Although it was an enormous station with at least six platforms, each one numbered with a huge black figure on a board, and all stretching as far as he could see without craning his neck, the whole place was empty: there was not a single passenger in sight. He thought that everything looked as desolate and as abandoned as the old factories which they'd passed.

There was a steady rhythm in the way the train moved, a musical rhythm. He settled back in his seat and watched the hills slip by. A scatter of raindrops on the glass shivered there.

He looks out of the window, feels his eyes hurt as they flick back and forth, trying to make sense of what he can see. A pub and a cutting. A stretch of a canal or a river. A change of note as they go through a tunnel. He sees a tractor in a long, brown field and a small cottage, a motorway bridge and a wood-yard. And they are gone.

Blurred landscape; a rhythm like a drum machine. (Dee-dum, dee-dum.) Warehouses. Warehouses. Small town. A station. Can't read the name. Long bridge. A river. Just a glimpse. Look: a swan. A boat. Sunlight sparkling. The roar of the train. And what's that? What's that?