Nicola Maitland-Mayne heard this pronouncement with dismay. ‘But I don’t know,’ she cried to her fellow passengers, ‘which portion I’m in! Is this one of the first four carriages?’

‘It’s the fifth,’ said the man in the corner. ‘Next stop Forthampstead.’

‘Oh, damn!’ Nicola said cheerfully and hauled her typewriter and overcoat down from the rack. Someone opened the door for her. She plunged out, staggered along the platform and climbed into another carriage as the voice was saying: ‘All seats, please, for Rimble, Bornlee Green and Little Codling.’

The first compartment was full and so was the second. She moved along the corridor, looked in at the third, and gave it up. A tall man, farther along the corridor said: ‘There’s plenty of room up at the end.’

‘I’m second class.’

‘I should risk it if I were you. You can always pay up if the guard comes along but he never does on this stretch, I promise you.’

‘Oh, well,’ Nicola said, ‘I believe I will. Thank you.’

He opened the door of the first-class compartment. She went in and found nobody there. A bowler, an umbrella, and a Times, belonging, she supposed, to the young man himself, lay on one seat. She sat on the other. He shut the door and remained in the corridor with his back to her, smoking.

Nicola looked out of the window for a minute or two. Presently she remembered her unfinished crossword and took her own copy of The Times out of her overcoat pocket.

Eight across. ‘Vehicle to be sick on or just get a ringing in the ears? (8).’

The train had roared through a cutting and was slowing down for Cabstock when she ejaculated: ‘Oh, good lord! Carillon, of course, how stupid!’ She looked up to find the young man smiling at her from the opposite seat.

‘I stuck over that one, too,’ he said.

‘How far did you get?’

‘All but five. Maddening.’

‘So did I,’ Nicola said.

‘I wonder if they’re the same ones. Shall I look?’

He picked up his paper. She noticed that under the nail of the first finger of his right hand there was a smear of scarlet.

Between them they continued the crossword. It is a matter of conjecture how many complete strangers have been brought into communication by this means. Rimble and Bornlee Green were passed before they filled in the last word.

‘I should say,’ the young man remarked as he folded up his Times, ‘that we’re in much the same class.’

‘That may be true of crosswords, but it certainly isn’t of railway carriages,’ Nicola rejoined. ‘Heavens, where are we?’

‘Coming in to Codling. My station, what a bore!’

‘It’s mine, too,’ Nicola exclaimed, standing up.