The Can on Platform Two

The train is due at 14:52, which means it will be at 14:58, which means it will be at 15:04 if the sheep on the line have opinions about it. Maddie has been on the bench long enough to have opinions about the sheep.

There are four of them in the field beyond the fence. Three are white and one is the colour of a digestive biscuit, and the biscuit one keeps standing at the exact edge of the wire, very still, as if it's waiting for someone to tell it something important. Maddie wonders whether sheep know what day it is. Whether they know it's Thursday. What would happen if one got on a train. Would it sit in a seat? Would it want the window? Would it get off at the next stop looking so pleased with itself that everyone assumed it had been going there all along?

Lou is on that train. Lou is always on a train. Lou said she'd be on the 14:52 from Paddington, which is a sentence that could mean anything, because Lou once said she'd be on the 9:10 and turned up on the 11:40 with a dog nobody had asked about. The dog was called Biscuit. Maybe the biscuit sheep is called Biscuit. Maybe it's the same dog, grown into a sheep through some terrible and quiet process.

Maddie checks her phone. Still on? she sent. Lou replied with a thumbs up and then, a minute later, which bench. Maddie sent back the only bench. There is, in fact, only one bench. There is also one platform, one ticket machine that has displayed the words PLEASE WAIT since at least March, and one board on the far end that says DELAYED with no reason, which Maddie has decided is a cow. It is always a cow. Or a leaf. Or a man who lost his hat and is now standing on the track looking for it with enormous dignity.

The can is still rolling.

It's a lager can, or it was. It's crumpled on one side and it lies on its flank on the yellow line, and every time a fast train screams through without stopping, the can gets pulled a little towards the edge by the rush of air, then the air drops away and it rolls slowly back. Forwards. Back. Forwards. Back. The trains don't even look at it. The trains are going to somewhere that matters, and the can is going nowhere, and somehow the can has the more interesting life. Maddie has been watching it for eleven minutes. She is now, she thinks, the only person in the world who cares about this can, and she feels a responsibility towards it that is out of all proportion.

Should she move it? Should she move it off the line? That's a dangerous thought. There's a sign about that. She is fairly sure there's a sign about that.

The door of the little station office opens and a man in a high-vis jacket steps out. He looks at the sky. He looks at the can. He looks at Maddie, who looks back at him with the face of someone who is definitely not planning to touch the can. He nods, slightly, and goes back inside. Maddie decides his name is Gareth. Gareth is a good name for someone who keeps an eye on sheep and cans and the occasional lost hat. She would like to know Gareth. She would like Gareth to tell her about the cow.

Her mind does the thing it does, where one thought opens a door and six more walk out of it. The last time she saw Lou, they'd got the wrong coffees and then the wrong train and then Lou had walked straight into a bollard while looking at her own phone and said I'm fine, I'm fine, don't look at me. Maddie had looked at her the entire time. She'd looked at her all the way home. She is still, nearly a year later, a little bit proud of that.

Is it weird to bring a present to someone you're meeting for a cup of tea? It's a small thing. It's a jar of something. It's in the bag. She checks. It's in the bag. She checks again, just to be sure it's still in the bag, and then has to think about why she checked, and then decides that's not a useful line of thought for a Thursday afternoon.

A bird lands on the fence post near the sheep. The biscuit sheep turns its head to look at it. The bird leaves. The sheep does not. It keeps watching the spot where the bird was, as though it's expecting an explanation.

Somewhere far down the line, there is a noise. It's not a train yet. It's the idea of a train, a low hum in the rails that makes the can shiver. Maddie sits up. The can rolls forward, touches the edge, and stops, as if it's listening too.

The forty-minute mark comes and goes, and she realises she's had perhaps three hundred thoughts since she sat down, and not one of them was the thing she'd planned to think about, which was what she was going to say first. Probably something about the dog. Or the bollard. Or the sheep, which has now come right up to the fence and is staring at her with total, unblinking seriousness.

The horizon wobbles. A light appears, very small, then less small. The rails begin to sing. The can rolls back, back, back, all the way to the far side of the line, and the sheep, all four of them at once, lift their heads.

Maddie stands up. She picks up her bag. She checks, one last time, that the jar is still in it.

It is.

The train slows, groans, and stops with a sigh, and the doors open, and for a moment nothing happens at all, and then a figure steps down onto the platform with a dog-shaped bag on one shoulder, looking around in a way that is already, very clearly, about to be a problem.

Maddie waves.

Lou has never once been on time, and Maddie has never once minded.