CHAPTER FOUR The Passenger Who Knew My Name

I did not enter the train.

The man inside was unmistakably me. He wore my coat, sat with his left leg crossed over his right, and held a book in the peculiar way I had acquired years ago, with one thumb pressed against the spine to keep the pages from falling open. Even the slight forward tilt of his head was familiar.

He was reading.

I wondered whether he could see me. The window reflected the platform lights, and behind them I could make out the outline of Eleanor, standing beside me with her suitcase.

“Is that what happens?” I asked.

“What?”

“I become him?”

Eleanor shook her head.

“You're assuming that one of you has to become the other.”

“Which one is the original?”

She looked at me with an expression I could not interpret.

“Does it matter?”

It mattered enormously to me. I had spent my life assuming that a person was a continuous thing, that the man who woke in the morning was the same man who had gone to sleep, and that memory, however imperfect, connected the two. Now I was looking at someone who shared my face, my clothes, and apparently my habits, yet whose existence seemed to have no place in that continuity.

I stepped closer to the window.

The other man turned a page.

I raised my right hand.

He did not respond.

Then, quite suddenly, he looked up and smiled.

I stepped back.

He put down the book, rose from his seat, and walked towards the carriage door. I heard the pneumatic mechanism engage. The door slid open.

He stood in the doorway, looking at me.

“You're late,” he said.

His voice was mine, though it sounded slightly older.

“Who are you?”

He seemed surprised.

“Who do you think?”

“I think you're me.”

“Then why ask?”

He stepped down onto the platform. For a moment we stood facing each other, close enough that I could see a small scar above his left eyebrow. I had acquired that scar when I was twelve, falling from a bicycle. I touched my own eyebrow. The scar was there.

The other man noticed the gesture.

“Ah,” he said. “You've reached that part.”

“What part?”

He glanced at Eleanor.

“Have you told him?”

“Not yet,” she said.

“Then perhaps you should.”

Eleanor shook her head.

“It's too soon.”

The man sighed, as though this were an argument they had had many times before.

“Very well.”

He turned to me.

“Don't take the book out of the library again.”

“I don't have it.”

“You will.”

He stepped back into the carriage.

“Wait!” I called. “What is this place? What is happening to me?”

He paused in the doorway.

“Nothing is happening to you,” he said. “You're happening to it.”

Then he sat down, opened his book, and resumed reading.

The door closed.

The train remained motionless for several seconds. Then it began to move, gathering speed as it travelled towards the far end of the platform. I watched it disappear into the mist.

“Who was that?” I asked.

Eleanor picked up her suitcase.

“You.”

“That isn't an answer.”

“It's the only one I have.”

I wanted to argue, but something in her expression stopped me. She looked tired. Not merely fatigued, but worn down by a long experience whose duration could not be measured in hours or days.

“How long have you been here?” I asked again.

She considered the question.

“Do you mean since I arrived, or since I first realised I hadn't left?”

I said nothing.

She began walking towards the end of the platform, where a narrow staircase descended beneath the tracks. I followed her.

At the bottom, we entered a room containing a row of lockers. Each locker bore a small brass number. Some stood open; others were locked. Eleanor stopped at number seventeen and took a key from her pocket.

Inside was a folded railway map, a photograph, and a small notebook.

She handed me the photograph.

It showed a railway station on a bright summer afternoon. People were waiting on the platform, some seated on benches, others standing beside their luggage. At the far end, a woman in a dark coat was holding a small leather suitcase.

Eleanor.

She looked younger in the photograph, though not by much. Beside her stood a man whose face had been obscured by a crease in the paper.

“When was this taken?” I asked.

“I don't know.”

“Where?”

“I don't know that either.”

“You must know something.”

She took the photograph from me and studied it.

“I remember waiting for someone. I remember being certain that he would arrive. I remember the train coming, and I remember getting on.”

“Then what happened?”

“I don't remember.”

She returned the photograph to the locker.

“Sometimes I think I got off at the wrong station. Sometimes I think I never boarded the train. Sometimes I think I'm still waiting for it to arrive.”

“And the suitcase?”

She looked down at it.

“Everything I brought with me is inside.”

“What's in it?”

She hesitated.

“Things I haven't lost yet.”

I was about to ask what that meant when a faint sound came from the ceiling. It was a rhythmic tapping, like a finger striking glass.

Eleanor looked up.

“Not again.”

The tapping continued.

I followed her gaze. Above us, the ceiling was made of dark wooden boards. Between two of them, I noticed a small square of glass.

Through it I could see the underside of a railway platform.

There were people walking across it.

One of them stopped directly above us and looked down.

It was the old man from the train.

He was holding a book.

He tapped the glass once more, then opened the book and pointed to a line on the page.

I could not read the words, but I recognised the gesture. It was the gesture of someone showing another person something they were expected to understand.

The old man closed the book and walked away.

The tapping ceased.

Eleanor took the notebook from the locker and opened it to the first page. The paper was covered in small, neat handwriting. I recognised the script before I could read the words.

It was mine.

I took the notebook from her.

The first entry was dated three days earlier.

I have discovered that the station contains a museum, and that the museum contains a library. I suspect the library contains something I have not yet found.

The next entry was dated two days earlier.

I met a woman named Eleanor. She carries a suitcase and appears to know more about the station than she is willing to say.

The third entry was dated yesterday.

I have seen myself on a train. I do not know which of us arrived first.

I turned to the last page.

There was a single sentence, written in a hand that was almost, but not quite, mine.

When you meet Eleanor, ask her what she remembers about the photograph.

I looked up.

Eleanor was watching me.

“Have you read this before?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Who wrote it?”

“You did.”

“When?”

She shook her head.

“I don't know.”

I looked again at the notebook. The entries were dated three days earlier, two days earlier, and yesterday. Yet I could not remember writing any of them.

I turned back to the first page.

Beneath the original entry, in faint pencil, was a line I had not noticed before.

The notebook has no first page.

I checked the binding. The first sheet was attached to the cover. There was nothing before it.

Then I understood what the sentence meant.

The entry was not the beginning of the notebook. It was merely the first entry I had found.

I turned to the back. The final sheet was blank.

Or appeared to be blank.

As I watched, a line of handwriting slowly emerged from the paper.

I am now reading the sentence that I will write when I have finished reading this notebook.

I closed it.

Eleanor took the notebook and returned it to the locker. She locked the door and put the key back into her pocket.

“We should go,” she said.

“Where?”

She looked towards the staircase.

“Back to the library.”

“Why?”

“Because the book is waiting for you.”

I followed her up the stairs. At the top, we emerged onto a platform I did not recognise. There were no signs, no clocks, and no departure board. A single bench stood beneath the roof. On it lay a folded newspaper.

Eleanor picked it up.

The headline read:

PASSENGER FAILS TO ARRIVE AT STATION.

Beneath the headline was a photograph of the station entrance.

I leaned closer.

The photograph showed me standing beside the ticket barriers, looking up at the departure board.

Behind me, a cleaner was mopping the floor.

I checked the date.

It was tomorrow's.

Eleanor folded the newspaper and put it into her suitcase.

“Come along,” she said.

“Where are we going?”

She looked at me with an expression that was almost tender.

“To find out which of us is waiting.”

Then she opened a door in the wall, and beyond it I saw the museum again.

The same museum.

The same glass cases.

The same lectern, with the catalogue lying open.

And behind the desk, reading her newspaper, sat Eleanor.