The Last Train Home
When the ticket clerk said the last train had departed, Marianne merely nodded. No surprise, no anger—just a cold resignation, as if she’d always known it would come to this. Inside, she had long coiled into a tight knot, braced for whatever blow fate might deliver. She didn’t panic, didn’t beg the clerk or search for another route. Instead, she sank onto the chilly bench, clutching a worn satchel that held the fragments of her past: a couple of jumpers, a battered book of poems missing its cover, a photograph in a cracked frame where the smile seemed to belong to a stranger. Even the scent of her belongings felt foreign—suffused with damp and impermanence. The station grew quiet, the air thick with the smell of wet tarmac and cheap coffee, while an elderly woman spoke loudly into her phone, as if afraid her voice might dissolve into the cold air of Manchester. The noise only sharpened the emptiness around Marianne, making her solitude almost tangible.
She gazed through the rain-streaked window. Beyond the glass, the darkness deepened, and in the blurred droplets, she saw not just a street but an entire procession of losses, as though memory had chosen to replay an old, faded film. Her father, who had stepped out for cigarettes and vanished forever, dissolved into the grey glow of streetlights. Her mother, hunched with weariness, had once dropped a bag of Marianne’s belongings by the door like a full stop to their story. Her husband, avoiding her eyes, had murmured that with Alice, things were “serious now,” rendering all they’d shared a mere shadow of love, of family. She’d long understood that an ending wasn’t always loud, with shouts and shattered plates. More often, it came in a whisper. Or in silence—like now, as lamplights shimmered in puddles, and her life felt like a broken mirror, every shard holding its own pain.
She was thirty-two. The age when you’re meant to know what you want but still fear admitting it. In all her years, Marianne had never learned to ask or to stay. To ask was to show weakness; to stay was to surrender herself to another’s hands. She always left first, jaw clenched, even when everything inside her was falling apart. Leaving first meant choosing. It gave the illusion of control—fragile as a spider’s thread, but lifesaving. Because if you walked away, it was your decision, not someone else’s sentence. Even if your hands were empty and your throat tight. Even illusions could be anchors.
A man in a dark coat passed by, slowed his step, glanced at her, then stopped. He hesitated, as if considering walking on, but something in her hunched posture held him. He approached, keeping his distance like someone carrying his own storm.
“Waiting for someone?” he asked. His voice held no curiosity, only a familiar note of bewilderment, as if he saw his own reflection in her.
Marianne almost waved him off, as she always did with strangers. But his eyes held no pressure—just weariness, the same as hers, yet borne differently. She shrugged, not looking up.
“No one. You?”
He gave a bitter smile, exhaling as though shrugging off a weight.
“No one either. Seems we’ve got something in common tonight—trains leaving without asking.”
They sat in silence, side by side, on the cold bench. The quiet between them didn’t divide but connected—a thread so fine it was almost invisible. Then he stood, walked to the vending machine, and returned with two cups of tea. The drink was hot, bitter, scalding her throat—like her life. But Marianne found herself smiling, lightly, as if for the first time in years she’d allowed herself the luxury. He introduced himself—Edward. She—Marianne. They didn’t ask where the other was headed. Encounters like these, where the destination matters less than the simple fact of not being alone, don’t require such questions. Sometimes it’s enough to share breath, even if just for a moment.
They passed the night in the waiting room, under flickering lamps, among trembling shadows and the scent of stale coffee. Edward took off his coat and draped it over her shoulders—gently, as if afraid to break the fragile quiet. She slept, resting her head trustingly against him, murmuring in her sleep—a name, perhaps, or a fragment of memory. At dawn, when the grey light began to erase the night, the first westbound train was announced. Edward rose, walked silently to the ticket counter, and bought two tickets. She didn’t ask—where to. She simply stood and followed, as if she knew: now there was not just a road ahead, but someone to share it with. Because sometimes the last train isn’t the one that leaves without you. It’s the one that waits. And if you’re lucky, it waits just for you.
