A train pulls into the eastbound District Line platform. The driver makes a PA announcement.
"This is Edgware Road. This train terminates here. All change, please, all change. This train terminates here. For eastbound stations including Euston Square, Kings Cross, Liverpool Street, Aldgate, and all stations to Plaistow and Upminster, please cross the platform. Once again, this is Edgware Road, this train terminates here. All change, all change."
As passengers pile off he shuts the train down, grabs his bag and starts walking through the train to change ends before returning to Wimbledon. A young man is sitting by himself in the third carriage from the front.
"Excuse me? Is this train going to Kings Cross?"
As a middle-aged man returns his season ticket to his wallet a small photograph falls out and flutters to the floor unnoticed. It's a slightly fuzzy photo of a woman with a sixties haircut and a broad smile, and for an hour or so it lies by the ticket gate among some other bits of litter until a rubbish collector passes by, picks it up with her tongs and flips it into a rubbish bag.
The picture's original owner notices that it's gone on his way home from work. It's gone, he thinks. The last picture. That last picture, taken just before she left to walk home to her parents' house.
Okay, there are pictures of her which were taken later by the police, but those aren't the sort of pictures which I'd want to remember her by.
He closes his eyes as flashes of pain and horror lash out across the decades, still raw and bleeding even after this long - the laughing kiss goodbye, the knock on the door and the pale, nervous policewoman, the silent, sobbing phone calls, the detectives and statements and reporters, the grey, shellshocked faces at the funeral. All these images resolve again and again into the same thing - a cold, bloodied, broken body lying on a mortuary table. As he turns away the vision finally fades into the background - for the time being.
An elderly gentleman walks into the station, looks vaguely at the ticket machines, then heads for the barrier.
"Can I see your ticket, Sir?"
The old man idly waves a hand. "You don't need to see my ticket."
"I don't need to see your ticket."
"I can continue my journey."
"You can continue your journey."
He strolls through the gate and heads for the Jubilee line. The assistant looks at his retreating back, starts to say something, then shakes his head to clear it and shuts the gate.
A man in a suit waits on the platform for a train to Queens Park. Occasionally he looks up at the indicator to see if the train's due yet before returning to staring vacantly forward with a blank look in his eyes.
He waits.
He looks up again.
He waits some more.
After what seems like forever, the train arrives. He wanders across the platform to the train, finds a seat, and sits down. As the train leaves, he stares vacantly across the carriage until it disappears into the tunnel.