Clare sat back, notebook in hand. It had started raining, blurring the scene outside as fat raindrops streaked the grimy glass. She sighed and closed her eyes, waiting for her imagination to project its images onto her eyelids, but for once, nothing happened. Instead, she heard someone in the seats behind her wondering if the stoppage was because of a suicide on the line. Alarmed, she opened her eyes again and caught the black man looking at her. She smiled but looked away again, reaching into her bag for her phone. She had to let work know she’d be late in.
Of course, no one answered – that was her job, and she was stuck on the train. She left a message.
‘Sorry, Dr Moncrieff, I’m stuck on the train. There’s been a suicide on the line, I think. I’m not sure when I’ll be in.’
Was it really a suicide? Suddenly there could be no other explanation for the stop. A death. It knocked the wind out of her.
She threw her phone back into her bag and sat, head resting, eyes closed, breathing in, out, in, out to a slow count of four, like her counsellor had told her to do when she felt a panic attack coming on.
I focus on my breath. I am not panic. I am not anxiety. I am bigger than them, I can contain them. I focus on my breath, in, out, in, out.
It wasn’t working. Her breaths were shorter, her heart thumping painfully against her ribs. She was having a heart attack this time, she was sure of it. All the breathing exercises in the world weren’t going to help now. She bit her lip to stop herself from screaming. A tear squeezed out from between her tightly closed eyelids.
She was going to die on a train to London surrounded by people who didn’t care.
She didn’t die. The black man sitting opposite her reached over and offered a crisp white hanky. She looked at it, at the man, and in the absence of any other choice, took it and wiped the sweat off her face and held the damp cotton over her mouth, forcing herself to take long, deep breaths. Eventually she was able to look around and name some objects in her vicinity to anchor herself to the present – a jacket lying on the floor, the dirt-smudged window. She felt the seat beneath her thighs, wriggled her toes in her sensible brown shoes. Finally, she lowered the hanky and thanked the man who was leaning towards her, concerned.
‘Keep it,’ he said, nodding towards the hanky scrunched in her hand.
Embarrassed, she thanked him again and got her Kindle out. She didn’t want to talk, to explain to this man that she was barely managing to breathe, to sit upright, to prevent herself from running, screaming from the train and her life. She could so easily have been the person on the track. Perhaps not this morning, but there were other mornings when she had to drag herself from her bed, force herself to wash, dress, drink a cup of tea. When she had to paint on a face she could show the world, build herself up in order to get out of the house. There were days when even her minimal contact with Dr Moncrieff’s patients required superhuman effort, when she had to remind herself to talk and smile, when she crept into the kitchenette or the bathroom and curled herself into a ball to stop herself shaking, or just to feel safe.
The rain stopped. The train shuddered and started moving again. She let her head rest against the back of the seat and took deep breaths, eyes closed, feeling the watery sun trying to warm her cheek through the window. She repeated her mantra, I focus on my breath, and finally she felt calm enough to turn her Kindle on and start reading.
Clare rushed through the ticket barrier at Euston and plunged into the underground, stepping onto a Victoria line train as the doors were closing. Being later than usual, commuters had been replaced by tourists with maps out or suitcases parked in front of them, talking in loud voices in a dozen languages. Clare recognised Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, Arabic and Dutch. Or imagined she did. Some, she had to admit, she guessed from the look of the person or the little flag stitched on a backpack. She wished, as she always did when confronted by foreigners, that she had travelled more, that the parameters of her life were not confined to home, London and the occasional holiday in the Lake District or Cornwall. Although she hadn’t even been to either of those places recently. She thought about exotic-sounding places like Marrakesh or Timbuktu, though she had to admit she would probably hate the realities of them – the dirt, the heat, the insects.
At Oxford Circus she took a deep breath as she reached street level. It was a primitive response to being outside again, and entirely beyond her control. She knew the air was not fresh, that it was filled with exhaust fumes and sweat, the cast-off cells of the people shoving their way past her in their hurry to get wherever it was they had to be. Drawing in lungfuls of this pollution was not particularly healthy, but she couldn’t help herself. Shaking her head, she set her course along Regent Street, Margaret Street, into Cavendish Square which was hosting a picnic for a group of young language students all glued to their phones, and on into Harley Street.
In the plush reception area of Dr Moncrieff’s private consulting rooms, sound muted by triple-glazed windows and deep-pile carpet, Clare hung her jacket in the cupboard, stowed her bag under her desk and took her seat. There were files scattered across the desk in what she interpreted as the doctor’s annoyance at her tardy arrival. He
