“Is this it?” the plump woman asked me.

“No. This is Green Park.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

The train was stationary now and I turned away from the man by a few degrees more, because that would suit his book. I didn’t want him to feel worried about me.

“When’s Piccadilly, then?”

I looked at the woman. “The next stop.” I didn’t want to tell her I was getting off there myself, because the man would hear, and behave differently from the way I wanted. “I won’t let you miss it,” I told her.

The train began moving again and I took a series of slow breaths, inhaling the smell of wet overcoats. When we were going at full speed I shifted my feet an inch for the sake of balance, and waited.

The woman was standing sideways-on to me with her shoulder against my chest; she had to turn her head quite a bit and look upwards when she talked to me, but that wasn’t good enough. I went on waiting.

Lightning came again on the black windows.

“Is it the next stop?” she asked me. “Piccadilly?”

“Yes.”

She nodded, turning back to stare at the windows. Then the train lurched and the waiting was over and I reached up with my left hand to brace myself against the partition; and now the woman couldn’t see my face any more because my arm was blocking her view.

The only sound was the moaning of the wheels, and someone saying, on the other side of the compartment, that it was going to snow. There was no other sound of any significance. But time was going by, and my right arm began tiring. I would have liked to rest it, but couldn’t.

Katia, I thought, Katia, remembering her name but not her face, or not very much. Just a girl standing there under the lamp with the two men on each side of her, standing there looking at me and smiling. It was all I needed, this thought.