Hourglass with banners and flowers

The glass on the desk at Platform Four has been running slow since Tuesday, or so Mr Okafor insists, and I have decided to believe him because a new one costs more than my patience. I am on early shift now, stamping passports under a strip light that hums the same note as the hedge of flowers outside the staff hut. You would hate it. You would have the whole queue laughing by seven and a lorry driver reciting poetry by eight.

Yesterday a boy of maybe seventeen came through in a coat two sizes too big, with a ticket for a coach to Lisbon. His papers were fine. His hands were not. He kept turning his wrist over as if something was written there that the wrong person might read. I asked him how long he had been travelling and he said, 'Long enough to be sick of waiting,' and I laughed, which surprised us both. Then I stamped him through and watched him walk towards the glass doors, pale under the sodium light, carrying nothing but nerves.

Do you remember the summer we had the biro? You wrote MORE FUN on my left hand and I wrote LESS FEAR on yours, and by the Monday both had smudged into grey ghosts that looked like nothing at all. I think about that most nights when the queue is thin and the little hourglass on my desk, the one I bought from the market for four pounds, catches the light. The sand keeps falling whether we are brave or not.

So this is your fourteen days' notice, and also my small rebellion. Book the ferry. Bring the terrible jokes. I will turn the glass over before you arrive and we will see how much fun we can squeeze into whatever is left of it. Love, Bea.