I stand on the platform, knowing full well which way I should be going. Back towards London and Charlie. Already they are announcing the next train. The trains are so frequent though, there is always a next one. It should be so easy just to head back home.

Instead I cross the station to the other side. To the platform opposite, where trains run the other way.

Truth and lies. Deceptions and pretence. Sarah’s story cuts closer to the bone than ever. It feels like a compulsion, a craving, a violent urge. I can feel my own history pushing up to the surface, swelling against my lungs. Dad has called me, without fail, every three months. And every time I have kept our conversation short, never letting it develop into anything. So am I any better than Sarah, avoiding everything, never facing up to the truth? Living inside my own little bubble? I’d thought it was easier that way. I’d thought it made it better. To hold a cleaner, kinder story on top of everything. A story that wasn’t so hard to look at and that allowed you to feel better about yourself.

But the truth, the reality, is that it hasn’t helped me. She hasn’t helped me. And I need her to name it now. I know that’s why I’m taking this train. I think deep down, my father has always been trying to give me a way in. But it was her, always her. And now she’s the one who I need to say it.

It’s only a couple of stops. Twenty-five minutes, thirty at most. I have time, don’t I, to get there and back? I can still be there when Charlie comes out of school. My parents’ house is such a short walk from the station, and look, the train towards Brighton is already pulling in. My legs cramp as I step up into the carriage, straining with the effort. I hold the top of each seat as I walk up the aisle. Here’s an empty seat, a whole table to myself; I can buy my ticket when the guard comes round.

We pull out of the station, heading further south, towards the town that I know so well. Sea and sunshine and quaint little beach huts. The perfect, don’t-scratch-the-surface kind of place. Is that why I came to London then, with Charlie? Because London doesn’t feel so false? Because London wears its mess in the open. Grit, grime, dirt, shame. In London, maybe the streets aren’t so clean.

My parents don’t even live in Brighton proper. They live on the outskirts, Preston Park; my stop is the one before we reach Brighton itself.