Two Cups on Platform Six

Her father arrived with two cups of tea and no apology. Elsie made room for him on the station bench, though she had promised herself she would not.

The train was twenty minutes late. On her phone, her new employer had sent directions from the station to the office. She read them again. Her father put a cup beside her suitcase. He had remembered she took no sugar.

“Your mother said platform six,” he said. “She couldn’t leave the shop.” Elsie nodded. Her mother had called twice already. Neither call mentioned the argument three nights earlier, when her father had said a job two hundred miles away was hardly worth calling a job.

He asked whether the rented room had a lock. She said yes. Whether the landlord lived there. No. Whether anyone would meet her. She told him about her colleague, Imogen, whose name he repeated carefully.

A family passed with a small boy pulling a suitcase shaped like a tiger. Her father watched them. “You had one with wheels that fell off,” he said. Elsie remembered. He had carried it through two stations without telling her it was broken.

“Why did you say I’d fail?” she asked. She had intended to wait until the train arrived, when he would have no time to answer. The delay had spoiled that plan.

He rubbed the cardboard sleeve around his cup. “I said it wouldn’t last.” “You said I’d be home before Christmas.” “Yes.” He looked down the track. “That was a rotten thing to say.”

Elsie waited. He had apologised for smaller things with elaborate explanations: traffic, tiredness, the wrong screwdriver. This time he offered none. The loudspeaker announced another five minutes.

“I went away once,” he said. “Before you were born. Job in a garage. I lasted six weeks.” Elsie knew about the garage, but she thought he had left to open the shop. “What happened?”

“I missed home. Didn’t ask anybody for help. Came back and called the boss an idiot so nobody would ask more questions.” He gave a short laugh. “Might even have believed it for a while.”

She turned her cup between her hands. His failure explained the argument without making it fair. “That doesn’t mean I’ll come back,” she said. “I know.” Then, after a pause: “I’m trying to know.”

The train arrived. He carried her suitcase to the door. She took it from him; it was light enough. On the step, she asked if he wanted to visit once she had settled in.

“Will your room fit us?” “There’s a café downstairs.” He nodded, already calculating a route. She hugged him before the guard raised his whistle.

From her seat she watched him collect both empty cups. Her phone buzzed as the train moved. A message from him: Send me the name of that café. She typed it, then added: Come hungry. We can have breakfast.