Single Woman

he lives in the country and every day commutes by train to the city for work. Each morning she rushes on the station platform like a black unicorn, just as the train departs. She steps onto the quickening regional service and finds an empty seat to curl up in and sleep the hour journey there and back, like she’s greedy for lost sleep. She even sleeps through the train stops. Every night she wakes just before her stop as if hearing a perfectly timed alarm bell.

Only one other man is still on the train when she wakes. He shares the same destination and service. His wife and children will have already eaten dinner, but every Tuesday and Thursday night, when the kids don’t have sports practise and his wife doesn’t have choir group, they wait by the platform to pick him up. On special occasions the mother makes the children wait till they pick up their father and go out to eat at the local Indian restaurant because it opens late.

The woman steps off the trains while it’s still moving. She hurries to her parked car, wrestling the distance with her handbag for her car keys. The headlights quickly disappear behind a forested road – disappearing towards a bottle of red wine and a dinner for one.