Victoria

At London's Victoria Station they hide the Brighton trains round the corner. Everyone else gets to walk under the grand illuminated train
time display to march promptly onto their trains. Not the Brighton line travellers. They get shuttled up to the right, down a specific narrow
channel, by the deadbeats and the tiny WH Smiths that only sells novels by Jeffrey Archer and Catherine Cookson. They get the cheese shop, the
supermarket and the hidden cash dispensers. They like it. It's Brighton. It's them.

He's standing by the entrance to the channel. He wears a dark blue shell suit. He has two children. A boy and a girl both around the turn of their first decade. They wear dark blue shell suits. Not for them the gaudy turquoise and purple shell suits of a brasher era. They have taste. His cheeks are reddened by wind, his hair is thinning. He has his children close beside him. He is in control. They do as he says. He says and they do. They are brown haired, indiscrimnate, going nowhere. He is brown haired, thinning, indiscriminate, gone nowhere. Now he is in Victoria Station, one of the great terminii. He is confused. He has gone nowhere and he is going nowhere but now he must go somewhere. A junction is not a good place to stop.

From the far side of the station someone screams. Loudly. The Brighton bound walkers walk on with no reaction. He flinches. He draws his children around him.

"Stay close," he says.

They stay close. They do not look around. They look at him.

"Don't be afraid," he says.

They are not afraid.

"We'll work this out."

They wait.

"Come," he says.

They shoulder their dark blue matching rucksacks. He leads them towards the trains.

"But we've just come from there," says the girl.

"I've changed my mind," he says. "We'll work it out."

He hands each child its ticket at the barrier. He watches as they place them in the machine. The barriers clash open and release them one by
one. He collects the tickets. They board the train for Brighton.

They get off at East Croydon.