At the foot of the grimy window a low arch gaped in the glass. Heavy wire mesh protected the aperture, putting me in mind of a church confessional I’d once seen in a film, but left a narrow gap above the sill for hands to reach through. Items encased in dusty cobwebs – a ledger, a pen and a chewed stub of pencil, obsolete little machines – lay on the extended sill beyond the window. A fireplace stood in so much gloom that it appeared to lead into a deeper darkness than it should. Between the hearth and the ticket window, a small table bore a teapot divested of its lid. Weeds occupied the pot, though in the dimness they could have been taken for a version of a genie emerging from a lamp. Some sort of growth poked out from the lid beside the pot, as if a hermit creature had appropriated it for a home. I was about to move on when I glimpsed activity around an office chair lying on its back near the hearth. Several thin fingers were fumbling out from underneath, as if an occupant had been squashed flat but was determined to return. The scrawny digits began to crumble, sending particles to swarm in all directions, and even when I realised that spiders were hatching under the chair I found no reason to linger.

I stepped onto the platform under the threat of a storm. Grass grew between the flagstones, twitching in the wind. Rotten lopsided benches stood about in remembrance of commuters, and one knelt on its solitary left leg like a beast about to die. On the opposite platform more than one flagstone had been heaved up by the knotted limbs of an intruder, the roots of trees beyond an insecure brick wall, which the trunks and branches were urging towards collapse. Apart from the sign that suggested a burst of silent mirth, one remnant said WAY ALT, another just A WAY. Perhaps this was the work of vandals, like the words sprayed or scraped on the mossy wall, MAG and GIST and TELL and RUM scattered along its length. No doubt the words meant more to their author than they did to the rest of the world, often the case with graffiti. They only helped to leave me increasingly unsure why I was there at all.