Rachaela put the heavier articles from her bag into the chest drawer. Her toothbrush and paste, her cosmetics and other items stood along its top like toy soldiers. She fought off the urge to take everything with her.

Outside the day was grey and yellow. Umbrellas marched on the pavements. There was no lessening of the crowd, men with shoppers and women with pushchairs, babies zipped in polythene environments, staring with contempt at the buffeted and unprotected adults they were due to become.

Rachaela walked carefully, trying to hold a half-formed map in her head.

She went into the shops, and inspected fifty-year-old antiques, woolly coats, blue ducks with flowers on their backs.

At lunch-time she went into a snack bar and ate a dry salad with drier ham. But she had not tasted ham in some while. It was salty, fatty. She had forgotten ham was like that.

At sea. It was all right. Only today, and one more day, and then she could take the train.

She should try to find the station. Behind the church, over the river, Wagon Street. She had memorized the address of the hotel and could find her way back.

There were Roman remains in the town. She had looked for them vaguely, and not found them.

The station was more important.

She got to the river, wide and yellow-grey as the sky. Boats went up and down, slick and trim or rusted and moribund. A bridge humped over the river, and beyond, the streets sprawled and flared into and out of each other. She asked the way twenty times. It was certain, there were those in the town who sent you on a wild-goose chase. Baiting an alien.

Finally, at a quarter to four, she came into Wagon Street and saw the brick and iron façade of the station like El Dorado.

She hurried up and went inside. It was very clean and plastic, with litter bins, and lavatories labelled in the London way, the woman with only one leg.

No one in the ticket office. No one on the wide windy platform where the darkness now began to fold its wings.

At last she knocked on a ‘Staff Only’ door. But nobody answered.

It was as if the station was a sop, merely. A ploy to prove it was feasible to get away, but inoperative in fact. Who would wish to leave?

No trains went through along the shiny tracks. No lights changed. The lavatories did not flush and the litter bins were devoid of mess.

Never mind. The station existed. It was there, and could be used. On Friday she would come very early, before eight, foregoing her lukewarm breakfast if need be. She would wait and if she had to, she would question the driver of every train that stopped. Fleasham, Poorly. The great sightless, careless city that sucked one in and buried one. To be buried. That was it.