Short Lived

  ‘The book’s better, believe me. You should try this sometime.’ She held up Cell and Henry found himself nodding now, infected by her enthusiasm.

  ‘Definitely – maybe I’ll even get a copy tomorrow, given the rave reviews I’m hearing.’ Molly narrowed her eyes slightly, as if sussing out whether he was teasing her or being genuinely serious. Another split-second of hesitation followed and then her smile suddenly turned coy.

  ‘Or you could take this one? I’ve actually read it before – I guarantee you its good.’ Henry opened his mouth, but she shook her head, that crooked smile widening. ‘Seriously, I think you should read it – after all, you went to so much trouble to rescue it for me. Consider it a thank you.’

  ‘Okay...’ Henry found himself grinning too. Outside the window, the hazy sunset was just dipping over the horizon into dusk as the train sped on towards home, but to Henry it felt like the sun was shining all over his world. ‘Sounds good – and I’ll be sure to tell you what I think of it?’

  ‘I’d like that,’ Molly agreed, the flush staining her high cheekbones once more. She started to hand the novel over, but then paused, eyes narrowing again. Then, pushing her glasses up onto the top of her head to tangle into her dark hair, she suddenly began rooting around in her handbag. ‘In fact... just so you don’t forget...’

  Triumphantly, she bore a biro aloft; opening the book to the inside cover, she clicked the nib out and scribbled something across the top of the front page. Finally done, she flipped the cover shut and held out the book to him, meeting his gaze warmly. Puzzled, Henry took the novel and glanced at the page: scrawled there in elegantly looped writing was her name, Molly – and a phone number.

  Swallowing back a grin Cheshire cat wide, Henry raised the novel’s spine to her and gestured vaguely with it.

  ‘Believe me, I wouldn’t forget.’

  The train suddenly began to slow, several passengers around them clambering to their feet and reclaiming possessions, adjusting bags and coats... Henry glanced quickly out of a nearby window to find that they were nearing the first of the larger connecting stations on their route – there would be another two small stops, then his own – and Molly’s – station, another bustling stop where more passengers switched trains, speeding off into the gathering darkness to wherever home was for them.

  He stepped back out of the way as the train finally juddered to a halt; hissing for a moment in the cold evening air, the doors slid open and people began to stream their way out into the evening. To Henry’s surprise, although she had moved back with him slightly, Molly turned the collar up on her coat and shifted her bag, angling half-towards the doors too. She smiled as Henry frowned.

  ‘Different route tonight, then?’ He asked the question before he could stop himself, flinching as a little voice inside his head flagged up ‘Stalker!’ loudly. But, as with his clumsy joke before, Molly didn’t seem to notice; instead, she stepped back a little further towards the door and the edge of the queue of people disembarking, still smiling back at him.

  ‘Adventurous, right?’ Hopping off the train to the platform edge, she paused for one last moment, glancing back. Further along, a whistle sounded. Molly nodded at the book still clutched in Henry’s hands. ‘Remember: tell me what you think... And thanks again – Henry.’

  The doors started to slide shut, but Molly stayed where she was, holding the farewell between them. Henry darted forward, seizing the last second and raising the novel readily.

  ‘No problem – Molly. And I will!’

  The train started to move and, after another lengthy moment, so did Molly, ducking her head to hide her jubilant expression and sparkling eyes as she made her way towards the station exit, joining the throng. Henry remained where he was until she was completely out of sight, swallowed up by the charcoal-smudged outlines of bushes and hedgerows as the train curved around a bend and on towards its next destination. Exhaling a long breath, Henry turned to claim a seat – the carriage had half-emptied now, everyone heading for bigger and brighter towns only accessible from the illuminated pit-stop of that last connecting station.

  He found himself met by the scrutinising gaze of those passengers remaining and now it was his turn to blush: they had all just witnessed his moment of chivalry, as well as his following efforts to chat Molly up... As he swung himself into one of the pairs of seats at the back, he suddenly shrugged the embarrassment off – after all, she had given him her number. Him. Who else there could boast such good fortune?

  Henry sat for a couple of minutes looking out the window at the darkened skyline, reflecting on everything that had just taken place; he could hardly believe that the one thing he had been dreaming of for the past three weeks – three months even – had actually just happened. He kept sneaking surreptitious glances down at the book on his lap, convincing his mind that Molly, the drunk, his outrageous good fortune hadn’t just been some warped hallucination. Henry would never have believed he could feel such a rush of appreciation for Stephen King before...

  Perhaps he should start reading it now? He flipped open the cover, fully intending to satisfy his promise to Molly – plus what was it the drunk had said about zombies? Didn’t sound too bad...

  Try as he might though, Henry just couldn’t focus – his attention kept springing back every few seconds to the front page and Molly’s scrawled phone number at the top. Every number sent a quick thrill through his spine, heart leaping euphorically at the triumph. He would have to call Ben the second he got home – never mind the clap on the back from his brother, what he needed now was advice, because how soon was too soon? Molly had given him her number; she clearly wanted him to ring her... So should he call her tonight? Tomorrow morning? Perhaps he should text? Maybe he should text now?

  No.

  No, this was ridiculous – he was getting carried away. Firmly closing the book, Henry tucked it beside his leg, resting it against the lip of carriage wall beneath the window sill – out of sight, but still with its reassuring touch lightly reminding him how, suddenly, everything had changed. Drawing in a deep breath, Henry drifted back to looking out of the window, musing on his thoughts; yes, he’d wait until he got in, give Ben a ring and see what advice his suave younger brother had in store for him...

  The next two stations passed without Henry really noticing properly. He was dimly aware of the overhead announcements counting down the stops until home, along with the carriage persistently emptying – it would only fill up again at his stop though, Henry knew. He had to love the erratic essence of train journeys; anything could happen, as he himself had just demonstrated... The buzz was slowly quieting into a steady bubble of elation, his adrenaline rush soothed by the steady rhythm of the train and the warm glow of his carriage reflected out into the gathering night. He had never felt so content.

  As the tinny announcement sounded his stop through a fumble of static, Henry turned to gather up his shoulder bag and noticed an elderly gentleman struggling to lift his suitcase from the overhead rack, a cane flailing in the other hand. Fate really seemed intent on making Henry a knight in shining armour that evening; getting up quickly, he stepped forward and reached up, offering the man a polite, ‘let me give you a hand with that’. The old man looked up at him, chest heaving from the effort, grateful for Henry’s intervention.

  ‘I used to be able to manage things like this,’ He said apologetically and Henry shook his head, easing the suitcase to the floor.

  ‘It’s no trouble – I’m getting off here anyway, so let me get it onto the platform for you...’ The old man seemed agreeable and Henry quickly hefted the bag towards the doorway; now that it was on the ground, where gravity could reassert itself, it seemed heavier than before – what did the old guy have in there, gold bars or something? Perhaps Henry was just exhausted from so much chivalry in one day...

  The evening chill hit him the second he stepped down to the platform, not entirely unwelcome, but cold enough to hurry Henry’s step. He
quickly set the suitcase down a safe distance from the platform edge and found the button to eject the pull-handle. Turning, he gestured to the old man and nodded in a finalised, ‘good evening’ sort of way.

  ‘Thank you, very kind,’ The man nodded gruffly in response and Henry shrugged.

  ‘Not at all.’ With another quick nod, he turned away and began to head off down the platform, towards the exit, the main road, home... and Molly’s book.

  Wait.

  Molly’s book.

  Henry stopped dead, the realisation hitting him like a bucket of icy water; his stomach flipped horribly and then seemingly attempted to crawl up his throat, churning nausea all the while. The book – the phone number –

  Distracted by the struggles of the old man, he’d left the book on the train.

  He spun around, but the guard was already blowing his whistle, preparing to hop back aboard and disappear off into the night; the last of the gaggle of passengers switching across from other trains had finished boarding already and the evening commute schedule was ticking on... Henry felt literally frozen with indecision for one hideously elastic moment – and then the monotonous warning beep that indicated the doors were about to close jerked him back into action: he could not lose that book.

  Which left only one option.

  Just as the doors began to slide shut, Henry sprinted the last two feet between him and the nearest pair – he was almost three carriages down from where he had gotten off, but that didn’t matter right now – all that mattered was getting back on the train and retrieving that precious novel, regardless of how long it would take him to get home again afterwards.

  ‘No! Wait!’

  He threw himself between the doors; the gap was narrowed to almost Indiana Jones proportions, but he just managed to slip through, tripping over his own feet in the process and staggering with the momentum across the entryway to slam into the opposite side of the carriage. Pausing, Henry drew in a breath – and then felt the carriage shudder beneath his feet, the train moving off along the tracks once more. He’d made it – and the entire carriage, for the second time that evening, was watching him in surprise. At least he was making a fool out of himself in front of an entirely new set of people this time...

  Henry straightened up, squaring his shoulders and briefly dusting off the front of his jacket, attempting valiantly to appear nonchalant. All that mattered now was getting Molly’s book back; gathering his bearings, Henry set off hurriedly down the aisle towards the connecting door of the carriage.

  Banging through the first set of doors, Henry hurried on towards the next – that was the section he had been sitting in, he was sure, even though the train was fuller now and his urgency was attracting more and more interested glances. That had definitely been his carriage; he remembered, from those first few minutes standing in the entryway, that it had been preceded by the compartment that held the bike rack... He wrenched open the last set of doors, crossing the precarious metal walkway that wobbled within the rubber-walls of the connecting passage. Just as he stepped across the threshold, into the carriage with the bike rack – so close to his final destination – he found himself brought to a sudden halt by the appearance of the ticket man, who straightened stiffly to bar Henry’s path.

  ‘Sorry, excuse me –’ Henry began; the ticket man sniffed.

  ‘Can I see your ticket please?’

  ‘I – what?’

  ‘Your ticket, please?’ The man looked irritated at having to explain himself.

  ‘Right, yes, erm...’ Henry fumbled in his jacket pockets, desperately trying to remember where he kept his rail pass. As he patted himself down awkwardly, he craned his neck to surreptitiously try and peer past the conductor, attempting to locate his earlier seat – to his dismay he saw that two men had taken up residence in the spot, one glancing absently at a newspaper. So where was the book? He hastily switched his attention back to the ticket collector. ‘Hey, erm – has anyone handed in a book to you? Stephen King...?’

  The conductor’s eyes narrowed, obviously wondering whether Henry was trying to distract him from the issue of his ticket.

  ‘A book? No, no one’s handed in a book, sir. Now if I could just see your ticket, please?’

  Henry felt flushed with desperation. He practically tore open his bag, fumbling around its chaotic innards for the tell-tale slick plastic cover of his railcard wallet; finally, he snagged it with a nail and hurriedly dragged it out, sighing with relief. The ticket man, on the other hand, was glaring at him in such a way that, if looks could kill, would definitely ensure Henry’s place six feet under. He quickly thrust the pass at him.

  ‘Are you sure no one’s handed a book in? I left it behind you see – just now – I’m just trying to get it back... It was sort of a gift and –’

  The conductor obviously wasn’t listening; with another sneer, he stopped scrutinising Henry’s pass and looked up at him.

  ‘No one’s handed me any books, sir – and I’m afraid this pass isn’t valid.’

  ‘What?’ Henry’s attention was only half on him – the men hadn’t handed the book in, so that must mean that it was still on the seat, or at least somewhere around it... He distractedly glanced down at his pass, which the ticket officer was holding out to him pointedly. ‘What do you mean, it isn’t valid? It’s a monthly pass – ’

  ‘Yes sir, it is a monthly pass, but for the line extending from Manchester to Macclesfield. We have just left Macclesfield and are now on route to Stoke on Trent. You’ll need to purchase a separate ticket to cover that part of your journey...’

  ‘No, no,’ Henry shook his head emphatically, still trying to keep one eye on the men now in his seat – and quite possibly in possession of his book. ‘That’s what I’m trying to explain – I left my book here – well, it’s not my book, it’s someone else’s and they gave it to me – I left it by accident just in the next carriage – I’m just looking for it –’

  ‘Sir, if you are going to Stoke on Trent, you will need to buy a ticket –’

  ‘I’m not going to Stoke on Trent, I just explained!’ Henry’s patience was wearing as thin as the ticket man’s – if he could just reach those two guys and ask if they’d seen his book... The phone number jumped into his mind, unbidden, and his desperation rose a couple more notches. He took a couple of steps forward, gesturing down the carriage. ‘Look, I’m just trying to find my book – I got on the train at Manchester, I got off at Macclesfield and realised I’d lost it – I just need to get it back, please...’

  ‘Sir, if you don’t buy a ticket, I will have to ask you to leave the train at the next station – with a fine!’ As if backing up the conductor’s words, and to Henry’s consternation, the train began to slow: they were approaching Stoke on Trent already. Henry staggered as the train began to lurch into a more measured pace, lights springing up on all sides as buildings began to invade their surroundings.

  To make matters worse, from over the ticket officer’s shoulder, Henry saw the two men getting to their feet, gathering up their briefcases...

  ‘Please – I just want...’

  ‘Sir – ’

  The train rumbled to a halt and, as he watched the men head towards the doors, Henry knew that it was now or never – the thought of Molly, his literary vision, and her longed-for number potentially disappearing because of his own carelessness drove him to new, desperate heights.

  He sidestepped the ticket officer and practically threw himself down the length of the aisle, incoherent yells chasing at his back. He was across the first entryway, pushing through the crowds waiting to disembark and halfway down the next aisle before he heard the bleeping of the doors as they slid open to spill passengers out onto the floodlit expanse of the concourse. The ticket officer was struggling against the tidal flow, torn between his duty to police new passengers and his bureaucratic need to chase Henry, the assumed ticket cheat... Daringly ignoring the man’s cries, Henry kept on running.

/>   It’ll be there, it’ll be there, it has to be there...

  He reached the seat he had been sitting in, barely fifteen minutes ago –

  It was empty.

  Lunging over it, Henry batted at both chairs, then at the gap between them, as if by sheer force of will he could pluck the book out of thin air. He dropped to his knees and fumbled beneath the seat, both in front and behind: nothing.

  The men – one of them must have taken it.

  Henry leapt to his feet once more; weeks, no, months, pining after the possibility of ever getting Molly – née book girl – to look at him, let alone speak to him, and then she had handed him her number on a silver platter masquerading as a Stephen King novel?

  He could not lose it – not now...

  Hearing the warning beeps of the train at the last possible moment for the second time that night, Henry raced to the doors, once more turning into a very urban Indiana Jones as he threw himself through the closing gap one last time, shouldering bemused people out of the way as he did so. He scanned the crowds frantically – where the hell had those men gone? And then suddenly, further down the platform, he glimpsed one of them, heading for the stairs – but where was his friend? And was he the right one, the one with Henry’s book and Molly’s precious phone number?

  By some miracle of chance, as Henry anxiously observed him, the man was knocked into by another traveller passing in a rush; caught slightly off balance, he was pushed into a half turn, one arm raising to steady himself in surprise – and clutched in his hand was the newspaper Henry had seen him reading on the train... It was curved around something else like a sling, something small and rectangular...

  The book.

  Henry ran pell-mell down the platform, yelling at the top of his voice, ‘excuse me! Excuse me! Hey, wait!’

  It felt as if the concourse had stretched out like a vast prairie, concrete endlessly rolling beneath Henry’s feet as he tore towards the businessman from the train – six feet, two feet; when he was barely a couple of inches away the man suddenly seemed to realise that the shouts were directed at him and half-turned, shoulder moving into Henry’s outstretched hand by accident, tugging him to a halt.