I did not open the door immediately.
The voice on the other side had been mine, but it had possessed something my own voice lacked: an urgency that sounded like anger held in check for a very long time.
“Who are you?” I called.
There was a pause.
“You know who I am.”
I looked at the woman.
She had stepped away from the door. Her face was pale, and she was holding the red string so tightly that it had cut into her palm.
“Don't ask him anything else,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because he'll answer.”
The voice behind the door gave a short laugh.
“She has always preferred questions with no answers.”
“Who are you?” I asked again.
The woman closed her eyes.
The door opened inwards.
Beyond it lay a small railway compartment. A wooden bench ran along one wall; opposite it, a window showed a landscape of dark water under a white sky. There were no tracks visible, no shore, no horizon. The water continued upwards into the sky, and the sky continued downwards beneath the water, so that the compartment seemed suspended between two identical expanses.
A man sat on the bench.
He had my face.
Not the face I saw in the mirror each morning, but the face I might have had if I had spent years looking for something I could never quite remember. His hair was longer, his clothes older, and his hands were marked with small, pale scars. A railway ticket lay on his knee.
He looked at me with an expression of immense relief.
“Thank goodness,” he said. “You've come at last.”
I remained in the doorway.
“Who are you?”
He glanced at the woman.
“She hasn't told you?”
“No,” I said.
“Of course not.” He folded the ticket and put it in his pocket. “She never tells anyone anything until it's too late.”
The woman stepped into the compartment.
“You shouldn't be here.”
“Neither should you.”
“I know.”
He looked at me again.
“Do you remember the house?”
“Yes.”
“The garden?”
“Yes.”
“The room with the glass vessel?”
I hesitated.
“Yes.”
“And the postcard?”
I said nothing.
He nodded, as though I had answered correctly.
“Then we're getting somewhere.”
“Where?”
He smiled. “You see? That's exactly the trouble.”
I entered the compartment. The door closed behind me, though I hadn't touched it. The woman remained outside, on the stairway between the roots.
I tried the door. It would not open.
“Let her in,” I said.
“She can't come in.”
“Why not?”
“Because she's already here.”
I turned.
The woman was sitting beside him on the bench.
The woman on the stairway was still standing outside the door.
Both looked at me.
The one inside the compartment spoke first.
“Don't believe everything he tells you.”
The one outside said nothing.
I looked from one to the other. Their faces were identical, but the woman inside wore her hair loose, while the woman outside had tied hers back with a length of string.
“Which of you is real?” I asked.
The man sighed.
“Must we begin with that?”
The woman inside the compartment took his ticket from his pocket.
It was blank.
She held it to the window. Beyond the glass, the water darkened, and a railway station appeared beneath its surface. A platform extended into the distance. Figures stood at intervals along it, each facing away from the train.
One of them turned.
It was the little girl in the dark coat.
She raised a hand and pointed at the window.
The man stood abruptly.
“No,” he said. “Not that station.”
The woman handed him the ticket.
“It's the one you asked for.”
“I asked for a way out.”
“And they gave you one.”
“That's not the same thing.”
The girl on the platform began walking towards us. As she approached, the water seemed to rise around her without wetting her clothes. When she reached the window, she pressed her palm against the glass.
The man backed away.
I had never seen him afraid before, but now I understood that his impatience, his irritation, even his relief at seeing me, had all been ways of keeping fear at a distance.
The girl mouthed a word.
I couldn't hear it.
The woman beside me leaned towards the glass.
“Read her lips,” she whispered.
I watched carefully.
Remember.
The girl lowered her hand.
The station disappeared.
The man sat down again, breathing heavily.
“What did she mean?” I asked.
He looked at the blank ticket in his hand.
“You really don't remember.”
“Remember what?”
He turned the ticket over.
On the reverse, in my handwriting, was a sentence:
I will stay until the others have left.
I stared at it.
“I didn't write this.”
“Not yet,” he said.
The compartment shuddered. Somewhere outside, wheels began to turn.
The woman beside me took my hand.
“It's time to go.”
“Where?”
She looked towards the window, where the white sky had begun to darken.
“Before he decides to stay again.”
The man rose and reached for the door.
But when he opened it, there was no stairway, no tree roots, no garden.
There was only the waiting room at the station, with its bench, coat stand, and handless clock.
A small photograph rested on the bench.
I picked it up.
It showed three people standing beside the pool: the woman, the man from the compartment, and myself.
The man and I were facing each other.
Between us, the woman held a brass key.
On the back, someone had written:
One of them must remain.
I looked up.
The compartment was empty.
The man had gone. The woman had gone. The window showed nothing but a still expanse of water.
I was alone.
Then, from somewhere beneath the bench, came three knocks.
A pause.
Two more.
And a voice I recognised, though I could not remember whose it was, whispered:
“Don't let me out.”
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