He can see lights bobbing up and down in the distance. Of course, he knows those aren’t gaslights carried by horse-backed man. That would have been nice. Train journeys always fuelled nice thoughts. He peers again at the glass. This time something else is bobbing up and down, but it’s not a light. No, egad, it’s a spider. He pats the glass with a light hand hoping to set it scampering in the other direction. No scampering. Instead, bobbing becomes more pronounced. A primal fear grips the heart and clutching the evening daily, he brings it down on the leggy arachnid with a smash.
Shit, why did I do that?

He picks up a tattered Wodehouse but the words don’t unravel to produce coherent sentences; the ‘what-hos’ aren’t funny. He looks up. An accusing glance is thrust back from a gaunt face.
I didn’t mean to do it, what would you have done?

He isn’t able to do justice to the exceptionally well-cooked dinner. He tries to sleep but
Something rotten will happen,
He just knows it. Why? Well, there was the time that he barked at his mother and she didn’t live long enough afterwards for him to take back what he’d said. Then when he stole his flatmate’s savings, he got mugged and couldn’t report it as theft. The spectre of retribution haunted him now as it did then and there was no getting away.

So now, seeing as sleep is eluding him, he gets down from his berth and walks out to the vestibule. There’s a washbasin with a mirror in which he catches a glimpse of his listless face and shudders. Tell me I look better than that. Standing at the open door, he lets the wind ruffle his hair and sting his weary eyes.

O hell, I’m out of ciggies. He turns back to head inside but stops suddenly. There’s a pack of Malboro lights on the basin.
Hey that isn’t mine, how come I didn’t see it before?
He looks around furtively and lights a cigarette.
‘You’re welcome’.
He turns around to find a curious figure. A girl, or woman, you couldn’t tell, with a wreath of straw instead of combed tresses on a peculiar head and two huge discs where there should have been eyes. Her wispy frame was draped in a purple T-shirt and something lycra that hung loosely about her skinny legs.

‘Hey, you ok? You look really tense.’
He ignores the question, taking a long drag.
‘I don’t mean to pry… just too nice a night to waste on some insipid worry, don’t you think?’
‘How insipid it is will depend on what happens tomorrow.’
‘Is it important?’
‘Hmm.’
‘I mean you’re young, healthy, it would seem not too badly off, so…’
‘Are you on steroids? Really, you seem insanely optimistic.’
Pregnant pause. ‘No, but one of us has to be somewhat optimistic and I’ve learnt the hard way.’
He looks at her hands, holding the door handle with a grip that would put a gym instructor to shame. He asks, a little hesitantly, ‘What do you do?’
‘Well, this and that. Not important.’
‘That’s a bit unfair don’t you think? You get to ask all the questions and also get to be delightfully vague when I ask you something?’
‘Do you smell that?’
‘What?’
‘Distrust.’, her eye widening and a hint of a smirk flashing across her peculiar features.
‘Heh.’
He puts out the cigarette and folds his arms as close to his body as he can. Looking at the moon, he says, with considerable effort,
‘Do you ever wish you were someone else?’
‘ Well, you know, there’s not much point. I mean, what can you do about it? Like there’s marzipan or boybands, just wishing won’t send them away. Similarly, who you are.. its there to stay.’
‘ But I mean, what about destiny?’
‘ What about it?’
‘Well what if you could change it?’
‘If - much virtue in if. If you knew what tomorrow looked like, would you perhaps not be here talking to me? And even as you contemplate that possibility, a few seconds of the present are slipping away quietly, repenting a choice you’ve already made.’
‘Well I don’t know if I’m repenting it entirely.’
‘Oh. I’m grateful to know it.’ She smiles, revealing a third of a set of awry though very white teeth. He is momentarily disarmed and doesn’t know what to say. And then he does:
‘Do spiders have souls?’
She laughs, almost noiselessly. He feels like laughing himself. They talk, counting stations, till the sun begins to peep over the silhouette of the trees. He smiles, and yawns.
She looks up and says ‘Do you need a smoke?’ He rubs his eyes and nods, going over to the washbasin.
‘Woman, you and I smoke the same brand. Isn’t that…?’ He turns back and starts.
‘Hey where did you go?’ He looks out, but the fields don’t have a trace of purple. Only a spider bobs on the handle.