(As promised, though it's rough, and some may have read it already...)
The stagnant, late evening air of the train station hummed with the lingering smell of a hundred commuters that had passed through during rush hour. The scent of sweat and stale cigarettes mixed with the pungency of the grease on the train tracks. A large, Edwardian clock hung from the beams above platform one, telling everyone who glanced upwards that the evening had just turned eight o'clock.
The station only had two platforms, one feeding trains to the north and east, the other to the south and west, back into London city.
Three young men stood beneath the old clock, restless and impatient for the train that had yet to arrive.
“Sam, is that clock right?” the one of them asked. With scruffy, dark hair and a pointed nose, he was the shortest of the three and stood between them as though his friends could shield him from the chilly wind that had started to blow. His thin denim jacket didn’t look like it could defend him against the weather.
Both of the other boys glanced at the clock, but the one called Sam rolled back a sleeve and checked his watch.
“It’s right,” Sam answered before shoving his cold hands deep into the pockets of his coat.
Sam was the tallest of the three, a grey woollen hat pulled low over his ears, the collar of his coat turned up to hide his neck from the cold. He wore dark grey jeans and black trainers. With the black of his coat the only colours he had were the flushed pink of his cheeks and the vibrant blue-green of his eyes.
“Didn’t you just asked that?” the third boy said, a subtle hint of humour in his words. Turning to Sam, he added, “I think Lloyd can hear the whip cracking from here.”
Sam laughed, and Lloyd flicked a finger at them both before answering. “Just because you can’t find anyone to stand your company longer than a few hours, Tony, doesn’t mean you have to get irritable.” He said it with a smile.
“Maybe it was the four tortillas he had for lunch,” Sam offered, patting his stomach and making a face of exaggerated discomfort.
Tony regarded Sam with accusation, but kept his mouth shut. Tony was the only one who didn’t seem to notice the dropping temperature, no doubt because of the puffy ski jacket that swallowed his average frame.
They had spent the day at a football game that Lloyd’s brother was playing in and had decided to take the train home. Lloyd was going to visit his girlfriend who lived much closer to central London than they did, and Tony decided to travel most of the way with him for the company, the train line running not too far from where he lived.
Lloyd passed another comment about Tony’s frigidity, which was answered in kind, and Sam kept out of it as they bickered back and forth for several minutes. Most days Sam would have picked a side and joined in, but even from when he woke up some ten hours earlier he had felt exhausted. He put it down to a restless night with not much sleep. A regular occurrence.
Yawning loudly, Sam was stretching the stiffening muscles in his back when a flicker of bright blue caught his eye.
It didn’t take him long to find the source.
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