Trust Me - T.M. Logan Page 0,7

I notice. Black jeans and Doc Martens, grey sweatshirt and a scuffed black leather jacket. Not a single note of colour; the skin of his face so pale it is almost translucent. Something else strange about him, still nagging at me. Something not quite right.

I step carefully down onto the platform, the air filled with echoing footsteps and thick with diesel exhaust. Marylebone is rich with Victorian red brick, steel girders criss-crossing the glass roof high above. I move away from the train door, look up and down the platform in case Kathryn has somehow managed to get back onto the train at Seer Green and is here right now, searching for her baby, hoping I might catch sight of her rust-coloured jacket moving towards us amid the disembarking travellers. A sea of faces travels down the platform, a group of slow-moving pensioners, a young family on a day trip, shoppers and students and a few suited commuters mixed in. No young women scanning the crowd. No sign of Kathryn.

I look down at the baby in my arms, Mia blinking against the bright light, and begin walking towards the main concourse. At the barrier I reach into my handbag for my ticket, searching awkwardly with my right hand while my left supports Mia. I try to reach into my jacket pocket, just about managing to push down into it with my right hand. Not in there either. Someone tuts loudly in the queue behind me, moving away to another of the ticket barriers. Was it in my trouser pocket? I pat the pockets of my jeans but can’t feel its outline. The guard, a smiling fiftyish woman with short dark hair, comes over and gives Mia a little wave.

Should I tell the guard what’s happened? Or would she just direct me to the nearest police officer? I’m trying to think of the right words to use but the guard isn’t looking at me, she’s grinning at Mia.

‘Aren’t you a little cutie?’ the woman says, as the baby regards her with slow-blinking blue eyes. ‘Let’s give your mummy a hand, shall we?’

She taps her own pass on the sensor and the grey plastic barrier swings open.

‘Thank you,’ I say, a small bloom of relief in my chest. ‘You’re very kind.’

The guard gives Mia another one-finger wave.

‘Have a lovely day, you two.’

I walk into the main concourse and look for signs to an information point, a ticket office or wherever the station manager might be. Do the British Transport Police have offices in the big stations? I’ve never seen one in Marylebone, but then I’ve never really looked either. In central London it feels like anything that isn’t a stabbing or a terror alert is a long way down the police pecking order. Is this the sort of thing they would deal with on the spot, like an imminent threat to life? Not really.

Reaching the station concourse proper, I catch sight of my reflection in the window of a shop and I’m momentarily disorientated by the shadowy image of myself with a baby tucked into my arm. It’s almost like I’m looking into a parallel life, a parallel universe, where the last round of IVF has worked and I’ve had Richard’s baby. And here I am bringing our daughter home, the wonderful warm little heft of a baby in my arms.

I know that parallel life isn’t real. And yet, here I am, with Mia.

With a jolt, I catch another reflection in the glass. Just behind me, keeping pace with steady strides, black beanie hat on his head. The thin man from the carriage is following me.

4

He’s walking slowly with a strange, spidery gait alongside a handful of other passengers. Pretending to be looking at his phone while he walks. I think of the bruises on Kathryn’s arm. The fear in her eyes. Perhaps this was the boyfriend? Not the broken-nose guy on the phone, but this man? Seeing him among regular passengers just adds to his sense of otherness, a sense of not belonging that seems to radiate from him. I quicken my pace.

Further behind me there are shouts, loud and angry, male voices full of protest. Some kind of row breaking out back on the platform. I glance over my shoulder to see the red-and-white shirted football fans held up at the barrier, arguing with the guards – something about tickets – their faces contorted with anger, swigging from cans of lager. The fans shouting, swearing to let them through, their