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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

Melissa has noticed Lockhart too – or, to be more accurate, she has felt the spark that crossed between them as they exchanged their smiles, noted the tiny, mutual flicker of it in their look. She is not thinking, oh no, though, she is smiling to herself and already moving on. Melissa is not looking for anything. She is thinking of how great it will be to go home to her mum’s beef casserole – it’s just the two of them now, although her brothers live in Peterborough. She’s thinking of how she reckons she can be Level D in Area Management within two years and then, well, the field is wide open. She looks around the station and thinks that it may not appear to be glamorous or fun but she loves working here. Her job is to make sure that all the thousands of people who pass through every week scarcely notice her, or her staff, because they are doing their job so well they are invisible. All these people, men and women, young and old, all these souls, and she keeps them safe, and they never know, and that suits her fine. She loves her staff too, every one of them. If anything happens, every one of them will do their best. They will all put their lives on the line.

*

Dalmar should be here, I think. But Dalmar has not been invited. It hasn’t occurred to anybody that he should be. Andrew and Ruth don’t even know about Dalmar. They don’t know that he was the last person to see their father alive, that he shouted at him across the tracks in a vain attempt to save him and was the first person to rush over to Platform Seven: that he saw what they are trying very hard not to imagine. Only I know what witnessing Thomas Warren’s death has done to Dalmar, the ghosts it has unloosed in his head.

Even Dalmar himself doesn’t know that it was him I saw across the tracks the night I died but I know now why I felt that yearning for him, as my memories came back: he was the last glimpse of safety that I saw. I’m glad he doesn’t know it, with his capacity for self-blame. Nothing was his fault – it was what I was running from, not towards – but I’m not sure he would see it that way if he knew.

It feels wrong that he has been left out of this afternoon’s small ceremony. I go up the ramp, along and out of the station, turning left, to the narrow nearby streets where Dalmar lives.

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