'I'm working on a story at the moment,' said Kallie.
'It's not set in the future, is it?' asked Masters cautiously.
'No, London Docklands, in the present day. I read about electromagnetic pollution somewhere. Microwaves can create hot spots, areas rippling with forcefields stronger than the most powerful ocean cross-currents. The story's about a corporation that accidentally creates them in its offices.'
'Sounds a bit far-fetched.' Summerfield wrestled another wine bottle away from the concerned waiter and overfilled everyone's glasses as the train hammered over a set of points.
'Big business as the evil bogeyman, it's an ever-popular target for student paranoia,' complained Masters, unimpressed. 'There's no human dimension in the stories of the young. Too many issue-led morality tales, the sort they have on American television shows, nothing from direct experience.'
'Oh for God's sake,' snapped Jane, 'people can only reflect the times in which they live. There are no traditional heroes left, no explorers, no captains, no warriors. I don't know why you expect so much from others. One thing that years of listening to you has taught me is that you're incapable of telling a decent story. It's a talent you singularly lack, because you have no perception. You're best off leaving it to other people.'
Shocked by her own honesty, she stopped herself from saying any more. An uncomfortable atmosphere settled on the table. Stung, Masters stared out into the rainswept darkness, avoiding his wife's angry gaze.
'Come on, chaps, let's not get personal.' Summerfield clapped his hands together and startled Jane, who was gazing glumly into her wine, hypnotised by the steady movement of the train. Most of the carriage was deserted now. Even the guard was dozing in an end seat, his head lolling on his shoulder. It was as though they had been freed from the shackles of time and place, the co-ordinates that underpinned their lives slipping quietly away into the night.
Claire shifted across the aisle to the opposite seat and faced them. 'I've got a story,' she said mischievously. 'About some friends of mine who got locked in a pub.' And she told it, although it didn't sound true.
'Well.' Jane cleared her throat at the end, slightly flummoxed. 'That was certainly frank. Although I'm not sure it's really a fit subject to turn into a dramatic piece.'
'Some people are uncomfortable around the subject of sexuality,' mumbled Claire, meaning older people, meaning her. The senior members of the group were a little embarrassed by the girl's intensity, although it obviously did not bother Kallie or Ben. Jane drained her glass and pushed back into her seat, unsettled by what she had heard. Masters cleared a spot on the window and peered out. 'My watch has stopped. I thought we'd be able to see the sea by now. Doesn't the train run along the coast for the last hour?'
'There's not much of a moon.'
'Even so, you should be able to see something.'
The carriage shifted across a set of uneven points, and the overhead lights flickered. Electricity crackled somewhere beneath their feet.
'Maybe we're on the Hallowe'en train to hell.' Summerfield looked around. Jane was half asleep. Suddenly the train lurched hard and shuddered to a hard halt, its brakes squealing. Wine bottles and glasses toppled on tables, and several pieces of luggage bounced down from the overhead racks.
'What on earth…'
Jane blearily pulled herself upright. 'Are we there?'
'God knows where we are.' The doctor pressed his forehead against the window. 'It's pitch black out there. I can't see a thing.'
Ben retrieved his backpack from beneath his seat. 'I'm going to ask someone.'
'You needn't bother asking the guard,' said Masters, pointing. 'He seems to have wandered off.'
'Maybe he's dead,' Summerfield stage-whispered, 'drugged, shot with a poison dart, a minor character in an Agatha Christie play, someone whose Rosencrantz-like role exists simply to fulfil a duty to the plot.'
'Now who's muddling fact and fiction?' Masters asked uncomfortably. He turned to his wife. 'Are you warm enough?'
'You've noticed it too, then.' The heating had gone off. They could hear the steady tick of the radiators cooling all along the carriage. Jane sensed that there was something wrong, as if the world had slipped a notch deeper into darkness. Panic was descending on her like a cold veil of rain. She dug into her purse for the tablets Dr Colson had prescribed, but could not find them. She had taken two earlier. What had she done with the rest of the packet? When she turned to her husband, she found that he was making his way along the aisle toward the exit.
There was something wrong. She needed the tablets to stop her from worrying. She dumped the purse out on to the table and began scrabbling through the contents. The foil sheet glittered between her fingers as she popped out two of the yellow capsules. Claire pulled a mobile phone from her bag and checked it. 'No reception,' she said casually. 'Anyone else?'
'Wait.' Jane retrieved a small black square from her coat and flipped it open. 'None here either. The service isn't reliable in heavily wooded areas.'
At the front of the carriage, Masters pushed down the train window and peered out into the darkness, his breath condensing in the invading night air. He looked back along the curving track, but could see nothing until the moon cleared the clouds.
When the lunar light finally unveiled the landscape, he saw that there were no other carriages behind them. Theirs had been uncoupled from the main body of the train, and released into what he could only assume was a siding. It sat by itself on a gravelled incline, with low hills rolling away on either side. The sea was not in sight, not where it should have been.
He tried to see ahead in the other direction, and could make out a vague dark shape beside the track, a large, squat building of some sort. Clearly there had been a mistake, some kind of accident. He decided to head back and give a cautious report to the others.
'Well, we have no power to move by ourselves,' said Summerfield, when the situation had been explained. 'As I see it, we have two choices. We can stay here and freeze our nuts off, hoping that somebody finds us, or we can head for the building you saw and try to find a telephone that works.'
'I don't understand how this could have happened.' Jane looked over at the students, annoyed that they could be so calm and still, and by the way they sat apart, implying some kind of private pact of solidarity that did not exist among their elders. 'Isn't anyone worried at all?'
'There's not really much to worry about,' said Summerfield. 'This sort of thing happens all the time. You always read about trains overshooting their stations and passengers having to walk down the track in the dark.'
'I'm not walking along the track – we could be electrocuted!'
'I'm not saying we all do, but someone should. This looks like an old branch line. Suppose a connection came loose and we got separated when we went over the points back there? It could happen, even with advanced information systems. Perhaps nobody will be aware that there's a carriage missing until the train reaches its destination. Maybe not even then.'
'Harold, I think your imagination is bypassing your common sense,' Summerfield admonished. 'Let's face it, you've never been much good in a crisis. Let's try and be logical about this. The carriage coupling must have made a noise when it disconnected. Doesn't anyone remember hearing it?'
Masters looked around. 'And what happened to the guard?When I last saw him he was asleep in the end seat there.'