It worked well enough, for the first half hour or so. The woman tutted loudly, tried to buffet her way in with interjections in a surprisingly lovely, soft Scottish accent. ‘That’s the ticket inspector coming.’ ‘Don’t suppose you have change of a fiver, do you?’ Ida grunted upward and downward in turn from behind her shield. You’ve mistaken me for a nice old lady, my girl, she thought. Should have caught me when I was a nice young lady.

They were just pulling out of Crewe when the woman’s phone rang, a little burst of classical music or something that Ida knew from somewhere. It wasn’t unpleasant. She almost broke cover to point out that this was the quiet carriage, but caught herself just in time.

‘It is. Um, two-two-sixty-seven-two-five-four-four. Yes. Right. OK. Please.’

…

‘No.’

…

‘So there’s no chance it could—’

…

‘I’m here, I’m here. I just – just taking it in.’

‘No, I’m on my way up north just now. It’s my mother’s birthday. Do you need me to—’

…

‘I just. Can you – is there. Is there. Absolutely no way it could turn around or still still still still continue?’

…

‘Yeah I can do yeah no OK I will—’

…

‘Yes. Thank you. OK. Thank you. Yes. Thank you.’

The woman didn’t seem to be moving. She’d put her own invisible shield up, didn’t want Ida any more. Wasn’t aware of Ida.

Ida risked lowering the magazine. The woman was looking down in the direction of the table. Her left hand was there, open, palm up, no ring, but she wasn’t really looking at it. Moving gently and quickly, Ida extracted herself from the seat, careful not to nudge the woman’s legs. She’d always loved the feeling of walking down a train carriage, against the direction of travel, the pull on her body as it fought the risk of stumbling. People saw the nice old lady coming, hauling herself from handle to handle on the edges of seats, and moved themselves in without meeting her eye. In what it had pleased the train guard to call ‘the dining carriage’, although ‘grimy coffee stand with three sandwiches and a beer fridge’ might have been closer to the truth, a uniformed man with a sagging face groaned at her as he scooshed hot water over teabags.

‘You would not believe the day that I’m having, my love.’

‘No,’ she said, handing him the exact money and closing her face to him. ‘I probably wouldn’t.’

Back at the seat, she nudged the second cup across the table to the woman, who was still in exactly the same position, and readied herself for a conversation she’d had twice before and would have once more in her life.

‘It’s got sugar in it,’ she said. ‘For the shock.’

The woman nodded slowly, and curled her hands around the cardboard slip cover.