He kissed Mary as he always did before he left the house. She, as always, gave no sign that the brief press of his mouth upon her cheek gave her any pleasure. As he shut the front door behind him, Peter tried to remember when they last made love. It was early July now so… he found himself shrinking from the fact that it could have been last year. Perhaps on his birthday? He plodded towards the train station, briefcase dragging at his hand. He looked at it resentfully. Why did he carry this to work and back every day? It wasn’t as if he was a top business executive, his briefcase stuffed with important papers, vibrating with the urgent trill of his mobile phone. This case contained nothing more earth shattering than yesterday’s copy of the Daily Mail, an empty Kit Kat wrapper and some hieroglyphic squiggles on a torn piece of yellow paper. Peter frowned. Suddenly, the briefcase seemed indicative of his whole wasted, failed life. He felt a sudden, breathless surge of anger – fury, not at broken dreams but at having no dreams left at all.

There was only one thing to be done and as he was now crossing the footbridge over the river, he did it. The case flew in a widening arc, wheeling above the water like a square black bird, before splashing into the river in a cacophony of droplets. Peter laughed and the two people who’d been walking ahead of him looked back briefly. They saw nothing but a nondescript middle-aged man clinging to the railings of the bridge and turned back, uninterested.

Peter remained at the railings, clutching them in both hands. He was aghast – he’d just thrown his briefcase in the river! – and yet exhilarated at the same time. “Begone dull care,” he said to himself, giggling quietly and wondering whether it was part of a quotation and if so, from what. Slowly, he let go of the railings. The concentric circles that marked the spot where his luckless briefcase had landed gradually smoothed out into flat, reflective river water.

Peter began walking again. He let his footsteps continue in the direction of the railway station, past the newsagent’s shop on the corner. As he passed the entrance, he caught a glimpse of ‘his’ car magazine on the racks inside by the open door and his stomach contracted. He wasn’t going to work today. He wasn’t going back to work again, ever. All of a sudden, an enormous exhilarating energy possessed him. He felt his spine straighten, his weary, dragging posture spring into something energetic and upright. He climbed the steps to the railway platform but didn’t turn right onto Platform Two, as he had done every weekday for the past fifteen years. Instead, he let his new, vibrant feet cross the bridge and take him to Platform One, the one for London. A train was just drawing up as he reached the platform and he joined the mass of people that were sucked into the carriage doorways as if by an unseen force.

He’d never been on this train before and was astonished at how busy it was. There were no seats available, of course not, but in Peter’s new mood, that was no hardship. He leant against the wall of one compartment and felt the warmth of the young girl beside him with a kind of sensuous happiness. He could see out of the window from his cramped vantage point and it was a pleasure to watch the sunshine on the fields, winking from the windscreens of passing cars, blotted out here and there by thick white clouds. The train rattled and swayed beneath Peter and he closed his eyes in wonder. I’m going to London, he thought. I’ve run away from home, from Mary, from work. I’ve got a day off from the world. A day? Why not longer? He felt giddy with the possibilities unfolding before him.

He knew the capital as well as most people who live in the suburbs do: Oxford Street for clothes shopping in the January sales, one or two of the West End theatres for a musical show at Christmas, Trafalgar Square, Waterloo station and Big Ben. The intricacies of the smaller streets were unknown to Peter; the buildings, pathways, nooks and crannies of this ancient city were as mysterious to him as the treasures drowned in Atlantis. He was dimly aware of that fact and thought he might start his adventure by walking. Just to walk, by himself, looking and listening…and thinking, remembering… he savoured the thought.

A baby was crying, somewhere further down the carriage. Poor little mite, Peter thought sentimentally. He remembered the three miscarriages, the one fragile foetus that had clung to Mary for nearly four months before being swept away, helpless, in a red torrent. Again, he saw Mary’s face as she sat in bed at the hospital, pinched with pain, her mouth drawn tight. He thought perhaps that was when whatever feeling they’d shared between them had started to wither away; she was silent for so long, when she did eventually begin to speak to him again, he’d lost the art of conversation. He’d forgotten how to communicate, his real, true words reduced to meaningless platitudes. Sometimes he’d felt himself choke on the welter of clichés that clogged his mouth. He’d mentioned adoption to her, just once, and received a look of such naked, blazing pain that he shrivelled at the memory of it, even now. I want my own, she’d said. Not somebody else’s discards. The honesty, the cruelty of it had taken his breath away.

A shift in the acoustics of the train signalled their approach to Kings Cross. Peter felt the people about him begin to shuffle restlessly, and drew his arms in towards his body as the doors opened and people began to flood out onto the platform. He let himself be pulled out in the swirl of humanity and found himself in the midst of a vast and exhilarating hubbub. He let his feet take him to the gates. He had a moment of panic when he realised he hadn’t bought a ticket but for some reason the automatic gates had been left open. People streamed though and Peter went with them.

He found himself on an escalator, heading down towards the underground trains that thrummed through the ground beneath his feet. He turned onto the nearest platform, heedless of the crowds of people waiting for the next train.  Peter could just make out the map on the tunnel wall though the shoulders, heads and backs of the people ranged along the edge of the platform. This was the Piccadilly line, he saw. The name had made him laugh as a child because it sounded so like piccalilli. This was fine – he’d take the southbound train to the West End and then he would… would… would start to be free. He looked at his watch – ten minutes to nine. Just think, he would have been at the office by now. Stuck in the awful little box, talking to people he didn’t like and never wanted to see again. Instead he was here in London. Again, Peter felt a surge of exhilaration and clenched his hands in a moment of joy and panic.

There was a low rumble, a metallic mutter and clatter as the train drew into the platform. People began to struggle towards the doors. Peter edged himself into the carriage and moved between the seats. Despite the heat and the crush, he found he was smiling. It’s not too late, he thought. It’s not too late at all. I can change; my life can change. He clenched his hand around the cool metal of the bar above his head. The rattle of the train was like the beat of a drum inside his head. The adverts before his eyes blurred into coloured squares, like the rippling flags of a crusading army; the rocking of the train was swinging him into his new life, one step, another step, on the jaunty, long awaited march to freedom.

Five seats away, the young man from Yorkshire put his hands to the straps of his rucksack, bringing its laden weight more tightly against his body. He moved his thumb against the button of the detonator, closed his eyes for the last time and began, softly, to pray.

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