On the Train
Day 3 exercise from the Curtis Brown Creative 30 day writing challenge
The only remaining seat in the carriage is an aisle seat in a group of four. I knew I should have walked further up the platform; I never learn.
An older woman sits beside me, her greying hair pinned back in a style I assume she’s had for decades. She’s wearing a pale pink tweed suit with a butterfly brooch on her lapel. I didn’t know those were still a thing people wore. She doesn’t look up as I arrange my belongings by my feet because she’s too busy reading her book.
It’s propped against her handbag so I can’t see the cover. I glance down at the page:
Suddenly, he sits up and tugs my panties off and throws them on the floor.
Jesus. The woman is reading Fifty Shades of Grey on a train. What year is this?
Across from her is a younger woman staring out the window, her reflection creating a mirror image of herself: perfect skin, a jawline that could cut diamonds, and mahogany curls bouncing as the train pulls away.
I stop myself from looking down to see if anything else is bouncing. This older woman’s literature choices have clearly gone to my head.
I turn my attention to the final member of our quartet. A man sits opposite me, eyes closed, breathing slowly.
Wait…
I know him.
I can’t place him at first, but I remember that mouth. He used to have a lip piercing; there’s still a tiny hole beneath the centre of his bottom lip. I have stared at that mouth across a pub table, wondering whether kissing someone with a lip piercing was a terrible life decision.
Where do I know him from?
“Sorry.”
My eyes snap up.
“I think I just kicked your bag,” he says. “Hope there isn’t anything breakable in there.”
I look down at my bag between our feet.
“Oh,” I say. “Well yes, actually. I carry around my finest crockery at all times. You never know when you might bump into a royal.”
He laughs. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No… Australian.”
“Well, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the royals don’t take public transport.”
I put my hand to my cheek in mock outrage. “You mean I’ve packed all this for nothing?”
He laughs and leans back, smiling.
“So, Australia, yeah?” he says. “I went there on my gap year. Some small town near Perth. No idea why we went there. I got really drunk one night and tried to fight a kangaroo.”
The woman next to him rolls her eyes.
“That’s a bad idea,” I say. “The kangaroo would one hundred percent win.”
“Yeah, my friend dragged me away. I’m also kind of famous in Australia, I think.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I joined a group of surfers for a beach clean-up, then realised halfway through they were filming a reality show about ‘extreme eco-warriors’. I ended up on national television chasing a bird that stole my sandwich. All my mates call me the ‘bird bouncer’.”
My eyes widen. I’ve heard that story before.
I look back at his mouth. He had a beard back then. I’ve never seen him without one.
“Oh mate, you saw it didn’t you?”
I shake my head. “No. I didn’t.”
“Phew. It wasn’t my finest moment.” He looks out the window. “What station did we just pass?”
“Harrow, I think.”
He nods and rests his head back again.
I tuck my hair behind my right ear, like I used to when I was younger, and glance at him.
Nothing.
He doesn’t recognise me.
The fucker.
Not my smile. Not my hair. Not my voice that once made him laugh so hard he snorted beer through his nose.
The tannoy crackles.
“Attention passengers…”
Great. I don’t have time for delays.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have an important announcement…”
The man stands and steps into the aisle.
“...Katharine Freeson is being offered an upgrade from ‘single’ to ‘engaged’. Please remember that wedding planning may cause delays, and there is no refund policy on becoming someone’s plus-one for life. Congratulations to the happy couple. Please mind the gap between single life and marriage.”
I scoff. What a ridiculous way to propose.
Then I look up. The woman by the window is crying, hands over her mouth. The man is on one knee.
For a second, I wonder if it’s for me.
“Katharine,” he says. “We met on a train, so I wanted to ask you to be my wife on a train.” He opens a box containing a ring that looks like it came free with a child’s jewellery set. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes!” she screams. “A thousand times yes! I’m going to be Mrs Miller!”
Miller.
That was it.
Jonah Miller.
The man who once told me public displays of affection were “desperate”. The man who said relationships should be private and meaningful. The man who broke up with me because he “needed to find himself” and apparently found Katharine instead.
The man who, after all that, didn’t even recognise me.
And now he was kneeling in front of a train carriage, proposing through a tannoy system.
What a fucking lucky escape I had.
Maybe being forgotten was the best thing that could have happened.