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“Sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen, we’re being held for a few minutes at a red signal. There’s a train ahead of us at Northampton and we’re waiting for the platform. We should be on the move in just a few minutes.”
I felt my heart begin to thump. Was there really a train ahead of us? Or was this some kind of ruse, to let the police get their officers in place, ready and waiting on the platform to board the train?
Shit. Shit.
But what could I do?
My eyes fell on the door, with its half-open window. If only it had been one of the old-fashioned trains, where you could lean out and unlock the door from the outside. But I was fairly sure those had been phased out. This one still looked pretty old, but it seemed to have some kind of central override—an illuminated display stated firmly Door Locked, and below it a poster read To open door, wait for train to stop. Check door is adjacent to platform. Wait for unlocked light above. Open door window and unlock door.
Which meant there was no chance of opening the door until we had reached the platform. Except… Open door window.
My thumping heart sped up. Could I?
The window was already halfway down, but it seemed to have stuck, and it was with a great effort that I managed to get it just a few inches further. Then I stood on tiptoes and put my head out through the narrow gap. There was nothing underneath apart from railway sleepers and gravel.
I put a hand to my side, thinking about the oozing cut beneath the dressing. This window was barely wide enough for me to wriggle through, and the ground was a good fifteen feet below the opening. I had dropped fifteen feet before. It is not a joke, even in tip-top condition. You feel it everywhere—in every bone and joint. I felt more than a little sick. But there were no other options.
I pushed the bag out first. The side pockets stuck against the sill, but I ground it through, and then listened with a wince as it ricocheted off the outside step and from there thudded to the ground. Then I grabbed hold of the top of the window surround and tried to hook one foot up and over the edge.
It was very high, and for a minute I wasn’t sure if I could even get my foot up, let alone the rest of my body. It should be possible. I had vaulted a much higher wall when I broke into my own backyard in Salisbury Lane, but now my arms were shaking with fatigue, the pain in my side was screaming, and my muscles didn’t seem to want to obey me.
For a moment I thought about giving up. But my bag was already on the ground outside. If I stayed on this train, even if the woman with the baby hadn’t spotted me, even if I made it safely to Long Buckby, I would be completely and utterly screwed. I would have no money, no phone, no clean clothes, nothing.
I had to get out of that window.
The realization gave me a burst of adrenaline and I got first one, then the other foot up and over the sill. Then I swiveled, ignoring the scream of pain from my side, and slithered through the narrow gap on my stomach, lowering myself until I felt my feet touch the step outside.
I stood, my muscles trembling with exertion, holding on to the edge of the window above me, and risked a glance down, past my legs. The drop was terrifyingly high. It looked worse than it had from inside the train.
Carefully, I got down on my hands and knees and twisted shakily around until I was sitting on the bottom-most step. Below me was a daunting drop, onto what looked like painfully chunky gravel.
I swallowed. And then I heard the train’s engines start up.
“Good news, ladies and gents,” I heard from inside the open window. “We’ve received clearance to proceed to Northampton.”
There was a jolt and the train began to move.
My heart was thumping so hard in my chest I thought I might be sick. What I wanted was to lower myself down slowly and carefully to the ground—but there was no time. We were picking up speed. I was going to get smacked in the face by a bush at seventy miles an hour if I didn’t act fast—very fast. But it turns out it’s very, very hard to make yourself jump off a moving train.
I was leaning forward, trying to psych myself up to do it—when I heard a noise from up ahead and looked right to see a tree looming over the track, its branches rattling against the roof of the train. It was too late to jump. If I did, I’d probably fly right into the trunk. Instead, instinctively, I flattened myself against the door, closing my eyes and hunching my head into my shoulder as the branches tore across my face, stinging my cheek and ear.
When I looked up again, the tree was in the distance, but the train was going even faster. Possibly fatally fast.
With the feeling that I was doing something incredibly stupid, I jumped.
I landed with a crash that knocked all the breath out of me. I was too winded at first to do anything apart from lie there, curled in the fetal position, gasping and holding my ribs. The puncture wound felt like someone had shoved a red-hot poker into it and was jabbing it deeper with every thud of my heart. I had been half expecting that someone would notice my actions and pull the emergency cord, and as far as I could think of anything over the screaming pain in my side, I was listening for the screech of brakes and the noise of the train coming to a stop. But when the pain subsided enough for me to raise my head, I saw that the train had rounded the bend and was disappearing into the distance. Either no one had seen me, or nobody cared.
I let my head fall back and considered my options.
All things taken into account, that hadn’t gone as badly as it could have done. I had landed in a pile of bracken—it could easily have been nettles or brambles, or even rocks—and I didn’t think I had broken anything. My knees and ankles ached with the jarring shock of the fall, but I wasn’t concussed, and when I pulled myself to my feet, nothing hurt too badly—apart from the hole in my side, which throbbed with every movement. When I put my hand under my top to check, I groaned. The dressing was still in place, but I could feel it was already pulpy with blood.
My rucksack was a surprisingly long way up the track, and as I picked my way back along the line, trying to avoid tripping over the sleepers—the last thing I needed was to fall and electrocute myself on the live rail—I tried to think what to do next. I very badly wanted to talk to Hel, but I wasn’t sure if I could do so without bursting into tears. More to the point, could I risk calling her? Her phone was probably tapped, but if I used Signal at least the police shouldn’t be able to triangulate my location…
When I finally reached the rucksack, I picked it up and began climbing the steep embankment. I needed to get away from the main line before another train came along. Maybe none of the passengers had noticed me, but a conductor would definitely spot me picking my way along beside the rails, and the last thing I needed was another train screeching to a halt and a “passenger on the tracks” security alert going out across the network.
It wasn’t easy pulling myself up the steep bank, and when I got to the top, the sight of a barbed wire fence almost made me break down, but I threw my bag over and with a huge effort managed to clamber after it, ignoring the barbs that dug into my thighs and ripped a chunk out of my jeans as I pulled myself free.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. I was over. That was the main thing. I was over and—where was I? Some kind of farmer’s field, it looked like, plowed into deep ridges and sown with something that looked like turnips or beets. All of a sudden I felt weak and trembling, and I knew that if I didn’t sit down—or, even better, lie down—I was going to collapse where I stood.
