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Back Platform Seven Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. Cover
  2. Landing Page
  3. Platform Seven
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Contents
  7. PART ONE
  8. 1
  9. 2
  10. 3
  11. PART TWO
  12. 4
  13. 5
  14. 6
  15. PART THREE
  16. 7
  17. 8
  18. 9
  19. PART FOUR
  20. 10
  21. 11
  22. 12
  23. 13
  24. 14
  25. PART FIVE
  26. 15
  27. 16
  28. 17
  29. PART SIX
  30. 18
  31. 19
  32. 20
  33. PART SEVEN
  34. 21
  35. 22
  36. 23
  37. 24
  38. 25
  39. Acknowledgements
  40. About the Author
  41. By the Same Author
  42. Copyright

I gave a small laugh. ‘Jeez, is that what they teach you in medical school? Honestly, Matty, really …’ I stretched my mouth as I spoke. It had all been over in a second or two. ‘Seriously, sometimes it’s like you’re trying to give me a glimpse of what you’d be like if you were a bad person.’ I spoke lightly, a laugh still in my voice. I was careful to do that. I leaned over and picked up my book from the floor, opened it again, still stretching my jaw.

He was still turned away, his back to me, looking at his phone. ‘Maybe I am a bad person,’ he replied.

PART FIVE

15

It was January: five months after Matthew and I had begun dating, and two months after we had moved in together – the bleakest part of the month, the mid-point, Christmas long gone and savage February ahead. Dark, darker, darkest, that’s the way it goes in the run-up to Christmas but in December it’s masked by coloured lights and parties, wrapped up in red and green. Then we all pop out the other side of the festive season and go, oh no, it’s January. We all hate each other and we’re broke.

My birthday is 29 January – hard time of the year to have a baby, as my mother said to me, more than once. The winter I was born, they had an old boiler that kept breaking down. She described to me the difficulty of those nighttime feeds, the sensation that you were the only person awake in the whole wide world, at the mercy of this tiny monster made entirely of need. It made an impression on her, clearly. Even into my teenage years, she would say during the particularly grim parts of winter, ‘Oh, this reminds me of when you were a newborn, Lisa!’ I was a little affronted, in my solipsistic way – she’d had me, after all, her choice. It was only later, when I had my own flat and also had cause to be awake in the small hours during winter, although not with a baby to feed, that I understood more of what it can be like: the depth of the cold and the isolation, that feeling.

I went through a period of insomnia not long after I bought the flat, I’m not sure why. I would rise to consciousness around 4 a.m., body still but mind turning as I struggled not to think. The things I did think were always weirdly philosophical. Who was I? What was I doing, living this life? Why wasn’t my life different or, more precisely, why wasn’t I different? Why wasn’t I not-me? Sometimes I experienced an odd, floating sensation, as if my body didn’t exist and I was nothing but my thoughts.