The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon [53]
And he said, “In there,” and he pointed and there was a big room with a glass window on the other side of the train station door, and then he said, “Now, are you sure you know what you're doing?”
And I said, “Yes. I'm going to London to live with my mother.”
And he said, “Has your mother got a telephone number?”
And I said, “Yes.”
And he said, “And can you tell me what it is?”
And I said, “Yes. It's 0208 887 8907.”
And he said, “And you'll ring her if you get into any trouble, OK?”
And I said, “Yes,” because I knew you could ring people from phone boxes if you had money, and I had money now.
And he said, “Good.”
And I walked into the ticket office and I turned round and I could see that the policeman was still watching me so I felt safe. And there was a long desk at the other side of the big room and a window on the desk and there was a man standing in front of the window and there was a man behind the window, and I said to the man behind the window, “I want to go to London.”
And the man in front of the window said, “If you don't mind,” and he turned round so that his back was toward me and the man behind the window gave him a little bit of paper to sign and he signed it and pushed it back under the window and the man behind the window gave him a ticket. And then the man in front of the window looked at me and he said, “What the fuck are you looking at?” and then he walked away.
And he had dreadlocks, which is what some black people have, but he was white, and dreadlocks is when you never wash your hair and it looks like old rope. And he had red trousers with stars on them. And I kept my hand on my Swiss Army knife in case he touched me.
And then there was no one else in front of the window and I said to the man behind the window, “I want to go to London,” and I hadn't been frightened when I was with the policeman but I turned round and I saw that he had gone now and I was scared again, so I tried to pretend I was playing a game on my computer and it was called Train to London and it was like Myst or The 11th Hour, and you had to solve lots of different problems to get to the next level, and I could turn it off at any time.
And the man said, “Single or return?”
And I said, “What does single or return mean?”
And he said, “Do you want to go one way, or do you want to go and come back?”
And I said, “I want to stay there when I get there.”
And he said, “For how long?”
And I said, “Until I go to university.”
And he said, “Single, then,” and then he said, “That'll be £32.”
And I gave him the fifty pounds and he gave me £10 back and he said, “Don't you go throwing it away.”
And then he gave me a little yellow and orange ticket and £8 in coins and I put it all in my pocket with my knife. And I didn't like the ticket being half yellow but I had to keep it because it was my train ticket.
And then he said, “If you could move away from the counter.”
And I said, “When is the train to London?”
And he looked at his watch and said, “Platform 1, five minutes.”
And I said, “Where is Platform 1?”
And he pointed and said, “Through the underpass and up the stairs. You'll see the signs.”
And underpass meant tunnel because I could see where he was pointing, so I went out of the ticket office, but it wasn't like a computer game at all because I was in the middle of it and it was like all the signs were shouting in my head and someone bumped into me as they walked past and I made a noise like a dog barking to scare them off.
And I pictured in my head a big red line across the floor which started at my feet and went through the tunnel and I started walking along the red line, saying, “Left, right, left, right, left, right,” because sometimes when I am frightened or angry it helps if I do something that has a rhythm to it, like music or drumming, which is something Siobhan taught me to do.
And I went up the stairs and I saw a sign saying ← Platform 1 and the ← was pointing at a glass door so I went through it, and someone bumped into me again with a suitcase and I made another