Jan and Chrissie barrel on to the train at Portsmouth,
fill the carriage with noise and disapproval: grab
seat-backs for balance, shriek beery breath into quiet faces.

Students bend in protective intensity over holiday-end essays,
teenagers shrink in their seats and hide fear behind giggles,
bearded hikers lean away as they’re told to Cheer up!

by Jan, a ruined beauty with history dragging at her skin, clothes
two sizes and twenty years too small. Chrissie is quieter
in clothes and loud in apologies and confidences. They drink

from bottles fished from bargain store bags and dance
in the aisle to the music that Jan demands the students turn up
high, until the guard tells them to sit down and disappointment

bends her spine like years. Chrissie leans across the littered
table She’s had a terrible life: six kids and her husband beat
her black and blue. Not that I’d put up with it, but I love her

to bits; we’ve been best friends since we was seven. They sit,
arms draped around each other, then erupt with fluster and noise
as their station is announced; blow kisses as they fall and squeal

out of the door. The carriage sighs as the train moves on; smiles
and shaking heads bridge the aisles and invite conversation,
relax into camaraderie as the train rushes into the blind tunnel.

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist