by Toby Faber
The screaming stopped. Laurie’s ears ached for the relief of silence, but instead she heard the hubbub of the reacting crowd, only a few feet away. One voice rose above the rest: ‘Did you see that? … She was right beside me … He was trying to stop her … Poor bastard.’
Trying to stop her? ‘No!’ Laurie wanted to shout out in reply. ‘He pushed me. He deserved it. Don’t you understand?’ Her mind raced ahead, to interviews with Sergeant Atkins and her colleagues. Would anyone believe her? Even if her police record really had been deleted, they’d be bound to dig up her behaviour after Mum died. All those counsellors’ reports would be filed somewhere. And how would she convince them of the truth? Only by telling it, with all the consequences that would bring. She had to carry on with her plan.
Enough light leaked in under the carriage to mean Laurie could see perfectly well. The train had come to a halt about twenty yards in front of her, not far from its usual stopping point at the end of the station. Above her, shadows moved in synchronisation with the sound of a hundred shuffling feet. In the background, she heard muffled tannoy announcements, their words indistinct but their meaning clear, as network control swung into its well-rehearsed procedures for dealing with a body on the line.
Now there were two pairs of legs visible at the end of the train, standing on either side of the central rail, green-clad: paramedics dealing with whatever was there. At any moment they would surely start looking for a second body. The power must be off. It was time to move. Laurie ignored the protests from her shoulder, grabbed her phone from where it had lodged by the track, and started to crawl towards the back of the train.
Laurie’s main concern was silence. Without it she would have made faster progress, but now she moved with exaggerated care, moving and settling a hand before following with a knee, minimising the risk that she might lose her balance, ensuring that she brushed nothing that might give away her presence. Every few yards she was presented with a small obstacle in the shape of a pillar, there to hold up the central rail. They weren’t hard to squeeze past, but each time Laurie found herself holding her breath, gradually easing her clothing through the gap, lest any telltale rustle should give away her presence.
After a few minutes, the sound of footsteps above tapered to an end. More than ever, Laurie had a sense of being on her own. When she looked back, she could still see the legs of people gathered around the front of the train, but here, towards the other end of the platform, it was deserted. Good, that was how she wanted it.
Finally, Laurie reached the end of the suicide pit. She was still under the train. Obviously it went back into the tunnel for some distance, equivalent to however far it had stopped short at the other end. There was nothing to do but wait. Surely they wouldn’t be keeping the network shut down for much longer?
Tuesday 11 August – 10.30 a.m.
The power rails began to hum. They were back on. That was a good sign, surely? Then, less encouragingly, Laurie heard footsteps approaching. Were they going to look under the train? Might she still be discovered? She buried her face against the wall of the suicide pit, willing herself into invisibility.
The footsteps came right up to Laurie’s hiding place, and then, without a pause, changed tone. Whoever they belonged to was getting on the train and walking along to the end that was still in the tunnel. Laurie curled up into a ball and waited, listening to the sounds of a Tube train coming back to life: first the rhythmic pulsing as air was pumped into the brakes above her head, then the rising tone of the motor coming up to full power. Finally, there was a whoosh and accompanying thud, repeated along the train. The doors had closed. With that, the motor changed tone once again, and the train headed slowly back into the tunnel from which it had come.
Inch by careful inch, the train edged backwards. With her back propped up against the end of the suicide pit, Laurie watched the approach of the far end of the train. Torches shone underneath it. She supposed they were looking for her, for a second body. Somehow, she had not expected this. She had acted too quickly to think it all through. There was nowhere left for her to go. Laurie drew her knees up to her nose, wrapped her arms around her head, and waited.
Cocooned by her own body, Laurie imagined the figure she presented, and was comforted. Her discoverers would be sympathetic, not censorious. There would be psychological assessments, of course, and embarrassment, certainly. Dad would worry too, at least until she explained everything to him. But it wasn’t as if she had a job to lose, or anything like that. Eventually the system would have finished with her, and she’d be free to get on with her life. They wouldn’t see her as a murderer, surely? She’d lost her footing and instinctively grabbed onto her neighbour, only to find that he was falling too. Yes, that was it: a dreadful accident, the result of too many people on the platform. One she could hardly come to terms with. That was why she had crawled as far away as possible, why she was even now in the classic foetal position of a traumatised victim. It wouldn’t be too bad to be discovered like that, would it?
With her eyes pressed into her legs and her ears covered by her arms, Laurie came late to the realisation that the train had stopped moving. She let herself peer over the top of her knees. She was still underneath a carriage, with at least two more between her and the end of the train. They must have moved it back by only thirty yards or so, enough to expose the spot where she had fallen, but not much further. And the torch beams had stopped as well. Presumably the searchers had satisfied themselves that there was, after all, nothing to find. Now what?
As if in answer, the train whirred back into life and started going forwards, beyond the place at which it had previously halted, to the point where it ran along the entire length of the platform. Above her head, Laurie could see the back end of the train, almost exactly in line with the end of the suicide pit. There was a space. Was it large enough for her to clamber out? Would she be seen from the platform? Laurie was debating her options when the train lurched backwards by a few inches, closing the gap.
Oh God, oh God, oh God. That would have killed her, no doubt about it: Laurie felt the pain in her midriff, almost as if she really had been crushed. This was crazy, wasn’t it? She didn’t want to die. What was she thinking of? Laurie slumped back into the suicide pit and listened to the sound of her blood pumping through her head.
Meanwhile, doors were opening above her. Laurie could hear feet – many feet – stepping onto the platform. A few came down to the back end of the train and got on. There were announcements – apologies for the delay, confirmation that this train was going to Morden, via Bank – and then the doors shut, the tone of the motor changed once again, and the carriages started to move off.
For a moment Laurie stayed where she was, savouring the light that fell upon her as the train moved away, the driver’s cab empty at the back. Then the adrenaline took over. In a matter of seconds she would be discovered. If ever there was a time for decisiveness, it was now. She just had to be careful to avoid the electrified rail. Laurie manoeuvred herself around to face the back of the suicide pit and, in a single movement, hauled herself out, and into the tunnel’s concealing darkness. From there, she risked a look back towards the platform. A new set of commuters was already arriving. If she made any attempt to return she would surely be spotted. It was time for her to trust her memory, trust her knowledge of Euston’s Underground network. She crawled on into the tunnel.
Tuesday, 11 August – 10.40 a.m.
In a matter of seconds – at about the time she got to her feet – Laurie realised how stupid she was being. Yes, she’d been running in tunnels very similar to this one only a few weeks before, but now the rails were live. She had to stay close to the left-hand wall and make sure that whenever she shuffled forward there was no risk of losing her balance, of touching anything electrified. It made her progress slow, and she could not waste time, or she would still be in the tunnel when the next southbound train arrived.
Forty minutes earlier, Laurie had been so desperate t
o bring everything to a close that she’d been willing to play Russian roulette with a Tube train. Success had turned her around. Now she was desperate to live, to enjoy the rest of her life. What was she doing? And why was she still feeling solid wall to her left? All that stuff she’d read on the internet made it clear that the spur off to the old platform – the one they used before the Victoria line was built – should be coming up. Where was it?
Laurie continued edging along, feeling out against the wall with her left hand as she did so, the panic rising within her. Every step took her further from the safety of the platform. Every second brought the arrival of another train nearer. Had the background noise changed? Had the general roar changed its pitch, become louder? Surely the rails were starting to ring? Laurie turned her head to the left, looking for her approaching doom.
She was right. There was a light; in less than a second it resolved into two separate pinpricks; they grew larger and moved apart. A familiar voice echoed down the tunnel from the platform: ‘Please stand clear of the platform edge.’ The air around her started to move, pushed by the piston of the oncoming train.
All this time Laurie was shuffling along the tunnel, away from the platform – it was too far away for her to reach by now – using her hand to search for the gap that would let her slip out of harm’s way. She’d had it all planned: the day spent on the disused platform, the one she’d read about online, then, once the electricity was off, a return to familiar ground, back down the track, through the station, onto the right-hand fork that linked through to the Piccadilly line – the one she’d taken by mistake the other night – then on northbound through King’s Cross to the disused station at York Way, and escape. She’d done it all before, much of it without a torch. It wouldn’t matter that she didn’t have one at all this time. The lights in the stations, York Way included, would have been all she needed. But first she needed to find that gap.
Then her hand met something: not a gap but a barrier. Laurie had been so focused on the approaching headlights that it took her a moment – a valuable moment – to understand what she was touching: some sort of metal box, about three or four inches deep, its top roughly level with her shoulder, its bottom with her pelvis. That was it; there was no way she could get around it with the train only seconds away. Nevertheless, the box itself gave hope.
There was no time to think, to calculate her chances. All Laurie could do was flatten herself against the tunnel wall, turn her head to the side, wrap her left arm around the top of the box, and hope that its existence meant there was enough clearance for the train to miss whatever parts of her body remained exposed.
So Laurie was looking straight at the train as it approached. The wind that came before it was deafening in its violence, forcing her to close her eyes just as she caught a glimpse of the driver, an indistinct human form, sitting in the front of the train. She had no idea if he (or she?) had seen her. Her hair streamed out behind her; it was all she could do to keep her grip on the box as she hugged it, one-handed, for protection. There was a thud as the train came level with her. For a moment she was convinced she’d been hit. How else to account for the sound, for the pummelling her body was receiving? But then the train was passing her, slowing down as it came into the station.
Laurie opened her eyes. She did not dare move her head, but she could see the shadows cast by the lights inside the last carriage, moving along the wall towards her. Any passenger looking out would have seen her torso. Laurie had time to register the thought and then the train was gone. She looked back over her shoulder to see its tail lights come to a halt at the end of the tunnel. Black spots danced around them. Flies? No, these were entirely in Laurie’s head.
The possibility of fainting made Laurie’s heart lurch, as if she really had touched the live rail a few feet away. It shocked her into clarity. She might have been spotted; she might not. What was important was that she was still alive, and she wanted to stay that way. All other concerns were secondary. She had to get back on the platform, away from trains, and live rails, and terror. With the tail lights as a beacon, and the light from the platform silhouetting the train, Laurie started back towards humanity.
It seemed to take no time at all. There she was, standing at the back of the train, listening to the doors close. The pitch increased; there was a moment of fear: what if this train reversed as well? And then it pulled off to the south, opening a gap through to the platform on Laurie’s right. No point wasting time on thought. With just a brief glance down to check she wasn’t about to step into the suicide pit, Laurie brought up her knee and levered herself onto the platform. The manoeuvre completed, she indulged in a small internal acknowledgment that she had just contravened the one cardinal rule she still remembered from that rock-climbing course when she was eleven (‘Don’t use your knees; it throws off your centre of gravity’). Then she got to her feet and looked around.
Further up the platform were the backs of the people who had just got off the train, now queuing for the escalator that would take them up to the connecting concourse above. Between them and her, however, a man had just stepped out of the archway connecting through to the Victoria line. For a moment Laurie thought it was Dad, before a part of her subconscious dismissed the notion: ‘Of course not; he’s with Jess.’
And that was enough. Dad was with Jess. Of course. Laurie stared at the man as understanding dawned, ignoring the odd look that he was giving her in return.
Then another thought kicked in. This man had just witnessed Laurie’s reappearance at the end of the platform. He probably hadn’t seen her climb out of the tunnel, and he might not raise any alarm even if he had; all he wanted was to get on the next train with as little delay as possible. Nevertheless, it probably wasn’t wise to stick around. Through the tunnel behind the man, Laurie could hear the whirr of an approaching train. With a grunt of apology, she slipped past him, arriving on the Victoria line platform in time to join the people waiting to board.
One minute more and Laurie was through the doors, hearing them shut behind her. She looked like God knows what; both her arms were immobilised by the crush of other passengers; her face was pressed into an armpit; a briefcase jabbed into her thighs; but she had never felt more exultantly alive.
They were leaving Oxford Circus before Laurie was struck by another thought. She had just been on the platform where, only a few weeks before, she had watched William Pennington die. He had been pushed, she could be pretty sure of that now, as sure as she had once been that he fell. Laurie looked back on her earlier self, on her certainties and insecurities. She’d been so wrong about so many things, so wrapped up in herself that she had thought about no one else – been blind to the blatantly obvious. But she was still alive. She was in a position to put things right. The question was, how?
Tuesday, 11 August – 11.05 a.m.
Seats were plentiful beyond Victoria. It was only when Laurie sat down that she realised how tired she was. For the first time in her life ‘take the weight off your feet’ seemed more than just an expression. As the ache in her legs eased, she examined the map on the opposite side of the carriage. Yes, as she thought, the Victoria and Northern lines crossed again at Stockwell. She could get off there, continue on to Morden, go and find Fitzwilliam Road; it shouldn’t be that hard to track down Dad – assuming he was still there – to tell him everything that had happened this morning, let him decide what to do next.
Two weeks ago that was what Laurie would have done. Even now, she found the thought ridiculously tempting. Dad would listen, be sympathetic, continue putting his own life on hold while he sorted out hers. When the train came into Stockwell, however, something more than weariness kept her in her seat.
Laurie was thinking. She carried on thinking when the train arrived in Brixton, ignored the flashing carriage lights that indicated it had reached the end of the line, remained in her seat as those around her started to fill again. By the time the train was heading back north, she knew what she needed to do.
She would sort things out herself, do the right thing, or something that approximated to it. Dad – Dad and Jess, to be more accurate – could be left undisturbed.
Laurie had thought she’d remember the route from Watford station, but last time she’d been following Dad and hadn’t really been paying attention. She got out her phone to check the route. Somehow she’d missed two calls, one from Jess, another from a private number. The voicemail icon was flashing. Laurie held the phone to her ear as she walked.
Both messages were short and to the point. She recognised Jess’s voice immediately. ‘Hello you, we’re back. No joy, I’m afraid. Where are you?’ That was to be expected, but comforting nonetheless.
The second was a shock, a reminder of a life that seemed to have vanished in the space of only a few days. ‘Hi Laurie. This is Linda. Can you call into the office please? Henry is trying to get hold of you.’ Oh God, Henry. What could he want? Did she even care? What would she do if he asked her to come back? Laurie was surprised to realise that she wasn’t sure. Her only certainty was that she didn’t need to call back right now. She could give herself some thinking time first.
Jess, on the other hand, deserved an immediate reply. Laurie stopped walking as she keyed in the text: All fine. Will call soon. Don’t do anything until we’ve spoken. That should hold things for a while. A conversation was the last thing Laurie wanted at the moment.
Laurie carried on walking into Chestnut Avenue. There was the house. A police car stood outside. Good, that would make things easier. She stepped across the road to ring the bell.
Tuesday, 11 August – 5 p.m.
The wind and overcast sky made Parliament Hill a far less inviting spot than it had been on Laurie’s last visit. Or perhaps it was simply the effect of being a weekday. Either way, she faced no competition for the bench at the top. She was glad she had suggested to Dad that they meet there. It would mean she could associate Hampstead Heath with a memory that had no connection with the man who had called himself Paul Collingwood. She hadn’t wasted time on the phone asking Dad about the morning. He didn’t have to justify himself to her. In fact, that, as much as anything, was what she wanted to tell him, to let him know it was OK, to give him whatever blessing he might feel he needed. So she had suggested that Jess came too.