July 20, 2021

Mid-thirties. Tired eyes behind clear glasses. A leather satchel slung across a lean chest. He scanned the carriage, saw the single empty space—the one next to Margaret—and hesitated.
She waited.
The platform at King’s Cross at ten-forty-seven on a Tuesday had a specific kind of melancholy. Not the desperate, last-train frenzy of midnight, nor the bright, efficient cruelty of the morning rush. This was a tired, honest hum. The air tasted of dust, hot metal, and the ghost of someone’s chip-shop dinner.