Emily Bagshawe shifted her weight around in her seat, rolling experimentally from one buttock to the other; she had been sitting, for some time, with her knees braced against the yellowing plastic back of the seat in front of her, and her bum had gone numb from tailbone to mid-cheek.

The train had left Manchester against one of those low, cold, shockingly-bright winter sunrises, but now, as the midlands flashed past the window, everything had turned squally and grey. Emily shifted her weight into the corner formed by the seat and the discoloured surround of the window, wiggling her earphones with her thumbtips until they formed a tighter seal against the noise of the track, the electronic chimes of the intercom, the whoop-laughs of children giddy in the days leading up to Christmas. And, on the luggage rack directly above her, her backpack clinked occasionally with the gentle movements of the train; she had bought a bottle of wine to bring to her parents because, she had surmised from some place or another, this might look like a nice gesture now, when she was visiting them for the first time as an adult who lives two hundred miles away.

She closed her eyes for a while and lost track of time as she ran through the events of last night again. She couldn’t say whether seconds or minutes had passed when she felt the brusque tap of a finger, sharp and stiffened through the fabric of her hoodie.

Emily turned in her seat and saw that the offending poker was a shortish man wearing the train company’s uniform, now looming over her and making a ‘take your headphones out’ gesture, pinching and yanking at the air next to his own ears, looking for all the world like he also had too much of it between them.

‘Sorry,’ she said. She had threaded the cable under her clothes, or between her t-shirt and her hoodie, at any rate, and when she dropped the earphones they clicked together and hung limply on her chest.

‘Tickets?’