Small cross tattoo on upper back

The last train went through Harwick Junction at twenty past eleven, and I've been stood on the platform with the lamp ever since, because Mr Penrose has the flu and somebody has to sign the milk tanker sheets. You'd laugh at me. Two hours of nothing but moths and the smell of wet coal.

Then at half past midnight a girl came up the steps with a rucksack and a paper bag of chips going cold, and asked when the first one to Carlisle left. I told her six-ten. She sat on the bench under the clock without taking her coat off, and we talked about nothing, the way you do when the place is empty. She'd finished a long shift at the laundry in Morpeth and was going home to nobody in particular. Her gran had kept a small black cross on a chain for sixty years and never once said why, and when the girl caught me looking at the one on her chain she said it was daft, but she'd wanted something of her gran's she could carry about without anyone asking questions.

I didn't ask any. I just told her the bench was the warmest spot on the platform, which is a lie, and she laughed and said I was a terrible liar for a porter.

The six-ten came in at ten past six, late as ever. She stood, shook out her coat, and left the chips on the bench with one piece still in the paper for the pigeons. I watched the carriage lights go round the bend towards the hills. When I went to pick up the bag, the paper had gone soft where her hand had been, and I stood there a minute longer than I needed to.

See you at Christmas. Tell Dad the signal at platform two is still stuck.

Love, Tom