The Window Seat

For six Thursdays, Julian had watched the woman in the window seat draw the same crooked tower.

He knew almost nothing else about her. She got on before him, carried a canvas bag patched with yellow thread, and always moved it from the aisle seat when the carriage became busy. Her hair was dark, her glasses had green frames, and once she had spent the entire journey eating cherries from a paper bag with the concentration of somebody solving a complicated problem. He had decided she was an architect. By the fourth Thursday he had revised this to an architect who disliked her job.

On the seventh, she looked up and caught him studying the drawing.

“It's a church,” she said. “Not a particularly successful one.”

“I thought you might be designing it.”

“Then I've really made it look bad.”

She turned the notebook towards him. The tower stood above a street of uneven houses, its clock drawn too large. A small dog occupied the foreground with the solemn importance of a local official. Under the dog, somebody had written: Chairman of the pavement.

“My brother lives there,” she said. “He sends photographs. I draw the bits I remember.”

“The dog?”

“The dog is entirely accurate.”

He sat opposite her when she pointed to the empty seat. Her name was Anika. She was thirty-seven, restored old photographs for a living, and was returning from an evening class in bookbinding. Julian was forty and worked in building acoustics, which she asked him to explain without using the word solutions. He tried. She judged the attempt adequate and drew a small pair of headphones on the church.

Outside, the train moved through the last of the industrial streets. Light caught the carriage windows and turned them briefly into mirrors. He could see them reflected beside one another, already looking like people who had agreed to travel together. It was an unreasonable thing to notice after twelve minutes. He noticed anyway.

At the next station the doors remained open. A staff member walked down the platform. Then an announcement apologised for a signal fault, followed by another apology which added no useful information. Julian offered to find out whether buses were running. Anika closed the notebook and stood.

“I think I would rather find coffee.”

“You don't need to get home?”

“I live alone. The basil plant will cope.”

They left the station into fine rain. The nearest café had shut, but a bakery two streets away still had lights on. Through the window they could see the owner stacking chairs. Anika held up two fingers and made a hopeful face. He considered them, looked at the rain, then put a chair back on the floor.

Inside smelled of warm sugar and the clean water used to mop tiles. They ordered coffee and shared the last pear tart because neither wanted to admit they were hungry enough for it. Julian cut it badly. Anika watched him struggle with the pastry and took the plate from him.

“You solve noise in buildings,” she said. “Let me manage this.”

She divided it neatly, giving him the larger piece without comment. He liked that more than he liked some entire dates he had been on.

They talked about the lives they had imagined for each other. She had thought he was a music teacher because he always carried a long black case. He explained that it held measuring equipment. She looked disappointed on behalf of the story she had made up.

“What instrument was I teaching?”

“Cello. You looked too tired for trumpet.”

She told him about a photograph she had restored that week: two women standing outside a boarding house, one holding the other's hat against the wind. The client knew their names but nothing about the day. Anika had spent hours making their faces visible without pretending to know what the expressions meant. She disliked captions that turned strangers into tidy stories. Julian looked at the measuring case beside his chair and admitted that he had already given her three different careers.

“Were any of them interesting?”

“One involved designing churches.”

“I'll keep that one.”

She asked what he would have guessed about her if she had never spoken. He thought about it, then said he would have decided she was happy travelling alone. She traced a finger around the edge of her cup.

“Usually I am. That isn't quite the same as never wanting company.”

He nodded. The answer made him want to ask another question and, for once, resist supplying it himself.

He told her about his niece learning the trumpet and her terrible certainty that every note deserved to be played at full volume. Anika laughed so suddenly that she put a hand over his wrist. She left it there for a moment after the laugh had finished. When she withdrew it, the place where her fingers had rested seemed unexpectedly cool.

The baker began wiping the counter more slowly. Julian realised they were being given time and felt grateful enough to buy bread he did not need. Anika bought another loaf, and outside they stood beneath the awning holding paper bags against their coats. The rain had strengthened. There was no point pretending the station was the most convenient place to go.

“My flat is ten minutes away,” she said. “I have proper plates and terrible coffee.”

“How terrible?”

“You might prefer the train.”

He smiled. “I'd like to come, if you're sure.”

“I wouldn't have invited you otherwise.”

Her building had a narrow staircase and a bicycle chained to the banister. On the landing she stopped to find her key, and he became aware of how close they were standing. She looked back at him. Neither moved away. He could see a drop of rain caught on the green frame of her glasses. He wanted to remove it and knew that wanting to touch someone was different from assuming he could.

“May I?” he asked, lifting his hand.

She took off the glasses herself. “Now you can.”

His fingers touched her cheek first. The kiss that followed was brief, almost questioning, until she caught the front of his coat and kept him there. Her keys pressed between their hands. Behind a door downstairs, somebody turned up a television. Ordinary noises, a place he had never been, her mouth finding his again. He forgot every version of her he had invented on the train.

Inside, the basil plant occupied most of the kitchen windowsill and appeared to be thriving. There were photographs drying beneath a sheet of glass, books stacked sideways, and a red jumper hanging over the back of a chair. She took their coats into the bathroom to drip. He found the plates where she told him they would be and put the bread on the table.

They did make coffee. It was terrible. She sat beside him rather than opposite, and eventually their conversation slowed into pauses that neither tried to repair. When he kissed her again, she put her cup down with deliberate care. She asked whether he wanted to stay a while. He answered by taking her hand and waiting for her to show him where.

The rest of the evening remained behind her closed door.

A week later, Julian boarded the train carrying two coffees from the bakery. Anika was in the window seat. Her bag had already been moved. In the notebook, beside the crooked church, she had drawn a man carrying a case and a woman holding a suspiciously large loaf of bread.

“That case doesn't contain a cello,” he told her.

“Artistic licence.”

He sat beside her. When the train began to move, she leaned against his shoulder and added two small paper cups to the drawing.