Douglas realised he was running too late almost as soon as he saw the sign.
The letters, old and chipped, painted onto metal that had known too many foggy dusks like this. Steam curled along the platform edge, hiding feet and swallowing sound. Below the sign the destination board rattled softly.
His chest tightened.
He slowed, suddenly unsure whether he should be here at all. He adjusted the strap of his pack across his shoulder. It felt absurdly light for a man who had just come out of a war. He felt lighter too, but in the wrong way - hollowed rather than relieved. Alive, yes. Miraculously so, they’d said. But set loose like a wire pulled free and left dangling.
Too late, he thought. Of course I’m too late.
That seemed to fit everything else.
He spotted the destination card next to the window
and unfolded it a little - 16.20. He checked his watch and it showed a little beyond half past four.
He coughed to catch the attendant's attention. The glass was smudged, the light inside warm and low. The attendant looked up as Douglas stood, breathless, hands damp, heart thudding as though he were still listening for gunfire. She was young; for a moment he thought how easy it must be. The thought embarrassed him. His judgment abated and politeness came from him first.
"Excuse me..." Douglas began, then stopped. He hadn’t rehearsed this. He hadn’t rehearsed anything in a long time. "Am I... is it too late for the..." He faltered, glancing back at the card as he tapped it. "This one".
The girl studied him carefully. Not suspiciously. Not impatiently. Just attentively as though Douglas were not late at all, but precisely where he needed to be.
He felt suddenly exposed.
He had the sense, dim but persistent, that his life had gone wrong. Not morally so - not in the way people usually meant - but out of true. Like he had been living several inches to the left of himself. The war had only sharpened that feeling. He could remember fear vividly, orders, and the weight of a gun in his hands - but when he reached for anything before that, his mind returned empty rooms, barely coloured.
No childhood anchors. No clear desires. No sense of continuity.
Just a long series of roles he had stepped into because someone else expected him to.
The girl smiled. Not brightly. Not sadly. Comfortingly. Like someone offering a blanket without comment.
"There is still time," she said, her French accent softening the words. He heard the phrase again in his head and it steadied him.
Not "Yes." Not "No." Not "you’re late but I’ll make an exception."
Just that. "There is still time."
Douglas swallowed and let out a breath. He hadn’t known that was the question he was asking, but his body responded as though it were. He nodded, pushed more coins to her than he knew was needed, trusting she would also be honest with change.
He took the ticket and the coins she slid back towards him without looking.
He didn’t know what he hoped for as he turned toward the train. He only knew that he couldn’t go back to where he had been - the camp, the darkness, the version of himself that stood guard because no one else would.
The train whistle shocked him from his thoughts, and it loomed beside the platform now, doors open, light spilling out in warm rectangles. It smelled faintly of oil and something else. Soap, maybe. Or food. People, new and clean. Scents of something closer to home.
Not the tang of his equipment, the stink of his pack wrapped up tight and not cleaned since... He tried to think, and couldn't remember that either. Probably the last time he shaved, he thought, as he stroked his face. It was more long hairs than bristle by now.
Douglas hesitated at the threshold, one foot lifted, suspended between ground and step, between what had been and whatever this was.
Then, before he could stop himself, he stepped aboard.
The moment his foot crossed the threshold, there was a sharp crack - not loud, but final - like a coupling locking into place, and the train lurched.
He grabbed instinctively for the nearest handhold. It shifted under his weight, loose enough to alarm him, solid enough to hold. For a breathless second he was suspended between falling back onto the platform and being dragged forward into motion.
The train committed.
Metal groaned, wheels took rhythm, and the platform slid away as though it had never truly been meant for him.
Douglas hauled himself fully inside and stood there, heart hammering, breath shallow, staring at nothing while the reality of movement caught up with him. He had the absurd thought that if he let go now, everything might unravel - the train, the night, himself.
But it didn’t.
The carriage was quieter than he expected.
He thought he'd seen dozens of people through the windows as he strode the platform to his carriage - silhouettes, movement, and the suggestion of lives already underway - but it held only one passenger.
She sat across the aisle, hands folded loosely in her lap.
Her dress was simple but well made. Light-coloured, and neatly pressed. Her hair was pinned up in a style that belonged unmistakably to another time, but not ostentatiously so. She wasn’t adorned. She wasn’t theatrical. She was just there.
Beautiful, yes - but in the way that ordinary people sometimes are when the light catches them right.
Douglas became sharply conscious of himself.
Of the stiffness in his movements. The way his shoulders wanted to curl inward. The fact that he must look like a man who had stepped out of violence and might not have yet realised it was over.
He chose a seat across the aisle from her - close enough that she could see him clearly, far enough that he wasn’t imposing. He sat where his presence was undeniable but not demanding. Where she would not be startled if she looked up and found him suddenly too near.
He nodded her way carefully.
"Hello," he said, voice rougher than he intended. "Douglas. Douglas Nowak."
The name felt strange in his mouth. The war had smeared men together until faces and voices ran into one another, and he was no longer used to standing apart from it all as one.
She met his eyes without hesitation. "Eleanor," she said.
No elaboration. Something in him eased at the simplicity of it, and hearing a familiar accent set him the smallest fraction at ease. Somewhere north - maybe a hint of Huddersfield.
Still, he sat there, hands clasped together, knuckles pale, and realised belatedly that he was trembling. Not violently. Just enough to be noticeable.
She noticed.
"You look like you’ve been in the wars," Eleanor said gently.
Douglas let out a short, humourless breath. "Yes," he replied. "I have. The-" He stopped himself, then continued. "North Africa. I didn't want to be there."
He stopped himself, suddenly conscious of how it sounded. Cowardice.
She considered him for a moment, and shook her head just slightly. "I didn’t mean that," she said. "I meant... altogether. Out of sorts."
He swallowed.
"...Yes," he said again, quieter this time.
The train gathered speed. The windows filled with motion - fields sliding past, hedgerows breaking and reforming, distant lights blinking in and out of existence. The countryside moved with the calm indifference of something that had always been there and would continue long after he passed through it.
Douglas watched it go.
The way moments slipped by without stopping. The way whole scenes formed and dissolved before he could take hold of them. Farms, fences, trees - all present, all unreachable. This countryside looked like memories he held, but it was all still strangely unfamiliar
He thought of years spent moving because he was told to move. Standing because he was told to stand. Holding a gun because someone had put it in his hands and barked "Now!"
Outside, the land rolled on, unconcerned.
Inside the carriage, Eleanor sat with quiet certainty - as though she had always known both that the train would move once Douglas stepped aboard, and that he would eventually stop shaking.
After a while, she spoke again.
"Do you have family?" she asked.
Douglas hesitated. His eyes stayed on the window, on the fields drifting past like thoughts he couldn’t quite catch.
"Yes." he said, too bluntly. "I mean - yes. A sister. My mother. They’re... good people."
He frowned slightly, as though the word didn’t quite cover it.
"I just don’t know how they’ll react," he continued. "I’ve been away a long time. And I’m not-" He stopped, searching. He didn't want to let Eleanor know he'd deserted, and his family would take that badly. "I’m not quite the same person I was when I left. I don’t know if I’m what they'll expect."
Eleanor smiled, small and certain. "I’m sure they’re good," she said. "And I’m sure they’ll love you."
Not forgive. Not expect. Not recognise. Love. A reminder that that might be the more solid thing to stand on.
He nodded, her words settling in him.
She tilted her head. "What was it like?" she asked. "Your time in the war."
Douglas opened his mouth, then closed it again.
"I’m not sure," he admitted after a moment. "I mean - I remember things, but not in order. Not properly. It was Africa. There were..." and his mind changed tack. "The most wonderful and frightening beasts!"
She raised an eyebrow, not startled, just curious. "Beasts?"
"Yes," he said quickly, then slowed himself. "Lions, mostly. Another cat something like that, and the rhinoceros. I admit I never saw a crocodile alive, though, but one had been mounted in a place we bed down at. It was fearsome!"
He thought he sounded too excited, but continued.
"But the lion, mostly. There was always one just outside the camp. Hungry. Waiting. It felt like -" He stopped abruptly, heat rising to his face.
"I’m sorry. This must be dreadfully uninteresting."
Eleanor shook her head. "Oh, no! Animals aren’t uninteresting," she remarked. "They’re honest. They don’t pretend not to be what they are."
He glanced at her, surprised.
"They follow instinct just as they should," she continued. "That can look like cruelty from the outside. But it’s often just clarity. Hunger. Fear. Survival. Truly, they follow what is needed." She paused. "People get into such trouble because we try to deny that."
Douglas considered her words. The lion in the fading light. The way fear had sharpened everything. The way he had been told to ignore it. He realised then that he knew it mostly only by sound and shadow.
"I suppose," he said slowly, his thought slipping sideways, "...it would have been easier if I’d known what I was meant to be doing. What I wanted."
She smiled at that.
"Well," she said lightly, "I think most of us don’t. We just get better at pretending we do."
Something in him loosened.
They sat for a moment in companionable quiet before she spoke again.
"I always wanted to be a watchmaker," Eleanor said.
He turned fully toward her now. "Really?!"
"Yes. My father was one. I used to sit beside him and watch the gears. The way something so small could hold time together." She shrugged. "It wasn’t always encouraged, for someone like me."
Douglas laughed - an actual laugh, surprised out of him.
"I was trained as a watchmaker," he said. "That was before everything else. Before the army and my father decided I was more useful elsewhere."
Her eyes lit. "Did you love it?"
The way she said that word, 'love' about a vocation. It struck him somewhere warm and unguarded, and let him see what he hadn't before.
"I did," he said now without hesitation. "I loved how precise it was. How patient you had to be. You couldn’t rush it. Time didn’t want to be bullied."
She laughed softly at that, and something like joy sparked between them - not loud, not grand, but unmistakable.
They talked then about growing up on farms. About mornings when the light came in sideways and made pollen glow. About sheep.
"Dorpers," Eleanor said.
Douglas blinked. "Dorpers?"
"Yes," she said, delighted. "Stubborn, wilful creatures. Lovely meat. Strange wool, though. But a lady who lived off to the west frith always came for some. My sister and I thought she was a witch! Can you believe it. She was lovely, always with a story..."
He smiled, the familiarity a comfort. "We had them too."
They spoke about shearing, about the smell of lanolin, about the way wool passed from animal to hands to craft. About people who made things simply because they had to even when the wool was strange. Because it was needed, and how it connected them to something real.
For the first time since he’d stepped onto the train, Douglas felt himself wholly there.
Not safe exactly. Not healed.
But there.
The countryside continued to slide past the windows, but it no longer felt like it was leaving him behind. For a while, at least, it felt as though he were moving with it. It occurred to him quietly and with surprise - that perhaps this journey might contain more than just an ending.
The mist outside the windows thinned and thickened again, and Douglas found his gaze drifting back to it. The conversation had warmed him, briefly, but the feeling didn’t hold. It slipped through his fingers the way so many things did now.
The train rushed onward.
Fields blurred into hedges, hedges into shadow, shadow into the suggestion of towns he would never enter. Somewhere out there were names and destinations and platforms that belonged to other people.
He realised, with a hollow twist, that he didn’t know which, if any, belonged to him.
"God above - where am I going?" he said quietly to himself, but loud enough.
Eleanor turned toward him, attentive.
"Oh sorry. I mean -" He gestured vaguely at the window. "I’m on this train, and it’s moving, and I suppose that’s something. But I don’t know where I’m meant to alight. I don’t even know if I’m meant to."
The words felt thin once spoken, inadequate to the depth of the feeling beneath them. Lost didn’t begin to cover it. It was as though his life had been shelved under the wrong letter, and no one had noticed for years.
Eleanor nodded slowly, as if he had said something very ordinary.
"Well I’m travelling to see my sister," she said, plainly. "I’ll meet her for lunch. In a little over nineteen hours, precisely." A faint smile touched her mouth. "She’s punctual to the minute. After that, we’ll go together to our mother’s place in Yorkshire. She’s been expecting us."
Douglas stared at her.
"You know exactly when you’ll arrive," he said. It wasn’t envy, exactly - more awe. "And where. And who’ll be there."
"Yes," she said simply.
He looked down at his hands, at the way they rested uselessly in his lap.
"I admire that," he said. "Having... direction. A purpose of your own."
She studied him for a long moment, then spoke carefully.
"People make rather too much of purpose, I think." she said. "One goes where one must, and life has a way of arranging itself around that."
"You continue and things come to meet you."
He nodded, but the ache remained.
"I’m still lost," he admitted. "I don’t even know what I’d want to plan for. I feel like I’ve been walking in someone else’s boots for years, and now I’ve taken them off and I don’t know how to stand."
The train thundered onward, relentless, faithful to its rails.
Eleanor didn’t rush to fill the silence.
Outside, the land kept passing. Inside, Douglas sat with the weight of not knowing, of being unmoored, of having survived something only to discover survival wasn’t the same as having arrived anywhere at all.
Yet somewhere beneath the despair, something small and stubborn stirred. Douglas leaned back in his seat, still lost, still afraid - but no longer entirely alone in it.
He found himself watching Eleanor as she spoke of her plans - her mother and sister, life after this journey - and something in him tightened, not with envy but with a sharp, aching admiration.
A life with continuity and a life that expected her as much as she expected of it.
He looked down at himself.
Slowly, almost ceremonially, he reached into his pocket and took out his handkerchief.
It had once been white. It hadn’t come clean in the last wash, not properly, though he’d tried. Water from his flask had helped a little to soften the stiffness, but the stains remained: a smear of mud ground in by boots, a faint green from grass crushed under a knee, and darker marks he stopped trying to identify.
Blood, probably. His, or someone else’s over his initials. D.N.
He poured a little more water onto it anyway.
Douglas wiped the back of his neck, his scalp, then his forehead. He dragged the handkerchief slowly down his face, pressing harder than necessary, as though friction alone might scrub something essential away. His breathing hitched. On the edge of tears he just wished to wipe all of this away forever.
Finally, he pressed the cloth over his eyes and held it there.
For a moment, the world narrowed to damp fabric and the sound of the train.
The train rode on.
Eleanor lowered her handkerchief from her brow. She had only meant to dab away a little sweat - outside was cold but the carriage was warm, and the night had finally given way to morning. She looked down, and saw the stains.
Mud. Grass. A little blood.
She held it for a moment longer, feeling the weight of it in her palm, and then a soft, knowing smile touched her mouth. She thought of Yorkshire. Of her sister’s voice. Of the sheep in the fields - the familiar, stubborn dorpers - and the way the light fell across the land she had not seen in so long.
She folded the handkerchief carefully and set it on the seat beside her, just so, the way you leave something you trust will be found by the right hands.
She looked across the aisle, the seat where the soldier had been sitting was empty.
His pack was there. His gear. The boots he'd taken off after all, neatly placed together on the cushion, toes aligned as if he had taken care to leave things in order.
There was no sign of haste, just absence.
Eleanor stood, smoothed her dress, and stepped into the aisle. She did not look back as she moved toward the door. The train slowed and followed the curve to the station. Light spilled in pale and yellow, burning off the Dieppe fog. Unmistakably a new morning.
As she stepped down onto the platform, a conductor glanced at his list.
"Mademoiselle..." He checked his board. "Dorothea E. North."
"Call me Eleanor, please."
He inclined his head, just enough. "Mademoiselle Eleanor. C’est ici."
Eleanor walked away, elegant and unburdened, into the morning light, leaving behind her handkerchief, the boots, the pack and the war - and carrying forward only what she chose.