Compass rose and world map on a shoulder

You will think I've gone soft, writing on the back of a timetable, but the buffet pen is the only one that works. The 6.14 is late again. For an hour I've watched a man in a grey coat try to wedge a rucksack through the ticket gate, and I've thought about Dad's atlas in the hall cupboard.

Remember how we spun it shut and let our fingers land? We never picked anywhere sensible. We picked the blank sea near the corner where the little compass sat, its thin lines fanning out like the spokes of a wheel, and then we invented the towns. Lisbon with its tram wires. A harbour where the gulls wore hats. You always said the map was lying, that the countries were the wrong size, and I always said that was the point.

I have the atlas now. Mum gave it to me the week the bus pass ran out and told me to stop mooning about. Inside the cover I found the postcards we never sent, and a rubber stamp shaped like a passport office, its ink gone pale. I pressed it onto the corner of this page just now so you'd know I meant it. Don't ask me where. Ask me when.

The guard is calling the platform. If the train comes, I'll be on it. If it doesn't, I'll walk to the bridge, look at the cloud over the viaduct and pretend it's the Atlantic. Either way, keep the compass in the spare room. Someone should know which way is north.