Pocket watch and chain in torn skin on upper arm

The big clock over platform four stopped again on Tuesday, and Mr Halloran sent me up the ladder with a rag and a tin of oil, as if oil ever fixed anything that had decided to stop. Behind the glass the works were furred with dust, and a mouse had built a nest in the escapement. I got it going by Thursday, but I kept thinking about the watch he gave me when I started here, the one with the silver lid, which I have not wound since the night you left. I still carry it. I keep telling myself it runs slow.

Yesterday the 4.15 came in twelve minutes late, and a woman stepped off with a brass compass in her palm, arguing with a porter about which way was north. She said the needle pointed at the station roof. The porter laughed, but I looked where she was pointing and saw the cracked plaster above the ticket hall, and the light coming through it in a thin white line, as if the building had split open to let the day in. Nobody else noticed. Nobody ever does.

Mr Halloran says the company will pull the old hall down in spring. He says it kindly, the way he says everything. I have decided I shall not be here to see the wall come away, so I have taken the watch out of my waistcoat and laid it on the sill of the signal box, open at the hour you used to call our hour, the one before the last train. I have looped the chain over the brass lever so it will not slide off.

Come home before the frost, Nell. The clock is running, and I am only a little bit late.

Yours, Tom