Running canine with swirling tail

The dog came back to the platform again this morning, the same lean grey creature with the dark brush of tail that curls up behind it like smoke off a struck match. Mr Okonedo swears it is the one that ran alongside the 6.14 last winter, keeping pace with the carriages until the cutting at Harrow Bank, then leaping the fence in a single bound as if the rails were nothing but a puddle. He says it runs for the joy of it. I have decided not to argue, because I have no better explanation for why it stopped, tail lifted, and looked at me as though I owed it a ticket.

I should tell you about the parcel. It came off the Leeds train wrapped in oilcloth, addressed to a man who died in March. Nobody at the office knew what to do with it, so I took it home and unwrapped it on the kitchen table. Inside was a clock with no hands, a brass key on a loop of red thread, and a note in a hand as sloping as that dog's stride. It said: run ahead of the timetable and the timetable will forgive you.

I have not run ahead of anything in years. But this evening I walked the length of the down platform, past the lamp that never quite lights, and the signal gave me a green I had not asked for. I think the dog is still out there somewhere, curling and uncurling its tail in the dark between the sidings, waiting for someone slower than itself to catch up.

Write back soon. Tell me whether the key fits anything in your mother's house.

Yours, Ruth