The two seats directly in front of me: an old couple. The man is holding a bag of groceries - Tesco's - I can see some packaging sticking out. The lady stares off into the distance, and occasionally glances at her watch. They hold hands the entire length of the trip until the man's hand lets go to scratch his nose, and seems to get lost on the journey back and ends up on his lap instead.
2 o'clock, to the right: a young woman in her early twenties in a Mickey Mouse sweater, listening to music. I spend most of the ride trying to figure out what book she's reading. The Seven Daughters of Eve, I eventually find out. She catches one of my inquisitive sidelong glances, looks up at me calmly, makes exactly no facial expression at all, and then returns to her book.
I find myself thinking about the Underground as an almost sacred place. You sit among strangers in silence, and the world is whisked away - and for a brief moment you're completely removed from the enclosure of the Outside. It's a separate space, neither here nor there, and you're drifting towards wherever it is you're going in a tube-shaped temporal netherworld.
The train stops. The Mickey Mouse woman slides her book into a bag, ruffles her hair for a second, then leaves the train. The old lady looks at her watch again, before letting her gaze trail back to the ground.
A beat.
The doors wheeze shut.
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