Night train, compartment four

Compartment four of carriage 22 measures one metre eighty by two metres ten. Two berths, one above the other. A basin that folds back into the wall. One socket. A wire hook welded to the metal, which does not come off.

The two berths are sold separately, and people travelling alone sometimes get lucky and sometimes do not.

She boards at 21:04, at Santa Apolónia, with a rucksack and a paper bag from a supermarket. Checks the number on the door. Checks the ticket. Puts the rucksack on the lower berth and the bag on the floor.

He boards at 21:19, same carriage, with a wheeled case that does not fit through the door straight on. He turns the case sideways. It fits.

"Evening."

"Evening."

He looks at the lower berth, which has a rucksack on it. Looks at the upper, which is empty. Puts the case under the lower one, because that is where it goes.

The train leaves at 21:34, seven minutes late.

For the first forty minutes neither of them speaks.

She sits on the lower berth with her back to the wall and her knees up, looking at her phone. He stands out in the corridor, on the other side of the open door, with his elbow on the window glass.

The corridor light is yellow. The compartment light is white and has two settings: the upper button and the lower one.

At 22:11 the guard comes through. They hand over tickets and passports. The guard hands the two passports back the wrong way round, and they swap them over, and that is the first time one of them touches the other's hand.

"Thanks."

"No bother."

At 22:26 she opens the paper bag. Takes out a packet of biscuits, a bottle of water and an orange.

She peels the orange over the paper, in one spiral, without breaking the peel.

He is in the doorway watching this.

"That's a skill, that."

"It's the only thing my grandfather ever taught me."

She splits the orange in half and holds out one half. He steps into the compartment to take it. Stands there, eats it, and does not go back to the corridor.

At 23:40 the train stops at Coimbra for six minutes. Outside the window there is an empty platform, a coffee machine and a man in a hi-vis vest with a radio.

Inside compartment four the two of them are on the lower berth, one at each end, backs against opposite walls, feet almost meeting in the middle.

She has the water bottle between her hands.

"Eleven hours," he says.

"Eleven and a half, with the delay."

"Do you sleep on trains?"

"Never."

"Nor me."

The train moves off again. Her bottle, standing upright on the floor, goes over and rolls until it hits his foot. He stops the bottle with his foot and does not pass it back.

She looks at the bottle. Looks at his foot. Does not ask for it.

At 00:12 he stands and presses the lower button, and the white light drops to the weak setting. He does not ask first.

She does not object afterwards.

At 00:14 she pulls the window blind all the way down, and the corridor, which was already empty, stops existing.

At 00:15 he shuts the door and turns the catch.

The catch on compartment four makes a metallic clack that carries out into the corridor, and nobody in the corridor is listening.

The lower berth is eighty centimetres wide.

One shoe hits the floor at 00:31. The other at 00:33.

At 00:40 the rucksack that was on the berth goes on top of the case, and the paper bag is pushed under the berth with a foot, and the orange peel in its single spiral stays in there for the rest of the journey.

A train in motion produces a short-period lateral sway and a heavier jolt at the rail joints, and the lower berth, held to the wall by two steel brackets, passes all of that through to whoever is on it.

At 01:02 somebody drags a case past in the corridor. Compartment four goes quiet for fourteen seconds. Then it stops being quiet.

At 01:20 the weak setting goes out too. The button is on the wall side, at shoulder height for anyone lying down, and somebody's elbow catches it.

Nobody puts it back on.

At 04:50 the train stops at the border. Vilar Formoso. It is a long stop: they change the traction unit, change the crew, and a smell of hot grease comes in through the ventilation grille.

The blind stays down.

At 05:02 somebody knocks on the door of compartment four and says a sentence in Spanish about documents. The voice that answers from inside says they have already been checked. The person outside says thank you and moves on to compartment five.

At 06:30 it starts getting light. There is a two-finger gap under the blind, and through that gap comes a band that crosses the floor, climbs the wall and stops at the edge of the upper berth, which is still empty, mattress untouched, pillow in its plastic.

At 08:44 the train arrives at Hendaye.

She gets off first, with the rucksack and without the bag. He gets off forty seconds later, with the case that does not fit through the door straight on.

On the platform they stand a metre and a half apart. She fiddles with the strap of the rucksack. He looks at the departure board and then looks at her.

"I'm going on to Bordeaux."

"I'm here until Thursday."

Neither of them reaches for a phone.

Eleven seconds pass.

"Thursday," he says.

"Thursday."

He goes into the station. She stays on the platform until hers is called, and hers is called at 09:06.

The cleaning crew reach carriage 22 at 09:10. Out of compartment four they take an empty water bottle, a half-eaten packet of biscuits and one whole orange peel, in a spiral, which one of the lads holds up to the light before binning it.