originally intended to wait a few more days, to spend more time getting her affairs in order. However, the arrival of her unexpected house guest yesterday had forced her hand, since she’d told him enough to potentially put her plans at risk if he didn’t do as she asked. The fact that he arrived and departed by train also felt like a sign.
As she arrives at the broken fence, she breathes a sigh of relief to see it hasn’t been fixed. It was only a few days ago she was last here, and it looked like the fence had been that way for a while, but, in her experience, Sod’s Law could strike at any moment. Well, not this time, she thinks, checking no one is watching before squeezing through the gap, catching her jeans in the process, but managing to pull free. Next she runs for the cover of a nearby bush.
She crouches there for a few minutes, catching her breath and calming herself down once again. Then she continues to a better location, still sheltered from view by thick greenery but alongside the train track. ‘This is it,’ she whispers into the warm summer air.
Her heart’s racing and there’s little she can do to calm it now. No surprise really, considering where she is; what she’s about to do. Her hands are shaking and her right eye is twitching like it does when she’s stressed or tired.
It’s no good resisting, her mind tells her worthless body. It’s your fault we’re in this situation. You’ll do what you’re told. That’s the only choice.
It’s a waiting game now. She just needs a train to come along. Either direction will do. Another reason she picked this spot, besides the broken fence and good ground cover, is that it’s far enough away from the station for any passing train to be travelling at a decent speed. She can’t see too far in either direction, thanks to the curved route of the track, but that’s fine. It means no driver will spot her too soon and slow down. She’ll hear it coming and then all she has to do is step out. At that stage, it won’t matter about the driver seeing her. It’ll be way too late for them to do anything about it. A fast-moving train takes a very long time to stop, as she discovered while researching the matter online.
All she has to do is step out. That sounds so easy, doesn’t it? She knows in her heart that it won’t be. That there’s a chance she might chicken out. But she can’t. And she’s not going to let one train pass by first as a practice. That was her original plan, but she decided the sheer noise and power of it thundering by so close might shock her into changing her mind. No, she’ll have to fight her natural survival instinct to do this, and she’s convinced that will be easier without a dry run. Plus she could get spotted by that initial driver, who’d then be able to warn the next. So it has to be the first one.
She needs to do it without thinking. The time for rumination has passed. She’s weighed up her options over and over again in recent days. She’s made her final decision.
She’s afraid – of course she is. She’s scared death or unconsciousness won’t come as quickly as she hopes and the pain will be excruciating. So she reminds herself that the odds of success are heavily in her favour.
The idea that she’ll never see …
No, she can’t allow herself to even think that name. Not now. Tears start to pour down her face as multiple images of the two of them together flood her mind. But she grits her teeth, squeezes her eyes shut and fights to block them.
‘I can’t. Not now,’ she says under her breath. ‘I have to do this. I have to do this. It’s the only way.’
And then she hears a rumbling in the distance. This is it. She knows it is, without question. A train is fast approaching from her left. She can’t see it yet, but it’s definitely coming, so as late as she dares she moves from a crouch into a standing position. The sound quickly gets louder and, as she stares in that direction, hunched, waiting, her heart is like a jackhammer, her breaths tight and shallow, her whole body trembling.
After a fleeting hesitation, she steps on to the track, her determination pushing her forward despite the continued resistance of her body.
Time crawls until the front of the train reveals itself, the noise deafening now, and she stares it down.
She can see the alarmed driver’s bearded face looking at her as he does the only thing he can and sounds the horn. She feels for him in that split second, knowing this must be his worst nightmare – something that will scar him for life – and wishing she didn’t have to be the one to put him through it.
But although it’s his face racing towards her, at the last moment her tortured mind replaces it with another: the one person she loves more than anyone or anything else.
‘I’m sorr—’
Hannah Cook was glowering at the computer screen, tempted to delete the pathetic collection of words staring back at her, when she heard the doorbell.
Her eyes darted to the clock in the corner of the display: 4.07 p.m. Who could be calling round at this time of the day? It was way too early for Mark to get home. Not that he’d use the bell anyway, unless he’d left his keys at the office or lost them somehow. And it would be unlike any of their friends to turn up unannounced. It was 2019, for goodness’ sake; there was no need to risk catching people unawares in this time of constant connectivity. In fact, to do so was verging on rudeness.
Hannah decided it must either be a delivery – despite the fact she wasn’t expecting anything – or someone selecting the wrong apartment number. In case of the latter, and since the bell had only sounded once so far, she waited for a moment.
It wasn’t like she didn’t want to get away from her laptop. She’d already found countless reasons to do so throughout the day, procrastinating like a pro. The problem was that if she did so now, this late on a Friday afternoon, she’d probably not get back to it. And then she’d feel guilty all night and into the weekend, maybe even making herself work on Saturday or Sunday when she ought to be spending time with her husband.
She’d once read somewhere that being an author was like having homework for evermore. She’d laughingly dismissed this at the time, when having a book published had been her heart’s desire: a dream she’d never expected to realise. But already, now, even though she technically wouldn’t become a published novelist for several more months, she understood the truth of that statement. A dream job was still a job. And this particular one had expectations and deadlines that didn’t disappear when she left the office at 5 p.m., because there was no office, nor regular business hours. There was just Hannah.
The bell rang again, longer and more insistent this time. Hannah saved her work, ignoring the reckless, frustrated part of herself who told her it wasn’t worth saving, and walked out of the lounge into the hallway.
‘Hello?’ she said into the telephone-style intercom next to the apartment’s entrance. As she did so, Hannah looked into the mirror opposite and frowned at the grey roots already showing in her shoulder-length, wavy brown hair.
There was a pause as the person on the other end of the line cleared their throat. Then, like a muffled gunshot, came the last words Hannah was expecting to hear: words with the power to flip her world on its head.
‘Hannah? It’s Diane.’
‘So,’
