Ghost Stories - Lorna Bradbury [11]
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Hello.’
‘Hi. Do you know when the trains are coming back on?’
‘Oh, might be a while yet, love. were you on the diverted train?’
Emma nodded. ‘They told me this was the best station to wait for a connection.’
The engineer shook his head. ‘Silly. The points are out on this line, now. You’d have been as well getting it back to Central. You’d have been warm in there. They’d probably put some taxis on.’
‘They said it would be another twenty minutes, tops. That was’ – she glanced at her watch – ‘forty-five minutes ago.’
The engineer looked pained. ‘Look, i’ve got ten minutes spare. I can give you a lift as far as a taxi rank, if you like. I know that sounds a bit odd, but this station’s a funny wee place. You get some rough kids going around here.’
‘No thank you.’
He smiled sadly, then was lost to the fog.
Emma sent some text messages to friends and family, but no one was about for a lift. Jed, who she’d arranged to meet that night, offered to come out and meet her in a taxi, but she said the train would be on its way soon. She was beginning to wonder if she’d been too hasty in dismissing the engineer’s offer when someone coughed behind her in the shelter.
She’d heard no one approach, and was sure that no one had been sitting there when she first took shelter. a young man was on the benches, a military-style khaki backpack in his lap. he wore glasses and had greasy black hair, unfashionably cut, with a dark anorak zipped to the neck. he might have been anywhere between those awkward signposts of seven-teen and twenty-one, like Emma.
He coughed nervously. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.’
Emma smiled at him and turned back to the tracks. She could barely see into the petrified winter foliage beyond the tracks. Eyes glittered amid the stones laid beside the tracks now and again, the eerie yellow fox-glow she recognised from where she lived.
In both directions – a faint tinge visible through the fog – the lights were still red.
The boy came out and stood beside her, leaning against the brickwork. ‘Engineering work. always a pain.’
‘Hmm,’ Emma said, taking a sidestep away.
‘I mean it’s probably something to do with the points being frozen or something. It happens, when you get a freezing fog like this.’
‘It is freezing,’ she agreed.
‘I don’t like waiting around at this station. You get a right bad lot around here, sometimes.’
‘That’s what the engineer said.’
‘Yeah. I bet he has to put up with all sorts. Do you know that they throw stuff at emergency workers? Firefighters and paramedics, just doing their job. when there’s been an accident.’
‘That’s terrible.’ She wrapped her arms around herself and stamped her feet.
The boy looked at her long legs, then to her face, then grew embarrassed. ‘Um, it’s a really, really cold night, I suppose.’
She smiled. ‘not really dressed for the season, am i?’ The boy looked away and giggled. he reminded her of her young brother, and that comforted her. he said:
‘Did the engineer guy say how long it’d be?’
‘A while yet.’
‘Hmm. Nightmare.’
Emma sighed, and fiddled with her phone. although she was glad of some company, she didn’t particularly want to get into conversation either. her breath spiralled up into the air in twin streams, mingling with the fog.
The boy hitched the khaki backpack over his shoulder. ‘hey, did you see that?’
‘what?’
He nodded towards the point where the tracks merged with the fog. ‘There’s some kids mucking about on the tracks.’
‘what? I don’t see them … are you sure it’s not foxes? I saw a fox running around a couple of minutes ago.’
‘No, definitely kids. Look. See.’
She squinted, picking out pinpricks of light, and fancied she heard the chittering howl of foxes – the kind of squalling that sounded like a little girl in distress. Then she made out a vaguely human shape moving around.
‘Idiots,’ she said. ‘There might be a goods train coming through here.’
‘I know.’ The boy shook