Lost
As she walks over the ridge, it is more than two hours since she last saw the others and her anger at them for wandering off has long since evaporated. She has a vague idea that if she follows a stream she will eventually get somewhere, but she has been stumbling over tussocky grass and heather for ages and seen nothing. At first, with the inbuilt contempt of the city born for the wild, she was not worried, but for some time now, she has been conscious of a nagging concern and a desire for a warm fire and hot soup. It's cold and getting colder.
Then, with a flood of relief, down the slope in front of her, she sees a line that can only be a road. There'll be cars, vans, buses even. People to help her, or give her a lift to a place where her damn phone will work. She starts to run down the hill and trips over a heather stem, falling flat on her face and near winding herself. Never taking her eyes off the line of the road, she gets up and carries on towards it, senses straining for any sight or sound of a vehicle.
Nothing.
The only sound is the moan of the wind; she can't even hear the most distant vibration of an engine. She scrambles over a wool snagged fence and stands bewildered in the middle of the worn tarmac, her relief fading. Where is all the traffic? She shivers as it begins to snow half-heartedly, flakes drifting down out of a leaden sky.
Her concern flares into anxiety as she realises she has no idea where she is. It could be a mile to the next village or twenty, in either direction. Aware how important this decision could be, she gnaws her lip, swithering; which way to go? A snowflake drifts down and lands on her nose. Suddenly she turns to her left and starts walking, hoping it's the right choice. She soon begins to wonder if she has done the right thing. The snow has started to lie now, and the flakes are coming down faster, no longer drifting down, but blowing past her in a rising wind. At least the wind is behind her, she thinks. She is concentrating so hard on the road ahead, that surely soon must contain the lights of an approaching vehicle, that she almost misses the turning. But when her eyes take in the old fashioned sign that proclaims, Station, ¼, she feels a blaze of triumph that she has made the right choice. A station must mean people. But then she looks doubtfully down what is little more than a track, pot-holed and puddle-strewn, covered now in a faint dusting of white. Doesn't it?
The road curves up over a shallow rise, before dropping down towards the head of a loch where it crosses the railway by a bridge. The station sits beside it; its grey, weathered sandstone and high chimneys, solidly Victorian; but it looks horribly derelict. Somewhere in the distance a sheep baas.
She walks over the bridge, knowing, hoping she's going to see a car parked behind the station. But then her heart sinks as she turns into the car park; even under the snow, she can see that it is seldom used, with the died-back remnants of the summer's grass taking over where there was once gravel. There's no one there. She tells herself she hadn't really thought there would be, but all the same, she blinks back tears.
She walks up to the building, but none of the windows is lit and the glass is frosted so she can't see in. Then she tries the peeling door to the waiting room, but it is locked. Not good. She gives it a kick and the dull thud as her foot hits the wood seems to echo around her. When she walks round onto the platform, she notices tufts of snow-frozen grass growing through cracks in the paving; this station will never win Station of the Year. Looking down at the track under its dusting of snow, she can see that the rails are dull and orange with rust, which means there are few trains. Or perhaps none at all, she thinks in sudden panic.
The angry graffiti scrawled across one wall seems out of place in this desolate location; the only sound apart from the moan of the wind, the creak of the station signs: Ben Gruach they say, under more peeling paint. She looks round for a timetable; all stations have timetables. Sure enough, next to a faded poster advertising the merits of a holiday in Cornwall she sees the familiar tabulation. She glances at her watch: twelve thirty five, bugger, now of all times it has stopped. Still, she runs her glove-encrusted finger along the line of the station name. There is only one train a day, and it's in the afternoon. Relief washes over her.
The waiting room is locked on the platform side too, so she huddles in a doorway, slowly freezing. She measures the passing of time by the accretion of flakes on the platform. Then at first she can't quite believe it; the rails are singing. The emotion that floods through her is far stronger than mere relief. At the edge of hearing comes a distant rumble and her heart leaps as it strengthens into the noise of an engine. Thank God!
She steps out of the doorway so she can see better and peers through the whirling flakes, straining to see along the track. Eventually she sees a dark shape moving towards the station through the snow, and the most decrepit train she has seen in years pulls into the station, stopping with a spine-crawling squeal of brakes. Nobody gets out, not even a guard. The engine is an ancient diesel, forty years old if it's a day. The carriages look even older; the maroon ones she remembers from her childhood. They have those awkward door handles she always worried about being able to open in time to get off the train. She walks up to the nearest one, and hurriedly twists it and pulls it open, eager not to miss her chance of escape. A dull round light bulb flickers in the ceiling, lighting the entrance enough to show a dirty lino floor and varnished wood. With its corridor and compartments, the carriage must be older than she is. She slams the door behind her, and it thunks shut. It should sound reassuring, but doesn't.
She is unsurprised to find the first chilly compartment empty. The door slides open easily enough, and she slumps down onto the worn material of the seat with a sigh. As soon as she sits down, the train lurches forwards, the ceiling lights flickering again.
She shivers, and breathes a cloud of steam. No, not warm at all. As she always does, when on a train, she looks out of the window; but through the flakes of snow, the landscape is drear, the light covering of white accentuating its shades of grey and brown. Eventually she leans back in the seat, feeling the springs poking into her back. She huddles up in the corner and closes her eyes, and sleeps.
When she opens her eyes, the train is still moving in the gentle rocking motion that has sent her dozing. Her belly rumbles and she decides to go and look for the refreshment trolley. It really is getting dark now; surely the train must get somewhere soon?
She lurches to her feet as the train jerks over points, and opens the compartment door. She is in the second carriage, so she goes towards the back of the train. To her surprise, the rest of the carriage is empty. She gingerly walks through to the next one and with growing uneasiness sees that it too is devoid of passengers. And the next: dusty compartment after dusty compartment, all the way to the end of the train.
She turns and runs back down the train until she gets to the front.
Nobody.
This is ridiculous. Do they run trains with no passengers these days? Without even a conductor? "Hello?" she calls, her voice echoing dully along the corridor, and she is conscious of a wish to snatch back the sound she made. She tries to shrug off the feeling, and returns to her compartment; it somehow seems more familiar than the others, although it is identical. She sits down again at the window and stares out at the darkening landscape. It has stopped snowing, but as far as she can see, it is unchanged from before, still the same, drear mountains and heavy sky.
Imperceptibly the train begins to slow down, and she peers through the window for any sign of the streetlights that would indicate a town, or a village, or a settlement of any description but can see nothing. Then she hears the squeal of the brakes as it pulls into a station, and it stops with a jerk that nearly throws her off the seat. She thinks it is the first time it has stopped, but strangely she can't remember how many stations she had counted from where she got on, to the junction with the main line to Oban.
The station is large with a vaulted, greenhouse glass roof and has at least two platforms and a double line of track. It's almost completely dark now, and the station is lit by low wattage yellow bulbs, like the train itself, pools of yellow light in the gloom. She stands up, and stares through the window, but there is nobody there, just a tatty sign swinging in the wind saying, gents. She swallows hard and steps out to the carriage door, but it's stiff and she has to struggle to open it. She hangs out so she can see along the empty platform, somehow unwilling to step down, her heart thumping so loudly she is sure if there were anyone there they would hear it. Maybe there is and they can.
The rumble of the engine dies and the train lights go out. Panicked, she stumbles out of the carriage and sees a sign tacked to the barrier in front of the buffer the engine rests against.
End of the line, it says.