The platform at Waverly Station was humming with rushing bodies and noise. I am sat on a cold wooden bench, morning air stinging my cheeks, people watching. Beautifully manicured women, with their sleek short haircuts and red lipstick, cackle together as they parade past me to the waiting seats for the first-class carriages. Men clutching brief cases and cigarettes talk among themselves, glancing up occasionally to give a nod or sly grin to the pretty women sauntering by. On the bench next to me sits a doe-eyed young mother, clutching a wailing bundle close to her chest, murmuring soothing sounds, one hand holding the hand of a small boy wearing a Brixton hat. I just sit, filled with nerves, waiting, tightly clutching my purse and ticket on my lap.
“South train to London, boarding in five minutes!” shouts a plump man in a tightly fitting pinstripe suit, vaguely resembling Toad of Toad Hall, from the window of the ticket office. “William, where are you” I whisper under my breath, beginning to tear at the sides of my fingernails. It is the middle of winter in Edinburgh and the snow is thick and white, blanketing the normally dirty and dull platform. I pull my coat tighter around my shoulders. Eyes wide. Scanning.
As the big hand of the large hanging clock ticks over to nine, I hear the clattering of the train approaching from the distance and the blearing of the horn as it slows, rolling into the station, breaks screaming. The seat beneath me trembles and suddenly the platform goes dark with steam and smoke. The brightly coloured people soon become silhouettes, darting left and right off to their assigned loading areas. The sound of the engine screeches as I rise from my seat. “All aboard the nine o’clock train for London, please have your tickets ready and all your belongings secure”.
I gaze down the platform in the direction of the city, stretching my eyes open wide, searching. The overhanging clock ticks over, one minute, two minutes, three minutes. As the steam evaporates into the sky, so do the people on the platform as they disappear onto the train, leaving few stragglers wrangling luggage and wailing children left to board. I dart my head left and right, urgency and panic rising in my chest. “Final call!” shouts Mr Toad. I freeze, taking one final examination across the platform. No William.
As the final whistle blows, I stand up straight, drawing in a deep breath, accepting the defeat that I am doing this with or without him. Perhaps a threat I should not have made. Holding onto small shards of my pride and the sting of a newly broken heart, I pick up my cases and climb up inside the carriage. The train rolls out of Waverly Station and across the snow draped city, church spires and leafless trees piercing into the grey sky. The train is southbound to Paddington Station in London, travelling forward to a new smog covered horizon of opportunity. Sitting back in my seat, refusing to look out the window, I let go of the last fragments of hope, I realise that I too am travelling forward.
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