Into Sparks

Have you ever met the same person over and over again, in completely random situations? I have, it’s weird. I didn’t think it actually happened in real life. I thought it was something that only happened to Carrie in Sex and the City.

But it happened to me. I met the same person time after time over a period of three years. It started off randomly, but these things have a sneaky habit of complicating themselves.

“D’you have the time?” is how it happened.

Before anything else, I suppose we had to meet a first time, and it happened at a train station. I was waiting for the last train out of London Waterloo. I was sixteen, and I didn’t know how old he was at the time, but older than me, definitely.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a large train station at near enough midnight, but it’s fascinating. Everywhere is still open. All the little kiosks and coffee shops, they’re still open with some poor bastard stood behind the counter. It’s so surreal, I love it. I remember that night I got myself a baguette and a coffee just for the sheer novelty of it all.

And that’s where I met Jack, underneath the clock in Waterloo station. He asked me for the time and I laughed.

“Look up,” I said, and took a bite of my baguette. The clock was big and old, with a complicated patterned face. In the day it was the busiest part of the station. He peered up, and then took a step back to check the time.

“Didn’t see that there,” he chuckled, and I remember wondering whether his hair was naturally that burgundy colour. Turns out that it is, but I didn’t find that out right then.

“D’you know when the last train to Exeter is?” he asked, and I didn’t answer because my mouth was full, instead I just pointed over to the departures board.

I swallowed. The bread was a little stale, but I don’t know what else I expected at God-knows-what past eleven at night.

“Oh,” he said, “right, yes. Thanks. I don’t know where my head’s at tonight.”

“It is pretty eerie in here,” I replied. His eyes drifted to the remains of my baguette. I wasn’t that hungry anyway, so I said, “Have it if you want.”

We exchanged a brief look, that kind that only strangers can, then he took it. It was strange feeling completely comfortable in the presence of someone I didn’t know, but we had half an hour to kill before the train even arrived.

I was supposed to be on the train at ten, but I’d missed it. My mum went mad when I called her, but there wasn’t exactly a lot I could do about it. I’d visited friends for the weekend, and time just has a habit of running away when you’re not looking.

I fingered the hem of my skirt, and he ate the last bite of the sandwich. My nails were a little dirty, but I left them as they were.

“This is so weird.” He glanced at his phone, then tucked it back into his pocket. He looked expensive, as tacky as that sounds. That’s the only word I can think of to sum him up. A nice phone, casually dressed but still sharp, slick haircut and slanted cheeks. Expensive.

“Not as weird as the chicken in that sandwich,” I said.

He laughed, and I laughed too. I had an exam the next morning, and I was probably going to end up sleeping practically through the rest of school, but I was having an experience. For once, I could pretend that I lived inside a story, or a film. I was sat on the floor of an empty train station, having a conversation with a stranger.

Of course, I never thought I was going to see him again. I foolishly assumed that when you meet someone at midnight in a London train station, that’s it. We didn’t exchange numbers, or even names. We got on the same train, but we didn’t sit next to each other and carry on the conversation. I went down one way, and he went the other.

That didn’t do much good though, because on a long term scale, we were just walking in circles back towards each other.