Thursday 3 May 2012

Just a crack

Something had cracked one of the windows, earlier in the month, but nobody had noticed and the train continued to rattle up and down the Jubilee line. On the final journey of the day, a drunk staggered into it and the heavy corner of his bag hit the crack and smashed the pane. The noise was drowned out by the clatter of the tracks and the rushing air and besides, the drunk wasn’t the only one too drunk to notice.

In the morning, a mother took her child to school, the car having stalled in the winter frost. The child wandered up the near empty carriage and peeked her head out of the broken hole. Before her screaming mother dragged her back, her hat was whipped off by the turbulence and lost in the black tunnel between Southwark and Waterloo. She continued to school with a cold head and a red mark around he wrist where her mum had gripped he tightly until they got off at Dollis Hill.

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