The train juddered just long enough to make them stop and listen but, as the guard had said, it wasn’t going anywhere.
Clare pushed him onto the toilet and unzipped his Virgin issue trousers. He was a surprisingly big boy for his slender frame, standing proud already. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. He tried to pull her towards him, but she took control; she wouldn’t be rushed. Easing herself onto him, she rolled her hips, watched his face flush and heard his breath quicken. He slipped his hands round her back, but she placed them on her breasts again, gasped as he squeezed hard and buried his face in them, groaning as she thrust her hips harder and harder, letting out a long sigh as he came. She lifted herself off him and started rubbing herself, staring at him from under heavy lids as she did. It didn’t take him long to take over; he licked his finger and started circling her clitoris and sucking on her nipples. The heat grew and Clare gasped. He knew what he was doing, bringing her to a high and backing off again and then bringing her to the edge again until she also came with a long, shuddering breath, riding the waves of pleasure.
She pulled her panties back up, smoothed her skirt over her hips and checked her hair.
‘See you,’ she said as she opened the door.
Clare opened her eyes and fanned herself with her notebook. Then she took out her Kindle. Fifty Shades of Grey wasn’t the kind of book she wanted people to know she was enjoying. Thousands of women were reading it, but she hadn’t seen too many of them reading it in public. It was like their guilty secret. She smiled to herself at the idea of a covert greeting shared only between the initiated. A wink, a knowing nod. A sisterhood of sexually-empowered women.
She laughed at herself. No one would call her empowered in any way.
Looking around, she wondered what the other people in her carriage did in their lives. It was one of her favourite things to do. She called it research.
That teenager over there with the eyeliner and upright – no, statuesque – posture sitting across the aisle, she was a dancer, going to an audition at the Royal Ballet School. Clare knew it was all rubbish, of course, but it was nice to imagine, to give people histories they might have enjoyed. More likely she was on holiday from Sweden, judging by the attractive Scandinavian woman (blonde hair and long legs) next to her who was probably her mother, although they didn’t talk to each other. The older woman couldn’t stop fiddling with the buckle of her bag and Clare noticed that the polish on one of her thumbnails was badly chipped. Maybe she was a corporate mother who thought the best way to bond with her daughter was a day out in the city but, now they were together, they had nothing to say to each other. She certainly looked smart with her pearl earrings and nine nail-polished fingers. She had a hard face, though, as if she’d had to fight for everything she had.
Clare sucked in her lips. They were dry so she dabbed some lip balm on. Travelling on trains always dried her out so.
The black man opposite her was a drug dealer. No, that was a cliché. He was the head of a charity for homeless people on his way to deliver a conference paper on funding alternatives for homeless youth in the South of England.
Clare smiled to herself. She was good at this. And so she should be after all the time she spent on the train making up lives for people. Sometimes she considered actually engaging with people and finding out what they really did but always talked herself out of it, preferring to imagine – it did away with the tedium of hearing about their empty lives, or the envy she might feel if she discovered they had more than her. She put her Kindle away unopened and reached for her notebook again to jot down her ideas, and add a few more details for each person, trying not to stare at any one of them too obviously as she searched their faces for clues. Of course, she never knew if she was right about people, but it didn’t matter; it was the creativity that was important. Like the sex-on-a-train scene she’d just written. She felt herself reddening again just thinking about it.
She looked up from her writing to see that the Scandinavian woman was now talking to the girl. They seemed to be sharing a joke. She edged closer to the aisle, hoping to hear what they were talking about but they were leaning into each other and speaking in low voices so she only heard snippets; something about a driver winning a cup, singing a song to someone and making toast. Or a roast. It was all rather odd. Clare shifted to the very edge of her seat, but to her frustration, they leant closer to one another and lowered their voices even further. Clare sat back again and pretended to look past them out of the window on their side of the train. It didn’t really matter what they were talking about, but she did like to listen in to other peoples’ conversations. More research.
The black man opposite shifted in his seat, drawing her gaze. He was reading The Sun. Or rather, the newspaper was in his hands, but his gaze was roaming around the carriage and he sighed from time to time, closing his eyes momentarily, as if he was in pain. Perhaps he was a drug dealer after all, or a junkie needing a fix. People who read The Sun were,
