‘Give us a bit more space,’ said his companion.

‘Just don’t let me forget it.’

Michael laughed.

‘So easy to do,’ he said. ‘We’ve all done it.’

The woman had a tablet, and next to that was a deck of cards. They both had paper cups, and there was the usual detritus of milk cartons, stirrers and sugar sachets, suggesting that the trolley had recently passed. Michael sat down, wondering if it would return, and whether it would be selling sandwiches or not – he should have bought one at the station. Every service was different, after all, and the catering had to be planned to meet different passenger needs. The people who organised these things were not reckless, and the last thing they wanted was a surplus of unsaleable food. Were there people monitoring how many items got bought and how many ended up wasted? Of course there were. There had to be – there would be computers receiving the data, and managers sifting the figures. A sandwich would cost three to four pounds, and the mark-up on that had to be three hundred per cent at least, which Michael didn’t begrudge if only because pushing the awkward, laden trolley down narrow aisles looked so hard. Those doing it were heroic in his opinion, begging people to move their luggage, feet, children and pets, even as passengers were constantly trying to squeeze past… Was it a job he could do? He wouldn’t last a day.

On the other hand, was there any job he could do? How had he become so jobless and unemployable? How had he become such a liability at the council? The whole staff, divided as they were by envy and intolerance, had come together to dismiss him. Looking back, it may have been the only thing everyone had ever agreed: that he, Michael, needed to be fired because his desk drawer was full of unpaid, unprocessed invoices which he occasionally shredded. His school desk had been just as cluttered, as was the one at home.

He said to the woman opposite, ‘How are you?’

‘Oh, very well,’ she said.

‘Where are you off to?’

‘Settle.’

‘Settle?’

Michael raised his eyebrows.

‘Somewhere I’ve never been,’ he said.

‘You should definitely go,’ said the man to his right – her husband, presumably.