“We’ve got to wait,” I replied.
“Why?”
“For the last train.”
“
“Because that’s what the symbol means. It’s not just the Circle line; it’s the train that swallows itself again, travelling round and round forever, no stations, no stops – it’s not just ‘Go take the Circle line.’ It’s much more complicated. Sacrifices.” I waved the bag with the sudoku book.
“You are deliberately being cryptic,” she exclaimed. “Why?”
“Because I don’t like you.”
“On my word your friend’s life hangs. And yours,” she added, eyes narrowing.
“So you tell us,” we said. “It must frighten you, not being entirely sure what we will do next.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she retorted, her voice cold and level. “You are a dead nothing, whatever forces you’ve made bargains with.”
“That’s not the point,” I said in my gentlest, most placating tone. “You are afraid of not being certain.”
“No.”
“If you say so.”
“You know nothing,” she added vehemently.
“I know that I want a coffee, and that beer would be a bad idea, all things considered.”
“Why? What’s so important about catching the last train?”
“I’d much rather let you work that out for yourself,” I said, and resumed trying to order coffee.
At 11.45 p.m. Oda and I walked down towards Farringdon station. The last train of the evening was written up on the board for six minutes past midnight, in blue marker pen. There weren’t many people waiting on the platform. Some late-night theatregoers lingered, in their pearls and smart suits, at a distance from a group of girls whose feet ached from having got lost hereabouts in the wrong kind of shoes. At the opposite end of the platform, pushed into a brick alcove by their passion, a couple of men soaked in sweat and hormones were engaged in the longest, loudest kiss we’d ever seen. I tried not to stare. We were fascinated.
A Metropolitan line train came, heading towards Baker Street, where, selfishly, it had decided to terminate; the girls got on it anyway, as did the theatregoers in their silk scarves. A Hammersmith and City line train didn’t do much better, giving up the ghost at Edgware Road, but that was clearly far enough for the two men, who, to the surprise of the polite Arab-looking couple sitting in the carriage amid piles of free daily newspapers strewn across the floor, resumed where they’d left off.
The indicator cleared itself of all but one more train – on the westbound Circle line, its destination picked out in bright orange dots. A group of young men and women ran onto the platform, giggling with the adrenalin of their own having-nearly-missed, until one of the girls, dressed almost entirely in cold pink skin and bra strap, was sick behind one of the benches. Oda scowled and looked away. The girl’s friends clustered around her, patting her, soothing, stroking her hair, and dabbing at the remnants of bile around her mouth until with a final heave she was empty, and sat down on the bench and started to cry. We felt a sudden burning in our face at the sight of it, which we could not understand or control, and it was only Oda’s cold expression that stopped us from sharing the girl’s distress.
At 12.09 a.m. precisely, the Circle line train rattled and wheezed into the station. Oda stood up quickly, slinging her bag onto her shoulder; but I caught her arm, pulling her back down. She said, “But the…”
“No. Not this one. The
“This is the…”
“Trust me.”
She hesitated, then reluctantly sat back down. The girls and boys staggered onto the train, which with a clunk and a beeping of door alarms slammed its carriages shut and, engine whirring with a rising pitch, rattled its way out of the station. It passed the graffiti on the opposite wall: long, incomprehensible names made entirely of angles, and doodles in green paint. By a board showing you where to go for trains to Luton, someone had drawn a pair of closed black-and-white eyes, each eyelash ending in a long Egyptian curve.
After a moment Oda said, “You’ve got a plan, sorcerer?”
I nodded as, above us, the indicator board swept itself clean with a single orange asterisk, and didn’t display any more messages. I stood up, and walked down the platform past signs for
Bollywood Romance – a Love Story for Our Time!
and further down.-.-.
When I reached the end of the platform, I pushed back the swinging “
Oda stared at me from the light of the platform itself with undisguised surprise and distaste. “What are you doing?”
“Oda,” I said, “when Hunger came looking for us at Bond Street station, do you really think he would have left you alive? Do you honestly believe he would not have drunk your blood as well, just to see if it tasted the same as the sweat on your skin as you died? Trust me. Please.” I held out a hand to her. Scowling, she pushed past the “
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I can see them in the dark.”
“What?”
“Your eyes. Like a cat’s – they reflect blue.”
“It was an almost perfect resurrection,” we hazarded.
She spat into the dark. Her spit fizzed off the live rail.
I said, “I can’t help… it’s not… sorry.”
She glanced up again, then away before I could see anything but the question in her face. “What are we doing here, exactly?”
“Waiting for the guard to inspect the platform.”
She only grunted in response, and we felt the heat of her breath tickle our skin again, like the brush of dying sparks.
We didn’t have to wait long. The guard came, muttering into his radio, a few minutes after the last train had left. He walked briskly along the platform’s edge, picking up bits of litter with a prong on the end of a plastic stick,
