop was packed. He shuffled through, excusing himself and trying to make himself smaller to fit between overweight men in suits and made-up women in high heels. Eventually he got to the counter and ordered his tea.

‘Like it strong, then,’ said the woman who served him. Her name badge said Sandra. ‘Just like our Tim, the conductor on this train. That’s how he likes his tea too. Put hairs on your chest it will!’

Trevor smiled at the thought. He’d always been somewhat lacking in the bodily hair department. Plenty on his head, it just hadn’t ever stretched to anywhere else. Sandra certainly had plenty of hair, plaited in thick, neat cornrows, the dark skin of her scalp showing between them. Trevor smiled, remembering Felice fidgeting and muttering under her breath when her mother tried to do them for her once. In the end, Frostie had given up, and Felice had run round to a friend’s house and come home later with her hair burnt from the straightening iron.

People were jostling him to get to the counter. It was a shame it was so busy. He would quite like to have stayed talking to Sandra and hear more of her theories about hair growth and tea. She had a word or a joke with everyone and they all ended up laughing or smiling. Funny how sometimes a stranger made you feel better, just by being there. He squeezed along to the end of the serving area and drank his tea, occasionally making a comment to Sandra who seemed to like the attention. Maybe he made her feel a bit better too. After he’d finished the first one, he ordered a second cup, and Sandra remembered how he liked it. It was a small thing, but it made him feel happy.

When he went back to his seat he was smiling and instead of dreading his lunch with Felice, he was looking forward to it. He’d got himself all worked up about it, but it would be all right.

Trevor leant against a letterbox and waited for Felice to come out of the building opposite. He had been rehearsing what he wanted to say all week, but now he was here, and she was about to join him, he couldn’t remember any of the arguments that had sounded so persuasive when he was on his own, practising in the bathroom mirror. Yet after the meeting with her grandparents he was even more determined to say his piece.

She’d said one and it was now one twenty. He hoped he hadn’t missed her, but surely she would have waited if they’d finished early? He checked his phone again. No missed calls. Nothing. He shifted to the other foot and turned his face to the weak May sun for a few moments.

‘Dad – there you are. Sorry I’m late. The meeting went over time.’

They hugged and then Trevor held her away from him. His fingers itched to pinch her cheeks like he used to when she was younger. She’d always pretend she didn’t like it but she never stopped him. She’d grown up so fast – twenty-two now, and in a real job but she’d always be his little girl.

He loved looking at his daughter, had stared at her for hours when she was little, wondering how something so perfect could have anything to do with him. She still had the same smooth, brown skin, the pert little nose, straight white teeth. But her hair was short now instead of braided and her eyes more knowing. Or guarded. Yes, that was it – she was ready to defend herself from him as if she knew what he was going to say. Trevor felt the dragging feeling in his abdomen again, accompanied this time by tightness around his heart. He didn’t want his daughter to feel she had to defend herself from him. They’d always been so open with each other. Theirs had been such a tight, happy family until Frostie got sick. He winced inwardly at the memory of his wife. He’d called her Frostie the first time they met because she was so pale, even for a white woman, and it had stuck. Frostie by name, but certainly not by nature. She was as warm and loving as the Jamaican sun.

‘Where do you want to go, Dad?’

He drew his thoughts away from his dead wife and looked at his daughter again. His adult daughter. ‘I don’t mind. You choose.’

Truth was, it had been so long since he had lived in London he didn’t know it anymore. It was Felice’s city now, her playground. Funny how you move away from a place to give your family better opportunities – good schools, less pollution, the country life, bigger house – and they end up back at the very place you