Ferryman Read Free

She zipped up the bag again and walked determinedly out of the room. Egbert lay discarded on the middle of the bed. Exactly twenty seconds later, she dashed back in and grabbed him.
    “Sorry, Egbert,” she whispered, kissing him quickly before stuffing him unceremoniously into the bag as she ran back out of the door.
    If she hurried she might be able to catch the earlier train and surprise her dad. This thought carried her down the stairs and along the street. There was a café en route to the train station; maybe she could nip in, grab a burger to sustain her till dinner. Dylan picked up the pace, mouth already watering in anticipation, but as she passed the high metal gates of the park, something stopped her dead. She stared through the bars at the melee of greenery, not quite sure what she was looking at.
    Déjà vu.
    She squinted, trying to work out what had triggered the feeling. A glimpse of tousled blond peaked out beneath the branches of a wide oak. For a second, Dylan had a flash of that same halo of hair, wrapped round a face, featureless but for eyes of shocking cobalt blue. The dream.
    She sucked in a breath, her pulse suddenly pounding, but a cackle of boyish laughter shattered the illusion. As she watched, the head turned to reveal a smirking mouth pouting out a stream of smoke, cigarette dangling from his lips. MacMillan, with his pals. Dylan wrinkled her nose in disgust and stepped back before he could see her.
    Shaking her head to chase the last tendrils of the dream away, she crossed the road, eyes fixed on the hand-painted sign above the greasy-spoon café.

Chapter Two
     
     
    “ I t’s outrageous. Scandalous.” The stranger had clearly decided that, as reading was out, he would concentrate on the next best thing: complaining. Dylan glanced at him dubiously. She did not really want to get into a discussion with this tweed-covered , middle-aged man and end up being drawn into awkward conversation all the way to Aberdeen. She shrugged, a gesture almost lost under her heavy parka.
    He carried on, unfazed by her lack of enthusiasm. “I mean, the prices they’re charging, you’d think they could be on time. But oh no. Outrageous. I’ve been waiting here for twenty minutes, and you know when it comes in there won’t be a seat to be had. Terrible service.”
    Dylan looked around. Though a cross-section of society loitered under the various points of shelter, the platform was not so crowded that she could just melt away and disappear.
    The tweed man turned to look at her. “Don’t you think?”
    Forced into a direct response, Dylan tried to be as non-committal as possible. “Mmmm.”
    He seemed to take this as an invitation to continue the diatribe. “Better when it was National Rail. Knew where you were with them. Good, honest men working the trains then. It’s all gone downhill now. Run by a bunch of charlatans. Outrageous.”
    Where
is
the train, Dylan thought, desperate to be relieved of this social charade. And there it was, rolling in like a knight in rusting armour. One glimmer of hope in a day full of embarrassment and torment.
    She reached down for the rucksack at her feet. It was faded and showing signs of wear and tear, like most things she owned. As she took both handles in her hand and heaved the heavy bag off the ground and over her shoulder, a faint ripping sound made her grimace. It would be in keeping with the pattern of today for the seam to tear open and a phantom wind to gust up and whisk her underwear across the station. Mercifully it held, and Dylan shuffled forward with the rest of the weary passengers towards the train as it coasted slowly to a standstill. It stopped with a hiss of hydraulics, leaving her equidistant between two sets of doors. She quickly eyed the direction in which the tweed stranger was headed and dashed, as fast as she could under her burden, towards the other door.
    Once in the carriage she glanced left and right, trying to identify the crazies –