The Train
Sarah Bourne
Copyright © 2021 Sarah Bourne
The right of Sarah Bourne to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2021 by Bloodhound Books.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Print ISBN 978-1-913942-42-7
Contents
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1. Judith
2. Clare
3. Tim
4. Ray
5. Alice
6. Sandeep
7. Iris
8. Lawrence
9. Trevor
Acknowledgements
A note from the publisher
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1
Judith
She hadn’t told anyone about Lawrence leaving her. Who would she tell? Her mother would only say that all men were the same, selfish and uncaring. And she certainly couldn’t tell her friend, Deidra, given that she was married to him.
‘I shouldn’t have done that to my friend,’ she said out loud to the bathroom mirror. She shrugged. ‘But I wanted him. I couldn’t help myself.’ She sighed. ‘He said it was the same for him.’ She gave a strangled laugh. ‘What a load of shit.’
He was a bastard and a liar.
She took a deep breath and looked at herself. She didn’t like what she saw; frown lines beginning to crease her forehead, mouth downturned, sadness – no, yearning – in her red-rimmed eyes. A sob rose from deep in her belly. She tried to quash it but it rolled up and out in a series of gasping breaths making her double over, hugging herself tight.
Finally, she stood upright again, pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin. Only days ago that would have made her feel stronger, able to face the world, but who was she kidding? She had no energy anymore for pretence. She’d been trying so hard for so long.
She’d spent her school years trying to recede into the background and shut her ears to the taunts. Even though no one could call her overweight these days she had never been able to drown out the voice in her head that told her she was fundamentally unacceptable.
In some ways, that was no bad thing. It had motivated her to work hard at university and she got a good degree. She tended to develop interests that had nothing to do with how she looked or whether other people approved of her. She was an accomplished ukulele player, for example, even before the recent craze for the instrument. And she had been fostering injured animals and nursing them back to health for years. Needing to get fit, she’d signed up to the local cycle club and had enjoyed the evening rides in the summer but they only met at weekends during the winter and she worked Saturdays and Sundays.
On bad days the negative commentary in her head made her hide from the world and doubt her abilities and even whether she deserved to be alive.
‘Depression’s in our family,’ her mother used to say when she was having one of her low periods. The message being, ‘just get over it.’ And Judith did, usually. Eventually. She had become adept at chasing her bleak thoughts away and distracting herself with work. Now she was so tired of it all. Of having to constantly battle her feelings of inadequacy. She felt herself sinking into the murky pit of despair.
At four thirty in the morning, she rang and left a message to say she had a cold and wouldn’t be in. Her job wasn’t important. No one would die if she wasn’t there. Most people wouldn’t even notice. She felt another sob rising and gulped it down. When had self-pity ever made anything better?
Her thoughts turned to Lawrence again. And from him to all the other men who had let her down. Her father, who had walked out when she was three and whom she’d never seen again. Steve, the boy she had a crush on when she was thirteen, who never noticed her. Fergal, to whom she’d lost her virginity at sixteen in a squalid squat with his friends shooting up in the next room. In her twenties there had been a couple of relationships. She’d gone out with Wayne for three years. He managed a local café and talked about wanting to have a family, but when Judith suggested moving in together he ran a mile. Several miles. He moved to Cheshire. After him there was Keith. He might have stuck around if he hadn’t died of a massive heart attack when he was out running one day. Since him there had been no one until Lawrence. She’d met him through his wife.
She’d first spoken to Deidra at the hairdresser’s in town one day. Judith didn’t usually spend a lot of money on her hair, but she’d had a few good weeks at Brook’s Property where she worked, including selling the dilapidated Bramley House for the full asking price, so she decided to splurge. She and Deidra got talking and became so engrossed in a conversation about the local animal sanctuary that they continued on for coffee at a nearby café. Since that day they’d met there regularly, always just the two of them. Over the weeks, Deidra had persuaded her to take more care of her appearance as if she was ashamed of being seen
