Creative Writing Course: Sarah In Seat D16

Creative Writing Course: Sarah In Seat D16

 [The setting: it's the year 2001 aboard a London Euston to Edinburgh Waverley train; Sarah, a twenty-six-year-old woman is flicking through a magazine ...]

Sarah sighed and put down her copy of Cosmopolitan magazine on the table; she'd had enough and was getting bored.  Her ancient Sony Walkman was playing retro music from a Now That's What I Call 1988 cassette.  Despite the long-lost memories the music was invoking, she found that she couldn't concentrate and soon clicked it off with a decisive snap. She sighed audibly - Aunt Moira, the one relative she'd always resisted visiting.  Saying that, it was important that she did so as she only had a few weeks until September, when she'd begin her PGCE qualification and the hard slog that ensued.

Thankfully, being a Thursday evening in July, which was the month preceding the famous Edinburgh Festival Season, gaining a reservation on the 16:30 service wasn't a huge issue? Moira herself had earned herself a pretty penny by renting out the two spare rooms in her city centre tenement to journalists in the past, her estranged husband, Angus, being a senior editor on The Scotsman.

Her bottom started to become numb and pins and needles began in her upper thighs, but as the train approached York Station, she was loathe to leave her seat and stretch her legs, lest her seat be pilfered by new passenger.  Sarah saw the old man and his wife who'd been seated opposite her since King's Cross pack up their stuff to leave - thank goodness! she thought - at least she wouldn't have to put up with the rancid stench of their Tupperware box of peeled boiled eggs for much longer!

Being a major junction, the train tarried longer at Crewe.  Very soon after, the crackly announcement began - apparently the delay had been caused by a need to change driver. Sarah was getting excited because it looked as though nobody was going to sit in the three free seats surrounding her.  Just as she removed her clunky laptop from the overhead locker, and wondered whether she could plug it in anywhere, a dark-haired thirty-something guy boarded the train, looked around and plonked himself in the seat diagonal to hers.  He grinned and pretended to wipe the sweat away from his brow and stowed his overnight bag on the seat nearest the window, taking out a heavily-thumbed Irvine Welsh paperback.

Ten minutes later, the guy asked Sarah to look after his bag whilst he went to find the buffet car, enquiring, at the same time, whether she wanted anything from there too? Sarah thought hard and asked for a small bottle of white wine, pressing a fiver into his hand whilst doing so.  He refused the money, smiled and departed up the aisle.  The man returned with the drinks twenty-five minutes later, mentioning that there had been a gang of football fans trying to source as much beer as possible, hence the delay.

Sarah duly poured her wine and he cracked open his beer and they fell into easy conversation.  The guy's name was Niall and he was en-route to Glasgow Central, ostensibly to 'catch up with an old friend', but mostly to escape the hustle and bustle of Crewe, such as it was.  Sarah purchased additional drinks for the pair of them from the trolley service which pushed its way down the aisles.  Time ticked on and the train soon passed Durham.

At this point, Niall stared into Sarah's eyes and said; "the next station's Newcastle, how about we break our journey there and grab a proper meal to soak up all of this booze, eh?  We can catch a later train."

"I really can't," she replied "my ticket's inflexible and most of all, I hardly know you - you may be a murderer who specifically targets lone women on trains clutching retro cassette players!"

Niall flashed a wolfish grin and said "no worries," and then excused himself to go to the toilet. Newcastle Station came and went, but he didn't return from the direction of the WC, which was located up in Coach B.  Sarah noted that he'd left his Nike sports bag lying on the seat opposite hers, but was still under the impression that he'd return.  However, as the train left Alnmouth his seat remained empty.  There was a huge gap between stops, so Sarah plugged back into her cassette player and drifted asleep until she found that the train had halted at a country station and that there were two Railway Police Officers briskly shaking her awake.