As a crowd of passengers wait on the southbound Bakerloo Line platform, the station PA springs to life with a bing-bong. They brace themselves for further news of the latest delays and suspensions. But the announcement isn't a delay, it's a personal call:
"If there is a Stephen Lewis on the station, please make yourself known to a member of staff. Stephen Lewis, please make yourself known if you are on this station. Thank you."
Stephen Lewis fights his way through the crowds on the southbound platform to the blue-uniformed woman standing next to the back wall. "Er, I'm Stephen Lewis - you paged me?"
She smiles at him and holds a brief conversation with her radio. "We've got a message for you.."
Twenty seconds later, the waiting passengers are startled by a sudden cry of "A girl! Eight pounds! And two weeks early!" as Stephen Lewis heads for the escalators and the first available train straight back home.
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?"
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 his twenties is leaning against the wall on the Circle Line westbound, head back against the cool brickwork, deep in thought.
It all started so well, he thinks. Old-fashioned romance, it was, or as close to it as you get these days. It had been a student ball, one of those things where you get to wear a penguin suit for the night and pretend to be civilised. He'd just gone with his mates for a laugh. But sometime around ten he saw her, and she saw him. The next thing he remembers it was 4 o'clock in the morning, the tired-looking DJ was playing the night's last record, and they were still dancing, oblivious, locked in an embrace, spinning across the virtually empty floor among the bottles and crushed plastic glasses.
Things went fine for ten months after that, at least after he'd found the guts to call her. Actually, he's wrong on this - he hadn't had the guts, but she'd had the sense to call him anyway. Suddenly, though, something went wrong, and he still doesn't know what. All he knows is that it was his fault. She told him as much. That's the way it always goes with me, he thinks. I always end up ballsing it up, throwing away life's opportunities. Throwing away a good thing without even noticing I'm doing it. Oh well, that's how it goes, he glooms, as the familar sick feeling that always accompanies thoughts of The Breakup wells up in his insides.
It's the middle of the rush hour. A weary traveller walks onto the station forecourt from the Euston Road and takes in the scene before him. A couple of junkies beg for used Travelcards at the exit from the Underground station while various other providers of local colour offer various goods and services or simply demand money. Thousands of tired and cross-looking people pick their way around the building works and the passed-out drunks. A couple of overworked-looking members of the British Transport Police attempt to keep the peace.
The traveller takes a deep breath, strides through the station doors, ignores someone who's either asking if he has some spare change or whether he wishes to buy a knocked-off Travelcard and heads down the stairs towards the Underground with a sense of relief. King's Cross station, he thinks. You will not find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.