I look up from Suzy’s Good morning from me and my oat cortado! to see a woman standing, holding the rail. She looks troubled. Faint, almost. Everyone else around me looks up from their phones, too. A voice! A human voice in the vacuum! What can this mean? The end times?

The woman is directing her voice to a woman sitting in a priority seat. Faint Woman is wearing a Baby on Board badge. (What was it that bastard said to me, the time I wore one? Did you lose your baby? Because he couldn’t see my bump, presumably. I felt too sick and embarrassed to question him further, on a packed train. Prescient, though. Prescient fucker.)

To my surprise – to everyone’s surprise – Priority Woman says No.

‘Sorry?’ Faint Woman says.

I look down, hard, at my blind phone.

‘I’m tired,’ says Priority Woman. ‘I’ve had a bad night and I’ve got a busy day. Why are my needs not as great just because I’m not pregnant? Pregnancy is not a moral agent; it is a physical state. By giving you my seat I am perpetuating the idea that pregnant women are more valuable – and this does none of us any good.’

I look up. Faint Woman looks flummoxed. And tired, really tired. I look down again.

I want to speak up. I want to be that person who speaks up and punctures her bubble of harmlessness for the sake of what is right. No – actually, I want this situation to end, right now. Why am I in this situation? It’s not fair. I don’t deserve it. Why am I under pressure like this?

I might tweet about how outrageous this is. I could do a phenomenally wrathful tweet about this, believe me.

I remain quiet.

‘This is for the good of all of us,’ Priority Woman says, ‘me sitting here and you not. Think of it as taking one for the team.’

I look up. Faint Woman is staring at me. The train moves off and she steadies herself.

JENNY, GET UP. A voice, from somewhere inside me. A deep, old, serious one. The voice of someone I don’t even know. GET UP RIGHT NOW.

I stand up and offer Faint Woman my seat. She accepts with a pointed ‘Thank you’, sits down and immediately looks out of the window. I walk away, down the Tube.

Priority Woman is furious. She stands up and stomps after me, accosting me by the next set of doors.

‘What was that about? I was making a point for womankind. It’s not progress, politeness, you know.’

I don’t know why or how, but I say: ‘The pregnancy was a red herring. I’m afraid it’s about kindness. If someone asks for your seat then you give it to them, because they probably need it.’

‘How do you even know she’s telling the truth?’

I look at Faint Woman.