The London Train by Tessa Hadley

Author:Tessa Hadley [Hadley, Tessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Psychological, Man-Woman Relationships, Psychological Fiction, Fathers and Daughters, London (England), Single Women, Railroad Travel - Great Britain, General, Literary, Great Britain, Cardiff (Wales), Families, Fiction, Railroad Travel, Midlife Crisis
ISBN: 9780062011831
Google: CCfqgeX6Z68C
Amazon: 0062011839
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-05-24T07:00:00+00:00

II

Cora, three years ago, on the train from Cardiff to Paddington.

It was a few weeks since she’d run away from the fertility clinic, almost six months since her mother died. Her teaching had more or less finished for the summer, and she was throwing herself furiously into the transformation of the Cardiff house, telling Robert she wanted to do it up to sell it. No matter what difficulties came up, how the builders found dry rot, or messed up the French windows in the extension, she encouraged herself: bite the bitter pill. She had got her force back, even if she didn’t know what to do with it, and was only pressing mightily up against an invisible resistance. She had chosen a wood-burning stove, she had scoured the reclamation yards for antique tiles for the bathroom, for lovely old pink bricks. Now, outside the train windows, the afternoon landscape fumed with rain, the green fields and woods were secretive, withdrawn around their own dense history, pressed under a lead-coloured lid of sky. The train wasn’t full; she sat at a table by herself. Dark drops rolled sideways along the window glass. For no reason, her heart was beating thickly, as if she was expecting something, though she wasn’t, she mustn’t look forward, because there was nothing ahead, nothing.

A man stopped beside her, carrying a cardboard cup of coffee from the buffet, a briefcase slung on a strap across his shoulder.

– Do you mind if I sit here? I’m escaping from an idiot with a mobile phone.

– How do you know I’m not one?

He glanced at her, taking her in quickly. – You don’t look like an idiot.

– You’re safe, she said. – Mine’s turned off.

– Good girl.

Half-heartedly she was offended by his calling her a girl. Sitting down in the window seat opposite her, he got out a book from his briefcase and started to read. It was a book of poetry, by someone Cora hadn’t heard of. She was embarrassed that she was reading Vogue – she knew the man had taken this in, in his quick survey, as a mark against her. She never used to buy magazines, but on her journeys backwards and forwards from Cardiff, not wanting to think too much, she tried to fill her head with ideas for things she might get for the house, or plans for new clothes.

He scowled into his book, gripping it as if he might tear it apart at the spine. Cora always looked at people’s hands when she met them (Robert’s were huge, with soft hollows in the palms and unexpectedly delicate finger ends). This man’s hands were long and tanned and tense, slim as a woman’s though he wasn’t effeminate, one finger nicotine-stained, the nails naturally almond-shaped; when he took a mouthful of coffee she noticed that they shook. He wore a wedding ring. She thought he might be precious, or pretentious; there was something dissatisfied in his ripe, full mouth, although he was attractive, subtle-looking, only

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