the bench he’d had his back to her, at first. He’d been staring at nothing in particular, just sort of letting the sun be on his face and closing his eyes to do a bit of deep breathing, reminding himself that he would be okay. He didn’t call it a ‘mantra’ as such, but when he missed his dad in his bones he’d say in his head, ‘Be alive, and remember to live. Be alive, and remember to live. Be alive, and remember to live …’
He became vaguely aware of a voice just over his left shoulder getting louder and louder, and he tuned his ear into it like a radio dial finding a signal on a country road, until he could hear a woman’s voice clearly saying:
‘… Because it’s going to be built anyway, right? So it needs to be built by people who come from lower-class or lower-income families …’
That was what had made Daniel pay particular attention. He was the first in his family to go to university. His family was very modest. His dad had missed only three days of work as a postman in his forty-year tenure, putting Daniel through a degree with hardly any debt. It had been important to him that his child had the opportunities he hadn’t. The woman’s voice continued: ‘The only way artificial intelligence will ever look after poorer people is if people from these underprivileged communities are the ones programming it.’
As an engineer, Daniel had a small amount of knowledge of artificial intelligence, but not much. ‘The next industrial revolution,’ one of his undergrad professors had declared, but Daniel had preferred the known entities of maths and equations and building things for the now, not the future. Daniel craned over his shoulder a little to see who was talking. There was a guy – suit trousers with no belt, obviously fitted by a tailor to the exact drop of his hip, narrow pinstripe instead of plain black, shoes so shiny you could see your reflection in them – giving the girl a sort of wry look. A smirk.
‘I’m not sure about that …’ the wry-smile guy said.
Daniel didn’t like him at all. He looked like he was from the gang at university for whom everything had come easy. The good-looking guys with the athletic frames who didn’t play football or rugby but played tennis or lacrosse. They got pretty average grades but were the first ones to get above average jobs, because their families all knew other families who could put in a good word. Daniel had friends at university – good ones, who he still knew now – but they’d all grafted, all been the working-class kids whose accents got mysteriously broader in the company of the posh boys, as if to hold up their class difference as a shield instead of bowing to the pressure to act like they were from somewhere they weren’t. A small ‘fuck you’ to privilege.
Most posh boys were amused by it, and a couple even tried to befriend Daniel, but he always felt like it was a game to them. That them being ‘unable to see class’ meant they could acquire a friend from a working-class family who spoke with different vowels and it be a testament to their own character. But anyone who comes from very little money knows never to trust a bloke who says money doesn’t buy happiness. Money buys food and electricity and pays for a school jumper without holes in it so you don’t get picked on, and you can’t be happy without that.
The woman talking was smooth. She wasn’t losing her temper as she explained her theory to this loaded rich guy, but she was passionate. Cared.
‘We need kids from underprivileged communities being recruited directly so that they take this technology in the right direction. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of rich people making rich-people decisions that continue to screw over millions of people for not being rich – like literally, the gap between the haves and have-nots will get to the point where there will be a minimum net worth a person has to have to even be alive. It’s sickening. Sickening! But we can absolutely do something about it.’
Daniel loved what he was hearing. He loved this woman, with her unbrushed hair and crazy arms and rice burrito and big ideas about social responsibility. He thought, My dad would like her. He positioned himself at a bit more of an angle so he could see her.
The rich man held up his hands. ‘Okay, okay. Jesus, Nadia, you can have the fund. We’ll do something. I hear you.’ He shook his head, laughing. ‘I’ll talk to the board. Give me a month or so.’
Nadia – so that was her name – laughed too.
Daniel had stood up at that point, his Apple Watch buzzing on his wrist to remind him that he had a conference call with the Cape Town office in ten minutes. The geologists had analysed the surface structures of the new site and he needed their input to know what to do about the drilling problem. He knew he couldn’t miss it if they were to come in under budget – and Daniel’s USP was that he always under-promised and over-delivered. That’s why he could charge the day rate he did. He felt much better now anyway. Now that he knew this woman existed.
He made eye contact with her before he left. It felt like the bravest thing he’d done in months. She was beautiful and untamed. He stumbled a little, backing away from the pair, unsteady on his feet. She half watched him, looked at him for what could only have been half a second but felt like a full minute to Daniel, and then she turned back to Rich Man. Daniel felt like he’d been slapped by the Love Gods, and it wasn’t his dad he thought about as he walked through the doors of his office, but the woman.
‘She just had this … spirit,’ he said to Lorenzo, later on. ‘And no ring on her finger either. I checked.’
Lorenzo had laughed. ‘This is the first time you’ve seemed even vaguely excited by something since your dad, mate. I’m pleased for you.’ And then, in a lower, more serious voice: ‘You’ll never see her again, though, of course. Don’t get too carried away.’
Daniel
When Nadia got on Daniel’s train before work two days after he’d overheard her speak at the market, first he gave a word of thanks to the universe, or maybe his dad, or whoever was up there doing him this very solid favour, and then sent a swift gloating text to Lorenzo.
Had she been on the Northern line this whole time? (Yes.) Why was he only just noticing her now? (He had been in his own, grief-fuelled world.) He knew he had to do something about it. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her, and had even gone back to the same lunch spot the next week to see if she was a regular, which was a bit much but true nonetheless. She hadn’t been there, of course. It was a lot to expect she would be.
Seeing her on the train felt like being given a second chance at a first impression. He looked out for her the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that – greedily, he wanted his third chance, and his fourth. The tube trains were huge and there were so many people on the platform and he couldn’t be sure, obviously, that she hadn’t got on one of the others whizzing through the underground every morning. She could have been on the 7.28, or the 7.32, or the 8 a.m. or 6 a.m. People didn’t always stick to the same schedule like he did. Daniel was anally retentive in a lot of ways, and thrived off routine and certainty. But for Nadia to be on the same train as him, even that once? He decided to hold onto that as a sign.
In total he’d seen Nadia (though he actually couldn’t decide in his head what to call her. Nadia was her name, after all, but having not been formally introduced it seemed presumptuous, even in his imagination, to refer to her like that. But then, why would he call her ‘woman on the train’ when he knew her name? It was confusing, and mostly meant he just imagined her face and didn’t really call her anything) seven times, always around 7.30, always seeming a little frazzled in a ‘Working Woman with A Lot To Do’ kind of a way. Three of those times she’d been in his carriage,
