The elderly woman clutches her coffee as she goes outside to stand by the suitcase, lest it be seized and subject to a controlled explosion. She saw no need to keep a close eye on the case when she knew it contained nothing of value – her purse, phone and driving licence are all in the neat leather handbag that hangs from her shoulder. What self-respecting thief would want her socks? Relying on the guesswork and common sense of petty criminals is something of a high-risk strategy for protecting your belongings but she’s not alone in that.

None of the five travellers left in the waiting room between Platform Six and Platform Seven has even looked around, either at the security announcement or to watch the elderly woman reclaim her suspicious suitcase. The warnings are so constant and terrorist attacks so infrequent that there is a disconnect between the two – nobody really takes the announcements seriously because of their frequency.

It doesn’t matter how many times you are told; in fact, the more you are told it, the less you are able to imagine it. You have to be someone to whom something unexpected and terrible has happened to feel that vigilance has a purpose. Until you have experienced the hard slap of violence, you can’t imagine a sudden, bad thing happening. People don’t report suitcases on railway platforms for the same reason that they don’t report a speeding motorist. There is the mundane, then there is the unthinkable – between the two, a chasm into which our imaginations tumble.

*

The morning grows old and even though it’s sunny I’ve had enough of Platform Seven, enough of staring out at the housing estate, the Used Car Supermarket, the distant Fens. Boredom: each day, each night, the turn and blur of those non-identical twins – the sameness of it. If all life is, or turns out to be, is a waiting room for death, then why don’t more people hurry it up? I would, if I had the choice, but you can’t commit suicide when you’re already dead, which leaves me in a bit of a bind.

I can’t afford to let gloom overtake me – I know that much by now. If you get depressed when you are in my state, it can curdle. I’ll start trying to whisper malicious thoughts into the ears of the living, urging them to do what I can’t.

*

I go to hang around the entrance. There’s a cafe there, although it isn’t a separate area, just an extension of the small concourse. It’s called the Pumpkin Cafe, appropriately enough for this time of the year, although it’s called that all year round. It’s more fun to hang around here than over there on the far side, where people are doing nothing but waiting for trains or killing themselves. There’s a fair amount of waiting goes on in the Pumpkin Cafe too, of course. You can get your cup of tea-in-Styrofoam and sit on one of the metal chairs in full view of the electronic display, where you can find out, should you need to know, that the 17.32 to Spalding is on time and is Calling at: Spalding. Not all trains are quite so punctual. The 17.24 to Manchester is Expected at: 17.25.