Chapter 14
‘Yes, Kelly, I know you’re new to the team but we need to hit the ground running, all right?’
Amanda glares up from her seat on the train.
It’s been a very long time since she visited her home city of Glasgow, but she has always been extremely specific about her seat reservation.
Although she only booked yesterday, she was relieved to be able to secure one in the quiet coach.
‘We need the whole team on this,’ the man announces, not merely flouting the rules but storming furiously up and down the aisle as he speaks.
Amanda inhales deeply and shuts her eyes as if that will make him go away.
She likes to think she’s a tolerant person.
Throughout her younger years – her flat-sharing years – she’d put up with sinks heaped with stinky dishes and flatmates ‘borrowing’ her clothes.
Then as her career took off, after she’d been plucked from obscurity in a club to present late-night TV, and then better TV, she’d put up with a different raft of things.
Sure, there was good stuff: free clothes and holidays, and instead of living on cereal and toast, she now had a favourite booth in a restaurant with a little brass button that said ‘ Press for champagne’ .
However, along with the money and perks and model boyfriends came the relentless demands of having to look gorgeous all the time.
Having constant blow-dries and manicures and her eyebrows laminated, plus a personal trainer yelling, ‘Come on, Amanda! It’s a win-win!
’ All of that she could tolerate – plus the strangers coming up to her in Tesco, wanting selfies and trailing after her while she bought pan scourers and tampons.
Today she has even coped with not having a table seat but a substandard one with a silly tray.
But this man in a pink shirt marching back and forth while shouting? It’s too much and Amanda snaps.
‘Excuse me!’ Now she too is out of her seat. Phone Man gawps at her.
‘Sorry,’ he tells Kelly, quickly averting his gaze. ‘Someone’s trying to say something.’
‘It’s the quiet coach,’ Amanda announces. ‘Could you make your call somewhere else?’
He blows out air as if she had made an outrageous suggestion.
‘Sorry,’ he says again. ‘Some woman’s trying to talk to me here…
’ Some mad woman , his tone implies. Weirdly, no one else seems to be remotely disturbed by his display.
Is it me? Amanda thinks wildly as she sits back down.
Am I the mad woman on the train? Maybe she is.
She hasn’t thought out this trip exactly.
She just knew she had to get away for a while, just to clear her head and figure out what to do.
About her career, for one thing, but more urgently about her potato-printing, Laughing-Cow-triangle-stabbing husband.
She glares around the carriage and shakes her head, teacher-style, at the seemingly unconcerned passengers.
Honestly, class, I’d have expected more from you.
The whole of yesterday she’d wondered what to do because actually, Celia sounded as if she had a lot on her plate herself.
Then it struck Amanda that this was the perfect time for a surprise visit.
Whatever was happening for Celia – and she’d thought it better not to call back or text – then at least they could have some fun together.
Amanda hadn’t got around to telling her why she’d called, and about her frustrations with Jasper.
Better to chat face-to-face, she decides.
Celia was always an excellent listener; so patient and thoughtful and wise.
At least, she had been before she met that mysterious boy – Logan’s real dad – and went all weird on her.
That’s another good reason for this visit, Amanda reflects.
To put things right, and try to build a sense of closeness again because, obviously, at Amanda’s wedding there’d barely been any time to chat.
The train is approaching Wigan. Maybe that arsehole will get off, she reasons.
At least the pleasantly scented woman next to her has been engrossed in a book the whole journey so far.
Amanda’s spirits lift slightly as Phone Man quietens down and makes for the end of the carriage.
However, it’s only to check on his luggage and now he’s back to his pacing and ostentatious ranting.
The woman next to her gives her a what-can-you-do?
look and turns back to her book. Amanda used to travel first class but she’s not that flush these days.
Her mortgage is crippling and Jasper contributes not a bean, and she can sense her blood pressure rising.
What can she do? Complain to the guard, or whatever they’re called now?
Is it ‘colleagues’? There should be a cord she can pull in case of emergency/insufferable men.
Why isn’t there one? Where are the colleagues?
Now a jovial woman is making her way along the carriage, checking tickets from Wigan – but of course Phone Man has stopped shouting into his phone now and sat back down across the aisle. So Amanda would feel silly complaining.
From her toffee leather cross-body bag she pulls out a small silver compact, flips it open and checks her face.
She looks tired and wired and her skin is ashen.
Cortisol face. That’s what it is. Stress hormones have rushed to her head and dissipated her fillers; that’s why her face is hanging like that.
She snaps the compact shut, trying to calm herself with deep breathing and reminding herself to ‘accept the things you cannot change,’ as she keeps reading in every damn self-help book she happens to pick up.
Arseholes never get off at Wigan, she reflects. They go all the way to Glasgow Central and you can’t change that.
However, the man’s conversation has taken a more worrying tone, and it seems it’s not Kelly he’s yacking to now, but a friend with an interest in tittle-tattle.
‘Yeah, mate, there’s this woman here. Sure I’ve seen her on TV.
I think it’s her but she looks different in the flesh. Not what you’d expect. Kinda older …’
Up she leaps – the reading girl barely seems to notice – grabbing her phone and bag and stomping down the aisle, wondering whatever happened to her sparkly life, to those press-for-champagne days.
Despite not being a quiet coach, the next carriage is virtually silent.
Amanda finds not only a vacant seat but a table seat, with a charger socket and – result!
– no one sitting beside her. Settling at the window, she checks out the middle-aged couple sitting opposite.
Nice, well-dressed people in light knitwear who smile politely before turning back to their puzzle books as the train rattles north.
This is what Amanda needs. A spell of calmness and pleasant scenery for the rest of the journey to Scotland.
As they speed through rolling Cumbrian countryside, she senses the cortisol retreating from her face and returning to wherever the heck it’s meant to be.
It’s quite nice out there, Amanda reflects.
All these fields and hills are having a settling effect on her brain and at forty-three, she has started to understand the point of nature.
Maybe Celia will fancy a road trip up north, while she’s staying?
That would be lovely: some proper quality time together.
The train pulls into Carlisle. Soon Amanda will be back in Scotland.
After decades in London her accent has been diluted to homeopathic levels.
It’s a tiny part of her now – a trace element.
But it’s still buried in there, brushing her vowels and inflections, and Glasgow is still in her heart.
She’s picturing cocktails tonight, and cosying up in Celia’s spare room (she assumes she has one.
Doesn’t everyone?). Then hopefully tomorrow they can head somewhere sans Geoff.
She’s visualising the magnificence of Loch Lomond and a delightful waterside pub.
She knows Celia has some little shop job but surely she’ll be able to arrange a day off?
The arrival of a panting woman gripping a multitude of carrier bags snaps Amanda out of her reverie.
Without asking if the seat is free, the woman lands heavily beside her and dumps her bags at her feet.
There follows much rummaging in said bags and Amanda’s nostrils flare.
She has an aversion to carrier bags. She hasn’t used one since 2006.
Now the woman seems to find what she’s been hunting for and the item extracted causes Amanda’s heart to sink.
A cardboard food carton. This is plonked on the table and as it’s opened, Amanda is engulfed by a powerful whiff of nuggets and fries.
Hot food on a train! An automatic fine should be issued for this.
The woman tears open a little red sachet with her pointy teeth, squirts ketchup all over her meal and proceeds to tuck in noisily with her fingers.
Amanda’s stomach rolls and she senses her cortisol peaking again, but she isn’t up to a second train confrontation. Instead, with every audible chomp and slurp, she tells herself firmly to accept the things she cannot change as soon she is back home in Glasgow.
And then, she is sure of it, everything will be all right.